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Ivory towers
31 March 2005
Been away, the last few days: first to Oxford and Henley, to spend a while with m’friends Helen and Mark. Good food, good drinking, bad falling-asleep-on-the-couch, and lots of fun shopping (watching Helen spend money, largely, and helping out just a little: always a favourite activity). Then to stay with m’friend’n’colleague Juliet for a few nights, while we spent the days at EasterCon (UK science fiction convention), promoting our latest enterprise. It does astonish me, just how enterprising I’m become. Whatever happened to the ivory-tower life I always aimed at? Actually, I do know what happened: they took it away, it's no longer possible, ivory is banned from the writerly process. Doesn’t matter where you sit on the spectrum; from those like m'friends Val & Ian who are ridiculously successful and ridiculously busy in support of that, who are kept so busy doing promotional stuff they barely have time to do the writing any more, to those like m’self who are ridiculously unsuccessful and ridiculously busy in support of that, kept so busy trying to save a frantic career that we barely have time to do the writing any more, that whole vision of the artist who sits alone and just does the thing they’re best at has been snatched away and is gone.
Anyway, the new enterprise: self and five other fantasy writers are setting up a group along the lines of Murder Squad, to promote our own work and the genre in general. We are called The Write Fantastic (more puns! more puns!), and details may be found on our website. Of this, more later: for it is late, and these days I wake early and tire early and hence fall asleep on people’s couches, or indeed my own. Whatever happened to the me of yore, who could sleep till midday or later? Lost and adrift, I guess, in an ivory tower somewhere. I envy the bloke, I do...
© Chaz Brenchley 2005
Reproduced here by permission of Chaz Brenchley, who asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.