What Do You Do?

Imagine, if you will, that I’m at a party. It’s a posh party with people dressed up to the nines, a pianist playing some light jazz unobtrusively in the background and the great and the good of the land all mingling merrily. They, like me, each have a plate of canapés in one hand and a chilled chardonnay the other. I’ve no idea what these are but if they’re anything like a Double Chocolate Magnum I’ll be in hog heaven.

Those who know me well will have realised that picturing me at an event like this takes a huge stretch of the imagination but go with me on this, just for a short while.

I sidle – or maybe I sashay, you’re the one who’s imagining this scene – over to a stunning blonde and we begin small talk. I’m a master of it don’t you know and I may even get her phone number.  Everything’s going spiffily until there’s a slight lull in the conversation and she asks that question. The question that everyone always asks in situations like this. The one question that people feel safe asking because everyone has an answer, even if it’s “Actually I’m between acting roles at the moment”.

“So tell me Shaun”, she says. “What do you do?”

I’m OK with it, I’m proud of my work. It’s not like I’m Gary Glitter’s publicist or something.

“I’m a writer” I say absently, trying to work out how to suck a sausage roll from my plate without putting my drink down.

“A writer!” The blonde would clap her hands together with glee if they weren’t, like mine, full of drink and nibbles. She’s impressed though, I can tell. So am I, every time I say it. I’m a writer. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. I’m chuffed to monkeys (as they say – whoever they might be). But then she asks the follow up question – “What kind of stuff do you write?” – and that’s when I crumple a little.

It applies to any kind of artist I guess. Painters, sculptors, actors as well as writers. We all have the same problem. Unless we’re ridiculously talented and/or even more ridiculously lucky then we have to make compromises. We want to produce our art for its own sake, to have it and by extension ourselves accepted and appreciated on artistic merit alone, yet we all have bills to pay.

They say that writers should write what they want to write, what they believe in, what they feel deep in their heart. If you write it, they will come, apparently. But what if what I feel in my heart is an urge to write long flowing descriptions of my perfect holiday destinations? Nothing about the human condition just incoherent pieces full of mixed metaphors and adverbs that are virtually unreadable in their ramblings but do at least calm my troubled brow? What if I want to lock myself away in research for days on end and have the freedom to include every single scrap of unearthed data in my work without having to care how badly these titbits will clog up the intricacies of plot? I’d much rather find out what someone in my story would authentically wear in his given timeframe than be bothered with consistencies in the complexity of his character. But who’d pay for work like that? Who’d commission a piece with very little storyline but a wonderful description of the settings and their history? Doing loads of research is useless if it never makes the final cut. It goes under the banner of ‘useful background material’ if I’m feeling generous: ‘a total waste of time’ if I’m not.

I need to earn a crust like everyone else and the only thing that I can do with any competence is string a sentence or two together so I don’t write my beautiful flowing poetic pieces and I don’t write bestselling doorstop novels with storylines so dense that you need a degree in advanced political espionage to wade through them. What I actually write are factual articles for magazines or webpages or trivia books. I can fill these with my research data and I still get to write each and every day but it’s a watered down version of my dream.

So when anyone asks “What kind of stuff do you write?”, whether they be imaginary blondes at an imaginary party or an unwanted new-best-friend who’s chosen to sit beside me on an otherwise empty bus, I usually give the same answer.

“I write whatever somebody will pay me to write.”