This, then, is writing as a way of wishing, but of course it is not only that. (In other places Freud admitted his inability to understand the creative artist.) If the writing act remained at the level of internal chatter it would, indeed, be a ‘neurosis’ or even madness. But the ‘phantasy’ is turned into words for others, or into an extension of literary tradition — this is the difference between the phantasies of Flaubert and those of Madame Bovary — and is used to make an alteration to the world. The ‘phantasy’ goes on.
I’ve always liked to write every day, otherwise I get anxious. Though I rarely think of it consciously, what I’m doing is always with me and I want to take it further when I can. As a young man I took it for granted that becoming a full-time writer was my goal. I’m less certain now that this is the most fertile way for a writer to spend his life; anyone with a historical perspective will see that any number of writers have pursued other professions, which have informed and broadened their work.
The writer as ‘artist’, as opposed to professional craftsman, particularly during the period known as ‘modernism’, might have rendered fiction more solipsistic and less open to the pressures of the everyday world. In the end it is life rather than language which is interesting.
*
If writing is a profession as well as an art, sometimes I like to think of myself as a ‘professional writer’. It’s a craft, a job; just hard work. I do it to support myself and my family, and if I weren’t paid would do something else. It feels better to be modest about such things: do what you can and shut up. At other times I want to be pretentious and consider myself an artist, a dreamer, someone with a unique vision. I can’t make up my mind; I don’t see why I should. I can be a different kind of writer on different days.
A few weeks ago I looked around at the young faces in my group and asked whether they wanted to be writers, working writers, as opposed to people who might write for pleasure, or as ‘personal expression’. All of them put their hands up.
I thought: none of you have any idea what it’s like to support three kids and run a house by writing. But then, nor did I, for a long time. When I began to write for the theatre I lived cheaply and thought little of how I might get by in the long term. The politics of the 1970s affected me; making money or a living wasn’t the point: free expression was.
Turning a penchant for storytelling into a profession, into food you can buy in the supermarket, and how you might do this for a whole working life, is different for each generation. Not long after I started out as a writer, I did begin to write films, which a number of writers of my generation were doing. I knew this would be useful, and it subsidised my novels.
Not long ago I had dinner with a charming French novelist from Martinique, who writes in Creole. Mostly he works as a teacher, writing at weekends and during the holidays. He was surprised that I don’t have to lecture or do journalism to make a living. He seemed to think there were not many French novelists who could do this. I said in Britain there were quite a few writers I knew who made a considerable living from writing, but that many of them also did other things, like writing for film, television and radio, partly out of choice, but also out of necessity.
*
Few of the writers I know teach much and the teaching I do myself is financially nugatory. These days writers are more likely to work in other areas of the media. As literature and academia have moved further apart, the profession of writing seems closer to the rest of the media: print, television and film. Most writers, these days, fancy writing and directing their own films, or at least having their work made into films, which is a good way of extending one’s income and reaching a larger audience. Films can be lucrative and pleasurable, but they take a lot of setting up and can be a waste of time and hope, as so few of them are actually made. With a film there are usually two significant creators, the writer and the director. Occasionally, as with Bergman, say, this can be the same person. Usually it is not, as writing and directing are different types of talent. The writer does his work first, after which it is used in various ways by the director. The writer almost always receives less recognition than the director and often less than the actors. This can be a mercy, depending on the temperament of the writer and the quality of the film. He will be paid far less, too.
*
Around the time of My Beautiful Laundrette my life changed. There were trips to America, prizes, nominations, opportunities, praise, attention, and new girlfriends. I had to try to understand the way long-standing friendships shifted; there was envy and incomprehension. It was an ‘accelerated’ period, which made me fear who I was turning into, and made me want to cling on to a previous idea of myself. I couldn’t integrate so many alterations; my identity seemed in flux. I didn’t know how much I could change in order to enjoy what was happening, without turning into someone I didn’t recognise.
My Beautiful Laundrette was a successful film, which took a lot of money at the box-office in relation to what it cost. I wasn’t fairly rewarded and was told not to complain, since the movie had established my reputation and enabled me to get my next projects made. Yet others, who lacked my ability, made plenty of money out of it. I was keen for this not to happen again.
There are few more bourgeois professions than that of writer. The fiction artist is rarely a heaving volcano of dissent. It’s the poets who are mad; they drink too much, bitch at one another, get into fights at parties and copulate with strangers. The novelists always leave early to relieve the baby-sitter. They want to be around for a long time; they think they’ll get better and better. The novelist is someone with a solid, middle-class job, who can never be sure she will be making a living in five years’ time. It’s like having qualified as a doctor but being uncertain whether there will always be work available. Each piece of writing should be a risk; it would be worthless otherwise. But to what extent can you jeopardise your livelihood? What happens if you run out of ideas just as your house needs a new roof? How long will you have between your ‘peak’ and the beginning of your decline? Most writers, I’d guess, imagine at the beginning of their careers that their income will increase. But it’s more likely to tail off, and there’s not much they can do about it. A bad divorce and you could be down to nothing, doing rewrites on other people’s films.
*
The other day I ran into a friend: we’d been young playwrights together; we’d shared awards and I’d stayed with him, discussing our work, directors and the theatre. He told me that last year he made only £1,000 from writing. Now he wrote proposals for television dramas or films, which were inevitably turned down by executives who’d never heard of him. He was, in fact, on his way home from a party where he’d met other contemporaries of ours who were complaining that their old work was no longer produced and they couldn’t put their new work on. They were all less than fifty years old, already out of fashion and still with plenty to say as writers.
This mixture of security and uncertainty can be enlivening. It can also be depressing and discouraging, if you have a family. But unlike with other bourgeois professions, you have to endure regular criticism and advertise yourself as well as your books. It isn’t imperative for doctors to appear in glossy magazines.