A hush descended on the auditorium. It was the real thing which was being explored here, and it was rather more absorbing than what had inspired Atonement or The Sportswriter. It seemed that the audience saw the two men not only as successful novelists, but as seers, top-of-the-range agony uncles.

On the face of it, that was an odd idea. The private lives of professional authors hardly suggest a profound level of emotional intelligence. Alain de Botton may have made his name with How Proust Can Change Your Life but there has been no sign of  a vogue for authorial self-help books – The Kingsley Amis Guide to Love and Marriage or Happiness the Virginia Woolf Way.

Yet the great authors have, down the centuries, been free with advice as to how writers should behave. There is much that we can learn from them in those tricky areas of life and work.

On health and writing

Some writers believe that their best work is done while suffering from a low-grade depression – nothing too devastating but a bracing, clear-eyed feeling of general unhappiness. AE Housman went further, revealing that he could only write when feeling “rather out of health”.

These are minority views, however. Hilary Mantel has famously said that her health improved as she started to write Wolf Hall. Georges Simenon took a more pro-active approach. Before starting on a new novel, he would go to the doctor in order  to ensure that he would be in good health for the time it took him to write a novel (11 days). If he fell ill mid-novel, he would throw away the chapters he had written and start all over again.

On sex

There is some disagreement here. Flaubert warned his friend Ernest Feydeau that ‘if you sow your wild oats… you will have none to put in your inkwell. That is the true vagina of men of letters.’ The reliably crushing Cyril Connolly was less graphic. A preoccupation with sex  was a  ‘substitute for artistic creation’, he wrote.

On the other hand, Tolstoy argued that prostitution was necessary for the maintenance of the family, while Baudelaire, in his Advice to Writers, declared that ‘a precocious taste for the world of women… gives birth to the superior geniuses.’

Less controversy attends the solitary version. Anthony Burgess claimed that writers were ‘at it like monkeys’ and,  more surprisingly, John Fowles agreed. ‘One can no more think of making fiction without onanism, or selfishness (ask our wives), than of the sea without waves,’ he once said.

On having children

Not a good idea, according to the great writers. Bruce Chatwin kept a quote by Sir Francis Bacon, ‘The Noblest workes and Foundations have proceeded from childlesse men’ in his notebook.

Modern writers agree. Philip Larkin cheerfully admitted that he disliked the young -  ‘Until I grew up I thought I hated everybody, but when I grew up I realised it was just children I didn’t like’  – and Richard Ford has taken the same view. Even without having had them, he saw children as ‘little hobbles around my ankle’. Another determined non-breeder Geoff Dyer has identified parenthood as a convenient excuse for failure. ‘The hamster not only loves his cage, but would be lost without it,’ he wrote in Out of Sheer Rage.

On being friends with other writers

Keeping literary company is regularly and rather primly discouraged. Ford Madox Ford advised authors to keep themselves at ‘a distance as considerable as possible from all other litterateurs’ while Graham  Greene described spending too much time with other writers as ‘a form of masturbation.’

More recently, Anne Tyler has made a similar point but  more tactfully. She was positively embarrassed when authors gathered to discuss writing, she told an interviewer. ‘It doesn’t seem like something you should talk about, because then you won’t be able to do it,’ she said.

On being a good citizen

Don’t bother. Cynthia Ozick has written an entire book on why the most talented authors are appalling members of society. ‘The good writer is rarely, if ever, a good man,’ wrote Peter Ackroyd expressing  the majority view.

On having a normal social life

Again, the advice is not encouraging. Dickens famously refused to accept dinner invitations. ‘“It is only half-an-hour,” — “It is only an afternoon”  -  “It is only an evening,” people say to me over and over again,’ he wrote. ‘They don’t know that it is impossible to command one’s self sometimes to any stipulated and set disposal of five minutes.’ Flaubert took a similar line, confessing that the necessity of sitting at a dining-room table at a particular time filled his soul with a feeling of wretchedness.

Beryl Bainbridge articulated the problem with rather more humility. While writing a novel, she said,  ‘I don’t go out, don’t change out of my nightgown, don’t wash. About every five days, I’ll have a bath and scrape the dried egg off my nightgown.’

On living the life of a writer

It is almost all bad news. John Wain’s view that ‘being a writer isn’t a profession – it’s a condition’ is the majority verdict. For Simenon, ours was ‘a vocation of unhappiness’, for Conrad,  ‘un metier de chien’.  Anita Brookner has said that she could ‘get into the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s loneliest, most miserable woman.’

Even the better aspects of an author’s life somehow tip the balance in favour of the outside world. ‘Writing saved my life,’ Thomas Kenneally has written. ‘It also allowed me to realise that things like grandchildren and how you lived your life are even more important than writing.’

The blog was published as the Endpaper column in the winter edition of The Author. A mighty archive of authorly advice can be found in my Writer’s Shed here. On most days, I post two of my Writers’ Rules, quotes on writing and life by great and not-so-great professional writers of the past and present,  on Twitter under the hashtag #writersrules.

She was not, of course. Maybe in a few months, or years, she might become a writer but that would require a long and tricky journey, mostly spent alone rather than in  a group. It is more likely that, after enjoying her moment of creative dreaming, she would return to the safer, saner civilian world, all the wiser for her adventure.

Experienced writers bring their hard-won experience when they teach on writing courses, and the students, without knowing it, offer something back. They are in a sense the pure article before the market, the snares and compromises of professional life, have got at them.

It is all here: the hopes, the illusions, the reasons for eventual success or failure. To meet the different types of would-be authors is to be taken back to the reasons why one became a writer in the first place. At this time of peculiar pressure and uncertainty in the beleaguered book trade, it is worth recalling that original spark.

Survival as a professional author has always involved maintaining a balance between the demands of creativity and of the bank manager  –  between, at one extreme, pursuing a love so pure that one could end up starving and, at the other, becoming just another slut in the market-place of books. Both tendencies can be found in extreme form among students on almost every creative writing course.

The Careerist has no doubt about why he (or she) wants to write.  Being an author is a positive professional option, leading, with the right management, to considerable potential rewards. He has bought into the fantasy version of overnight literary success which is peddled every few weeks or so in the press: the story of an author tapping away in obscurity, rejected by countless publishers, who finds wealth, renown and film deals become the dreams of avarice.

A keen student of trends and bestseller lists, the Careerist needs to know about agents and publishers. He is as keen to master the art of the synopsis and self-presentation as the writing itself. He believes in the great lie, established in the 1980s and still widely believed, that a successful writer’s greatest talent must be self-marketing.

Of course, he invariably fails. The trend he has been pursuing will have passed by the time he completes his book. It is a tiring business to write for a market without enjoying the process in the slightest bit. At some point, probably quite soon, it will dawn on him that, if a person is interested in making money, writing should be at the bottom of a very long list.

At the other end of the scale, there is the Purist. She (or he) writes out of an often desperate inner compulsion. Perhaps setting down the past, ordering it on the page, is the only way to make sense of her life. Or maybe it offers an escape from present unhappiness.  She too has a myth to which she clings: that of the healing pen. If you write something down, your inner wounds will begin to heal.

For the Purist, scribbling away is not far from being a psychotic disorder. She may write one novel after another, each exploring some aspect of her past. Or perhaps there is one great work, added to and expanded over the years, doomed never to be satisfactorily completed. Editing or re-writing are of litle interest. Her only reader is herself. She needs to keep moving forward. The idea that she should write something which is not essentially autobiographical has not the slightest interest.

The Careerist’s sense of a market and the Purist’s need to write are both important. The trick is to negotiate a way between the two.

The problem today is that the pressures and temptations of the writing life, whether towards the market or into self-indulgence, are greater than ever. Reeling from the effects of the recession, the rise of ebooks and the general effect of Amazon and the internet, publishers are increasingly obsessed by marketing. They are fretful about authors promoting themselves and encourage them to dance about in online chatrooms and blogs.

In this mad market-place, fraudulence abounds. Authors, and probably publishers, create “sock-puppets”, invented online personae who earnestly discuss the authors’ books and give them enthusiastic reviews. It is the Careerist’s playground.

At the other end of the book trade, the new respectability of self-publishing allows an outlet for writers following the way of the Purist. The media is obsessed by emotion and self. It is tempting for authors, released from the demands of the market and eye of an editor, to become self-indulgent.

Yet it is moments like these which offer opportunities to real writers. The more market-obsessed, and crazed by money that the world becomes, the more useful it is for writers to look below the busy surface of things. The more the daily print and screen media demands tears and self-obsession, the more urgent the requirement for those writing books  to be cool and thoughtful.

I suspect that these years will turn out to be good for writers. It is a time of change and dangers, always stimulating for the creative process. Already there are wiry, dynamic new publishers and new ideas about reaching readers emerging in the chaos.

In the meantime, teaching on a creative writing course takes one back to what lies beneath our fragile careers. It reminds us that, while a new model of publishing develops, it will be strong, professionally-minded authors balancing the demands of the muse and the market-place who will keep the show together – as usual.

*

This blog first appeared in my Endpaper column for The Author, winter 2012. An archive of my other writing-related columns are to be found in the Writer’s Shed.

A small example: about five years ago, I found myself writing songs to sing on my guitar. This was not a hobby; the songs were not follies or sideshows to my professional writing. They mattered to me.

At some point, a little later, the idea of taking the songs and writing short stories around them crept up on me. Every song has a largely unrevealed hinterland behind it; I thought it would be interesting to explore that hinterland – in another voice, from another perspective – in written fiction.

These song-based stories were fun to write because, after the song is completed, they were already there, half-formed, hiding in a murky corner of the brain. It was just a question of finding them. As for performing, it has, on the very few occasions I’ve tried it  – reading a story and then bursting into song halfway through -   felt like I was on to something.

The idea for my song ‘Inappropriate Uncle’ came from the famous music hall hit from 1892 ‘After the Ball’. I liked the idea of a mysterious relation at a family gathering, a man who has a secret life. In ‘After the Ball’, he is a tragic lover. It starts:

‘A little maiden climbed an old man’s knees—

Begged for a story: “Do uncle, please!

Why are you single, why live alone?

Have you no babies, have you no home?”‘

My Inappropriate Uncle is an altogether gamier figure, being something of a master criminal and conman:

‘Jim was the blackest sheep of the family,

His interests were fraud and forgery…’

Having recorded the song,  I had a niggling sense that Uncle Jim wasn’t finished with me. I began to wonder about how he ended his days. A couple of police officers, a male detective inspector and a female detective constable, crossed the world to a tropical island in order to arrest him.

In the story I eventually wrote, ‘Operation Bird of Paradise’,  Uncle Jim plays a small, if pivotal role. What had started out as the tale of a toff criminal took an unexpectedly romantic turn.

I think it ends there – but, right now, nothing is certain.

Inappropriate Uncle is on the CD ‘Lovely Little Games’, and can be heard online here. Operation Bird of Paradise is a Kindle Single.

Some stories come easy. The Twyning was not one of them. It can be tricky, I discovered, to write a novel in which rodents and humans share centre stage. Having two narrators, a young boy and a rat, is not entirely straightforward. There are questions of balance and taste, of how graphic descriptions can be, in a story of inter-species war which I hope will be read by readers of all ages.

I think I cracked it as well as I could but, with false starts and interruptions, The Twyning took the best part of five years of my life to complete.

It was published last month. For 24 hours, on 10th February, it is being sold for 99p on Kindle, which works out at just under 20p for every year of work.

Here is the odd part: I’m delighted. It’s good news if a book is chosen as a Daily Deal on Amazon. My rats have soared gloriously to #17 in the Kindle bestseller list. As I write this, there are five more hours before it returns to its normal price, and I rather long for the 99p to be reduced still further – to 20p, or maybe 10p  –  in one last brave push for the top spot.

There is, of course, the niggling worry that these are the economics of the madhouse. Nothing can surely work on this model (except, arguably, for readers) in the long or even medium term.

Right now, though, I’m thrilled to play the game. Readers are readers. What the hell, it’s only money…

The Twyning reached #13, and will now, one assumes, slowly make way for other Daily Deals. Funny old business…

It is available on Kindle here.

The connection with a spiritual quest is a valid one. Writing, it has been said, is a form of prayer. When adherents gather for enlightenment, they can experience moments of joy, revelation and, if one of the gamier gurus is involved, misbehaviour. On the road to Nirvana – a publishing deal, a single-figure Amazon rating, a critical benediction from Professor John Carey – many are called, but few are chosen.

What, though, are the articles of faith around which a belief system should based? Mine, were I ever to attain guru status, would be single and simple: you should recognize a fork in the road before you reach it rather than many miles later, when it is too late to turn back.

There are, after all, only seven great questions in an author’s professional life. Resolve those, and you will be on your way.

1. Muse or bank manager?

A few authors are saints, many are tarts. Most of us run an unsteady course between virtue and sin. All the same, you should not wait too long before deciding whether your first loyalty as a writer is to posterity or to scratching a living. There is no perfect balance between the two; one has to take precedence over the other. If you decide, bravely, that you want to write something lasting, then you will not waste time, studying bestseller lists or listening to vapid chat about market trends from publishers. If you want to make money, then sweating over work which few will read will seem futile.

Only the very fortunate manage to appease both the muse and bank manager, and that is largely a matter of luck.

2. To lunch or not to lunch?

At the memorial service for a much-loved writer and literary agent, it was said by several speakers that the dead man had been a legendary luncher. The presence of hundreds of people at his last hurrah was testament to the importance, to them at least, of this spirit of congeniality. Was he right, though? Think of the hours of aimless chat, the lost, woozy afternoons.

There is more to lunching than lunch. It is a state of mind, a sure test of whether you see yourself as an insider, popular, part of a book trade-gang, or whether you prefer being on the outside, a solitary presence beyond the restaurant window.

3. Nice or nasty?

Surprisingly to some, this key question of temperament involves choice. At some point in their lives, those who belong to the VS Naipaul school of author relations have decided that smiling away, feigning generosity and generally playing the nice guy is a waste of time.

Quite often, being unpleasant – or at least prickly -  is a good career move. It is seen by publishers as a mark of integrity and seriousness. The pleasers, writers who suck up to them at every opportunity, are seen as lightweights. On the other hand, cultivating dislike and reacting to everything with grumpiness can be hard work and exhausting for all concerned.

4. To take arms against a sea of troubles or to swim with the tide?

At some point, the prospect of not winning the Booker Prize will become a real possibility. The dream, it must be admitted, has not come true. On the other hand, your head is still bobbing above the water. You are paid for your words. There appear to be readers out there who quite like what you do.

At this point the muse/bank manager conundrum becomes more nuanced. The market is telling you to follow the same-but-different approach encouraged by most publishers and produce more or less the same book again and again, but in your pure authorly heart you want to try new things, take risks. It may help keep you sane, but it will be the rockier path.

5. To join or not to join?

You are not alone. There are great organizations out there for people in your profession. The Society is at the pinnacle of them, of course, but there is also Pen, the Writers’ Guild, the Royal Society of Literature. There have always been distinguished authors who shun professional institutions and communities. Like the mad general in Dr Strangelove, they fear loss of essence.

Maybe they are right. Perhaps solidarity is not for free spirits, and support for other writers is something which only concerns mediocrities. The choice is yours.

6. Straight or curly?

For most authors, surviving involves some kind of compromise. Only the supremely successful, or those with private incomes or a wealthy spouse, can remain on the straight path without deviations into the world of journey-work.

Every obvious source of income which is not writing but is connected to writing exacts some kind of  penalty, the most ruinous being chatting on TV or the radio and teaching creative writing. You may tell yourself, as you grind out another draft of a corporate booklet, that this sort of work is less harmful to your talent than pulling pints or digging graves, but you are not necessarily right.

7. Fade gently or blaze ridiculously?

There is no silver clock to be handed to you by the managing director, no pats on the back, no speeches. There are not even colleagues around to tell you that your time is up. Thousands of authors, all over the world, are working away right now without having noticed that they retired several years ago.

Be ready for this last great decision. It has within it the thin but discernible traces of all your earlier choices. You are back where you started, a writer alone in the world, and that is how it should be.

 This blog was first published in The Author.

It was Monday afternoon, Broadcasting House, a meeting to decide the topic of this week’s 15 minute reality-based story From Fact to Fiction.  The ideas were being shot down like clay pigeons on Marksman Day at the range.

Not that I was complaining. Like most writers, I tend to do most of my brainstorming  with myself. A real meeting  -   executives, notes, someone checking the news websites for breaking stories  – felt serious, grown-up.

It is a brave idea,  From Fact to Fiction. An item from the week’s news is taken as the starting point for a story in monologue or dramatic form. Over recent weeks, topics have included Savile, the weather, the triple-dip recession. AL Kennedy bravely tackled events at the Sandy Hook Primary School.

It is also, like all the best ideas,  fraught with danger. A story can slip from the news. What seemed amusing can, a couple of days later, have become more serious. There are legal factors, not to mention matters of taste. Then there is the speed of it all: commissioned on Monday, it is to be written, cast and recorded by Friday for broadcast on Saturday night.

Personally, I love the immediacy and edge this brings to the process. I write both fiction and opinion columns for newspapers; this form, perhaps uniquely,  brings together elements of both disciplines.

Monday’s meeting went on for longer than expected. For varying reasons, Michael Winner, the dog, the football manager and the DJ failed to find favour. The news websites seemed unusually quiet. Then, as a certain edginess descended on our little group, the news broke that Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands was to abdicate. We decided that the reaction of a certain eminent royal personage might be interesting.

Most of my week has been spent, with the producer Duncan Minshull, in the imaginary presence of Her Majesty. She will played tonight – with appropriate dignity and serenity  – by Sara Kestelman.

Thank you, thank you, Queen Beatrix.

‘One Needs Me-Time’ is on BBC Radio 4 at 7pm on 2^nd February

Here is a story of how it works the other way round – of how big business can exploit the system to bully local communities and councils into submission.

Over the past six years, there has been a plan to site three 125m wind turbines between four villages in south Norfolk. It was opposed by local planning officers, then rejected unanimously by the council’s planning committee.

The developer, TCI Renewables, appealed to central government’s Planning Inspectorate. After two hearings, lasting the best part of two weeks, with experts, barristers and the full panoply of the law, the planning inspector also rejected the application on the grounds of its impact on nearby houses, and on the church and landscape.

End of story? Far from it.

TCI, a firm which had already shown a high-handed disregard for local people and, shall we say, an excessively relaxed attitude to telling the truth, has now revealed another side of its corporate character.

It has submitted a further application. Same site, same number of turbines. They have simply been moved around a bit and put closer together.

There is no obvious planning logic behind this move. With their investors’ money (and, if I were one, I’d be asking a few questions about their business decisions), TCI has simply decided to conduct a war of attrition on the local community in the hope of grinding them into submission.

Here is the way it works. It is a large, rich company. In contrast, those who have dared to oppose them  -   and have successfully made their case  –  are ordinary people using their own time and money. The planners of the local council are overstretched and may well be unwilling to fight another long battle. Call it the Tesco Manoeuvre, if you like.

So TCI banks the parts of the planning inspector’s decision which supports its case, fiddles around with the rest, and starts all over again, no doubt confident that in the end corporate muscle will win the day.

Cynical, nasty and bullying, these are the kind of tactics which bring development and developers into disrepute.

It is the time of the year when the great divide between the salaried and the self-employed is at its widest. For one group, there will be the usual pay-slip at the end of the month, while the other faces that painful moment of reckoning which is the tax deadline.

In these prim and disapproving times, the breaking news that men become stupider in the presence of women is unlikely to win much sympathy. There will be knowing, irritating female chuckles over breakfast tables across the country at the revelation that male cognitive resources are “depleted” by the exhausting business of trying to impress a woman. The fact that the depleted male is in a relationship makes not the slightest difference.

Most of the time, those of us who happen to live in the country are happy to ignore the casual urban prejudice which characterises British politics and the media. Now and then, though, the level of metropolitan silliness reaches a level which is impossible to ignore.