I am not alone

To take a break from finishing off three of the major stories in Fictions, I decided yesterday to grab a read of one of the books in my small but fairly impressive (I have a special three-volume boxed hardcover edition of The Lord of the Rings) library, a collection of classic and contemporary stories. After reading Nadine Gordimer's "The Life of the Imagination" and sinking into a slight depression, I decided to look up her biographical data at the back of the book, which lead on to my browsing through the lives of the several writers whose stories were included in the book. If I did not have one book out already and so far gone into the second, I probably would have quit fiction writing on the spot. In so many cases, in the lives of writers, it does not end well. I can give you a short list:

• Ernest Hemingway- won a Pulitzer in 1953, the Nobel in 1954, blasted his brains out with a shotgun seven years later.
• Guy de Maupassant - one of the fathers of the modern short story, died mad from complications due to syphilis.
• Stephen Crane - brilliant young writer, pioneer of modern writing, taken out by bronchitis at 29.
• Ambrose Bierce - broken by a divorce and the death of his two sons, drifted often in oblivion in Mexico.
  

I have to stop the list now because the depression is setting in again. The upbeat point I was trying to make is that I went online this morning on the blog of a literary acquaintance, and found a link to this article on young writers in British Columbia, Canada. The same issues I go through here, are faced by these people. And while I am alone in the sense that I am pretty sure that no one else in Guyana, not my age anyway, is putting virtually everything else on hold to focus on writing a book, there are kindred spirits somewhere out there over the rainbow engaged in this at times seemingly pointless venture. I am not alone!

The truth is, taken into perspective, I've had a fairly stellar launch into the world at writing. Not to blow my own horn but at 22 I was shortlisted for both Best First Book of Fiction and Best First Book of Poetry, and with two unpublished manuscripts typed up on my little sister's laptop, and printed half in dark-blue ink because the black ink on our printer ran out. I actually won the Prize for the Best First Book of Fiction - the youngest person to have done so. And this in a country without a creative writing programme, literary grants, an arts council, not even a single fucking writing workshop. I will personally salute the next 23 year old that does that. I haven't put out any significant literary writing since then but my journalism (which I have engaged in half-indulgently) has still resulted in some laurels.

I realised also that I am 27 years old, 28 in September, after my planned local launch for Fictions. So where on earth is all this anxiety coming from?