Memoirs of a Private Man by Winston Graham Read Free Book Online Page A

offended him because he suddenly said to me one day: ‘ When’s your novel going to be finished?’ It was the first time he had ever mentioned the subject. I replied: ‘Oh, this year, next year, sometime, never.’ It was a rude and unworthy reply, but I was only just turned eighteen and he spoke with what the French call pudeur , as if he were lifting the corner on some distinctly disreputable occupation. I curled up inside instantly , like a prodded snail, and those were the only words I could think to say.
    The idea that I should ever make a living out of such scribblings seemed derisory. And it probably was. I lived a quiet, unadventurous, retired life when, if I really meant to succeed at this strange profession, I should have been plunging into all aspects of living with the gusto and the enterprise of an explorer. Once when Somerset Maugham was asked by an anxious American mother how she could best help her son, who wanted to be a writer, he replied: ‘Give him five thousand dollars and tell him to go to the devil.’ This advice no doubt would have been appropriate for me.
    I did not know a single author, however insignificant, or publisher, however small-time, and I don’t think I knew that people called agents existed.
    My first full novel, after a long and arduous struggle with an earlier book, got itself written when I was twenty-one. It took me ten weeks – then I retired to bed with complete exhaustion and a stomach complaint. Later I typed the book and sent it to a publisher, who returned it within two weeks with a rejection slip. I then fired it at another, who kept it a month. Then I sent it to Hodder & Stoughton, who kept it five months before sending it back saying the book had distinct promise but wasn’t quite strong enough for their list, but if I wrote a second they would like to consider it. Heartened and encouraged, I shoved the first novel away in a drawer and began my second. When this was finally finished I sent it away in great hope, whereupon Hodder & Stoughton returned it with a conventional rejection slip.
    I had now been writing for five years and had virtually nothing to show for it. Surely mine was a pipe dream, as everyone else thought and knew and had been trying to tell me for ages? Why didn’t I wake up and stir myself and get some regular decent honest work? I was untrained for any profession, but I could surely turn my hand to something practical and realizable.
    About this time, having written two unpublishable novels, I found myself involved in amateur theatricals in the village Women’s Institute. I acted in one or two small pieces, and at once it struck me how perfectly frightful the dialogue was, and how equally awful the contrived events and denouements. So, while keeping the titles and the general storylines, I began to rewrite the pieces and found the audience most happily responding. The authors got their minute royalties, and we got the laughs.
    Just then there was a popular movement to raise money for the unemployed, and someone, interested in what I’d done, said why didn’t I write a three-act play and it could be put on at the local cinema for this good cause. So I sat down and wrote a play in six weeks, called it Seven Suspected , and this was eventually produced and played to a full and appreciative house for three nights. It was never printed, but copies circulated in typescript, and it was produced in Truro, Camborne, Hayle, Bury, Hendon and elsewhere, always with great success. Looking back, one particular feature strikes me – hardly a line had to be altered from the first draft. When one thinks of authors writing and rewriting scenes endlessly until the moment of first production, this seems preposterous. Of course it was only played by amateurs, who probably didn’t know any better, but every line was speakable , and when actors found their lines producing laughs they didn’t want to change