Fame is regarded as the highest reward for achievement.

The opposite is the case.

Die with a reputation on your conscience and you’ll join the undead.

Crawl between heaven and Hades forever.

Be feasted on by ghouls.

Unrest in pieces.

Anonymous, you’ll leave the world intact.

Languish a generation in memory.

Two, tops.

Then, rest undisturbed.

Never be disinterred.

The secret of a successful death is to leave life as you entered it:

Unknown and unknowable.

What inspired this thought?

A dread of real people reading my irreal scribblings?

Of course.

Of crossing the divide between anonymity and notoriety?

No.

WHO EVER ANYWHERE WILL VIEW THESE PRINTED IMAGES?

None of this will be viewed by a soul beyond the next generation –

This suspicion taunted me after I helped a relation sort through a cache of old photos.

My gaze bleared.

For the relation?

At first.

(I said nothing.)

But also – admittedly, ashamedly – for myself.

What would happen to the thousands of snaps I’d taken of my family?

They’d be reviewed by my children, probably.

At first cursorily.

When they reached my age, more intently.

They might show them to their children.

Who’d look them over dutifully.

Illustrations to an anecdote.

And, then, overlook them.

After all, I’d little interest in the sepia rectangles memorialising my great-grandparents.

And had never seen – asked to see – portraits of their parents.

Later, another thought mopped my mawkishness.

Would this be a bad thing?

More:

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be wholly un-known again?

As anonymous as I’d been for the eternity running in the other direction?

Why?

I didn’t know at first.

Then Pythagoras popped into my mind.

His parable of the three types who attend the Olympic Games.

First, he said, was the lowest sort:

Those who came to buy and sell.

Next, just above them, were those who competed.

Best of all, though, were those who came to watch.

Did something comparable apply to renown?

It’s a difficult claim to accommodate.

My pantheon is as crowded as Olympus and Asgard combined.

WHEN YOU’VE GOT IT, FLAUNT IT!

Perhaps the notion was inspired by the realisation that fame has become so – well – common of late.

Vulgar, even.

As if self-conferred.

Like slapping a label on yourself.

A label of yourself on yourself.

So, though we’re encouraged to conceive of those in the limelight as heroic, many betray themselves as pathetic.

Tragic.

Why?

I don’t know.

But if they savoured the sordid rewards that accompany fame, I could afford to be generous.

It’s necessary to live, after all.

And, so, make a living.

But most insist that income is irrelevant.

Demonstrate this by doing nothing with their swag.

For themselves or others.

Little constructive at least.

They shoot it up their noses, into their veins, across roulette tables.

So, they seem as sad as the latter-day masters of mankind.

Forbes’ feudal lords who bank funds enough to explore the world a thousand times over –

A thousand worlds –

Then loiter in a boardroom.

Sickling under the glow off an overhead projector.

MISSION CREEPS

Forbes folks, too, claim it’s not about the moolah.

Never was.

How to test this?

Fork over your fortune to a foundation.

Both of you will be quids in for you being quids out.

You’ll welcome the challenge of heaping-up another hoard.

Prove you weren’t favoured by fate merely first time round.

Like Forbes, the famous began with a single mission:

Take piggy to market.

One hog.

One breed.

One time.

Snuffling success, they diversified.

Were soon busing entire barnyards to the agora.

The new mission?

Maintain renown.

For the sake of equity?

Their credit card?

Their equity card, rather.

For love of their art?

The applause it purchases.

After all, as with Forbes, there’s no guarantee that the farmer who brought you the best bacon will rear chickens you’ll want to take home.

But they have to keep going.

Like a great white?

The metaphor’s trite.

But apposite.

Only, this shark doesn’t just keep moving but evolving.

Devolving, rather.

Into an entirely queerer fish.

Look, it says, a million knots later, I’m still here!

Bigger, stronger.

Yes, but you’re no longer what you were.

So, you’re not a sleek great white.

More a megalodon.

ESSENCE PRECEDES EVIDENCE

Great, public lives ought to be great first and – because of that – public.

But, nowadays, many seem comparable to modern royals.

Whose fame is bestowed prior to achievement.

Along with the injunction:

We have conferred attention on you.

Go forth and merit it.

Often, all the recipients of fame need do is commit one uncommon act.

Thereafter, our attention, and their regal bearing, invests activities that wouldn’t command a glance elsewhere with grandeur.

Because we venerate them, they are deemed special.

Because they are special, we venerate them.

Heisenberg’s immortality principle:

We cannot determine whether it is the act being observed or the act of observing that confers greatness.

Accuse me of lèse-majesté, but this is laissez faire majesté.

(Translation from pig-ignorant French: let this be majesty.)

The quotidian activity that accounts for the majority of their existence is ignored.

They are the public performance only.

But only by our leave.

Yes.

Fame doesn’t belong to them.

It is a crown they wear, but never own.

Something they are current custodians of only.

WHAT A HEEL!

In book IX of the Iliad, King Achilles discloses all his mother foresaw for him:

‘Two fates bear me on to the day of death.

If I hold out here and lay siege to Troy,

My journey home is gone, but my glory never dies.

If I voyage back to the land I love,

My pride, my glory dies.’

All face this dilemma, of course.

To a greater or lesser extent.

Whether to risk all to reap renown.

Or quit to endure the quiet life.

Homer hints at something else too.

To this point in the epic, Achilles has done nothing to merit demi-godhead.

Nevertheless, he knows it’s his for the risking.

Now, the fast runner’s mother is a goddess –

So, he’s entitled to take what she prophesies to the banks of the Styx.

But most do likewise.

That is: decide it’s their destiny to be X before they have probable cause to reason why.

Evidence to back-up the claim.

Example?

My unbrilliant career.

WHY I AM NOT WISE

I’ve been writing for 40 years.

And, boy, am I tired.

In between choring about the parental home, caddying, cinema ushering, video-store managing, administrative assisting, programming –

Husbanding, fathering, grandfathering –

I’ve turned a pen towards everything.

Poetry, plays, short stories, novels –

You name it, I’ve failed at it.

Fallen over it.

Got up.

Tried again.

Failed again.

Better?

Differently.

So, I’m a heroic failure at least?

In this one regard glorious?

Not really.

I failed at failure too.

Proved to be nil-ettante, not dilettante.

My not-working method?

Learn from an unpro:

First comes research.

Borrow books for dummies and dopes.

Study every exemplar cited.

If you haven’t done so already.

Pick up all you need to know to get everything wrong.

Force a fatuous first draft.

Rewrite and dewrite it endlessly.

Put everything into it.

Take everything out of it.

Twist fingers, toes –

Then, dispatch the manuscript to agents/publishers/producers.

Formerly as hard-copy, never to be copied, consecutively, after each is slushpiled.

Latterly, electronically, hundreds at a click, concurrently.

The result?

Indistinguishable.

But now rejection comes faster.

Exhausted, revert to doing what you’re paid to do.

Don’t want to do.

For – oh – a year or two.

Espy a glimmer through a gap.

Experience another hope.

Crawl towards it.

Worm through it.

Lean into that rock.

Start up the hill.

Why have I succumbed again and again?

I’m a sucker for a sob story.

My own especially.

Self-romantic.

Always knowingly sold a bill of bads.

Sell myself on same.

Sell myself out, the rat.

Reading that poetry offered full creative freedom, I indentured myself to it.

Got nowhere.

Radio drama seemed a softer option, kinder, wider.

The BBC produced 300 plus plays a year.

And I’d listened since I was a pipsqueak.

But it wasn’t for me.

Or me for them.

Then the road to unserfdom lay in screenwriting.

I sent my screenplays to Hollywood studios unsolicited.

As you’re not supposed to do.

(Outsiders knew no better then.)

Later, I learned the right way to go about it.

Went about it.

Vive La No Difference!

Overhearing that a writer will always find a home for a novel, I dedicated five years to disproving the claim.

‘It’s just not the way the market’s going right now,’ a publisher told me.

My reaction?

There’s a scene in The Godfather where Michael Corleone says something like:

‘Don’t tell me that because it insults my intelligence, and makes me very angry.’

I didn’t have the publisher whacked.

Nor did I order him to enter his local bookshop –

Glance over the thirty thousand volumes staged by genre, age group, size on shelves, tables –

And tell me there’s a market.

I’d rather have been straight-talked that my manuscript was unreformable dreck.

WHY I HAVEN’T WRITTEN EXCELLENT BOOKS

The reason for my remarkable failure?

Lack of talent.

Lack of drive.

Lack of self-belief.

Lack of self-belief due to lack of talent.

Lack of drive due to lack of talent.

Lack of talent due to lack of self-belief…

Ad lib the matrix to fade.

In addition, I’m no one.

From nowhere.

Know nobody.

Anybody who knows anybody.

Still, I am a writer.

Just not a published one.

A paid one.

A blockhead?

You’re leaning against an open trap-door after the horse has bolted pushing the cart before it.

I own every accusation you can level.

Other than I haven’t put in the time.

I’m not read but, Lord knows, I’ve written.

And it takes as much effort to write an unpublished as a published book.

More probably, because an unpublished one is never finished.

Merely set aside.

So, blockbusterers probably spend no more time penning million sellers than I do my non-starters.

But at least I’m in the majority.

Billions write.

Thousands get published.

Hundreds taste success, a soupçon.

One in a generation is rewarded with enough to retire on.

WHY I AM NOT CLEVER

The most likely reason is that I simply can’t hack it.

Willing and wanting doesn’t always lead to mastering and practising.

After all, there are other things I’d like to do that will remain forever beyond me.

I’d love to be able to fly, say.

(Only if granted invulnerability also, of course.)

But no amount of wishing or trying is going to shuster that up either.

Put simply, I don’t work.

Rather, I work –

Don’t get paid for it –

But I – me – this – it doesn’t work.

Why?

Thomas Mann is alleged to have said:

‘A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.’

For me it’s impossible.

Or nearly, clearly.

A greetings card, reply to an e-mail, prescription request – all demand twenty passes.

More.

So, where others claim to get by on a couple of drafts and a polish –

Claim?

First off, it’s hard to accept that some are capable of doing what is impossible for one.

To believe that any writer would be comfortable doing as much.

Not doing as much.

And even the greatest artists lie, don’t they?

Undermine any suggestion that they’re other than self-generated.

(Michelangelo denied he served an apprenticeship in the Ghirlandaio brothers’ workshop.

Insisted he emerged on the art scene fully-formed.

Simultaneously vestal and worldly-wise.)

Then, maybe there’s a way to reconcile the claims of published and un.

I used to believe that a book was a consequence of a superior talent penning one or two drafts –

An editor checking the manuscript for typos –

And a printer delivering the result to the world.

However, recently it’s emerged that even the greatest of them is flagged into pit-stop after pit-stop –

By mechanics rude and respectful –

To receive the tinkering necessary to horsepower them to the finish line.

That every name on an acknowledgements page has reviewed the rest of the manuscript at least once.

Harper Lee’s editor Tay Hohoff turned Go Set A Watchman over a span of two years till it hatched as To Kill A Mockingbird.

If Raymond Carver’s body had received as many slashes as editor Gordon Lish dealt his stories no surgeon on earth could have done a thing for him.

The presenter of the New Yorker fiction podcast rarely preludes a reading without betraying how much supervised revision transported script to news-stand.

So, perhaps what writers mean when they claim to need no more than two passes and a polish is that their work is done at this point.

Then their editor/publisher/reader/publicist/friends/family take over.

Why don’t I draw comfort from the realisation that my scratchings have never been assessed unliked with liked?

Because it reforms every brusque rejection into a comprehensive indictment.

Not only affirming that my work wasn’t satisfactory as was –

But that were I to enjoy the assistance every professional receives –

It wouldn’t pass muster still.

Was not only entirely without merit, but potential.

Or that’s what I suspect.

I’ve never sought clarification.

Fearing confirmation.

But I hope professionals get a lot of help.

Or I’m beyond hope.

WHY I AM NOT A DESTINY

I hate writing.

Have always hated it.

But feel obliged to do it.

That is:

Jot down ideas – flat, exanimate – as they arise.

Titify a few into something rounder, pneumatic.

Build up.

Tear down.

Keyboard.

Screen.

Print black.

Ink red.

Keyboard.

Screen.

Print black.

Ink red.

Repeat till every wound is staunched.

The tendency has ruined my life.

Had I stuck to programming, I’d be better off.

Financially, certainly.

And mentally, probably.

I wouldn’t wake at the very witching time most nights.

Bladder and Biro in need of draining.

The odd thing is I’ve no pretensions about what emerges.

Don’t have a mission.

Just an urge to purge the crap filling my mind.

Though I know it’s of no more importance than the counterpart that occasionally bloats my bowels.

It seems to be my fate to do so.

As such, I suppose I ought to welcome it.

Say yay! to it.

Love it even.

But amor fati is amour fou.

A lover who uses and abuses.

Une Belle Dame to die for.

Given all this, is it any wonder I’ve come to expect rejection?

Respect rejection?

Welcome it?

Engage in it even?

(The majority of my efforts remain undispatched.

Divine wind at my back, I blew them up before they could be shot down.)

Thus, the prospect of releasing my work via this blog –

A forum I built, fund, and so cannot – in all conscience – be canned by –

Filled me with trepidation.

Over what now?

That there’s something compromising about sending anything into the world.

Formerly, I hoped that doing so might vindicate my unwarranted self-belief.

Rather, in this single area of my life, lack of belieflessness.

Now I worry that public attention – however modest – will confirm the opinion of the hundreds of agents, publishers and producers who’ve dismissed my efforts.

Confirm I’m more Thersites than Achilles.

See, if you do nothing, no one can rate you.

If you do anything, it better be something because it’ll be regarded as your everything.

All you were capable of doing.

HOW ONE BECOMES WHAT ONE ISN’T

Realisation?

I prophesied I’d be published before I’d written a thing.

Still believe, though I’ve no cause to trust the auspices.

Indeed, have a forty-five year paper trail proving my auger is a fraud.

Nevertheless, the expectation persists.

What motivates it?

The desire to be famous.

Worse:

To be not unfamous for having written.

What else could be at the bottom of my craving?

The riches that accompany literary success?

I’d have earned more by doing something else.

Anything else.

Something criminal, even.

(Some break the law for notoriety’s sake.)

Not only do I want to be a writer, then –

But be regarded as a writer.

Known for that solely.

To be famous, yes –

But only for this.

Why else would those who’ve tasted fame hunger after its prolongation?

Pursuit of their art?

It’s no longer the one that jumped their start.

They don’t need the money.

Never needed it.

What reward remains?

Adoration.

This shame is at the base of all fame.

And what if I succumb similarly?

If the urge is within me already?

Awaiting an opportunity to emerge?

A little limelight to lon-chaney-jr it out of me?

After all, I’ve diversified already, and desperately.

A CHILD’S FOREVER IN HEAVEN

When I used to believe, heaven was an immense party hosting everyone who’d ever existed.

I’d spend my timelessness autograph-hunting my heroes.

Later, I realised there was a snag:

My heroes would be tracking down their heroes.

Who would in turn be pursuing theirs.

So, from afar, everyone would appear to be running away from everyone else.

As if engaged in billions of games of It.

Now I know it wouldn’t be that way at all.

That, on another plane, outside time, the great would no longer seem remarkable.

After all, the claims of scientists and philosophers would be irrelevant, surely.

The expressions of artists unnecessary, largely.

The only earthly commodity of lasting interest would be personal history.

Suddenly, the lives of ordinary people would seem extraordinary because unknown.

However, this couldn’t last.

One eternity into all eternity, we’d be back where we started.

And those famed down here would become of interest up there for having been ignored for so long.

ACCIDENT OF WORTH

Most achieve fame by accident.

But if they maintain it, they prove they want it.

Always wanted it.

So, whether Mephistopheles approached them or they him is immaterial.

If they indulged his art –

Haven’t hexed it –

They crave it.

ON THIS IMPERFECT DAY

We conceive of those in the spotlight as godlike.

But no sooner do they wake under an artificial sun –

Receive their godhead with a kiss –

Than they become mortalised.

Commodified.

We pick them up.

Use them.

Are amused by them.

Dispose of them.

A private life?

The famous can’t afford this meagre accommodation.

We tramp about their mansions.

Every room.

As they inhabit them.

So, they are less than us.

Smaller.

Merely the creatures we want them to be.

Being nothing particular, we are anything potentially.

Everything.

Our little, secret lives are richer than their big, public ones.

All that separates them from us is the size of their audience.

Is an actor greater, more convincing for playing to a larger auditorium?

Dead or alive, the famous cease to be subjects and become objects.

Secret, protean, elusive, we maintain ascendency over them.

Dimensionality.

Better to be a flash in a pan, then.

Even when flushed out of it.

And on the way to the fire.