I’m not Martin bloody Amis, but I knew the Nehru jacket would come in handy.
You may or may not have launched a book of your own, but the feeling is a halfway house between desperately wanting it to go as well as you can, and feeling an utter fraud for subjecting people to it in the first place.
I launched Unlimited Overslast Thursday evening at One Tree Books in Petersfield, at an event for which the word ‘hopefully’ was invented. It is hopefully a funny and poignant story of growing older through the prism of a cricket season, populated by hopefully interesting characters; people hopefully enjoyed themselves, and hopefully, they bought quite a few.
When you stand on the second step of a staircase and tell a hundred people below you about the book you want them to buy, to read and to enjoy, be assured that the drumbeat rattling around your brain is not ‘Clever old me’ so much as ‘How have I got the bloody nerve?’
When you sit at the table in your Nehru jacket, pen poised to sign books people have bought, your first instinct is not to think ‘lucky old them meeting the author’ so much as insane gratitude that there is more than one of them waiting to see you.
And yes, you love queues. For the first time in your life you want to see people waiting in line. Lots of them.
And no, you couldn’t give a damn about the friends that take the mickey as they come to see you. Tonight, the currency you are paid in is attention, and who cares what it sounds like?
And yes, you love the ones who come along with a whole handful of books, and ask you to dedicate each one to some unfortunate nephew who ‘likes a game of cricket’.
And no, you really are not offended by the person who honestly tells you that your last book was ‘rather boring’, and who hopes this one will be better. He’s buying it, so who cares?
And yes, you lie through your teeth to the grandmother who asks if it is suitable for her nine-year old grandson, and does it have any rude words in it. Does it fuck, you think.
And no, you couldn’t give a toss about the ones who have got the famous guest to sign your own book for them before you do.
And yes, in your heart of hearts you really do believe in what you have spent a year writing. You have to. You have no option. Like the Jamaican novelist Marlon James often says: ‘believe in your self, because sometimes you will be the only person who does.’ That’s not a complaint, by the way, it’s a fact of life.
Strangely enough, with writing, as with all performances, it is hard to shake off the unspoken accusation that you have simply found an elegant way of showing off.
And the irony is that today, three days after the event, I wrote the 63487th and final word of the next book, its draft anyway, which won’t see the light of day until next March. This is not a game for the impatient.
Ultimately, though, like so many things in life, what an event like that is about is the uncomplicated joy of friendship. And, if that sounds trite, I don’t care.
Thank you.
(And please feel free to comment, whatever you say!)
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