We held the launch for Oothangbart in just about the coolest event space you can imagine, right in the centre of Bristol in an old building full of texture and character, a place called The Forge that has become very popular with creative people.
I was what you could call ‘alert’, that means not exactly nervous, but anxious to get through my short speech and small section of reading from Oothangbart. I was really happy that more people than I’d expected came to support the launch. You know from experience that if 40 people have said they are definitely coming, definitely…. because they are your good friends and you know…… will be there for sure ….. that you can cater for maybe 25 to 30 people at the most. But in the case of the Oothangbart, I think there were more than 30 people out of the 40 acceptances, and that was gratifying for me. Writers all too often have to rely on some species of self-generated conviction about their writing and whether it’s worthwhile going on because, unlike actors, there is little in the way of instant applause for your work, and in fact you could wait years before your writing became ‘recognised.’ I think it’s important that all creative people, and particularly writers and artists, get very straight-forward appraisal, assessment, encouragement from the people around them and from people they don’t know personally. We’re not bears who can hibernate through the winter on our fatty bits of support from others, so we could die. In other words, we could stop doing our craft and that would be a real shame if the work was good. It’s always been the case that it isn’t just talent that writers need, but to go with it, an almost perverse determination… a true stoicism… to carry on often in the face of radio silence.
