From the “Beginning Life at Sixty Series“ by Kenneth Moore, first published in The New Beacon, 1970.
Stop. Stutter. Start.
Most writers tell that before they got going they had to overcome initial disappointments. Even so successful a writer as P. G. Wodehouse confessed that at the start of his career he acquired a collection of rejection slips with which he could have papered the wall of a good sized banqueting hall. He commented wryly that what he always felt about rejection slips was that their glamour soon wore off, ‘when you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all’.
At the outset of what I hoped would be, if not a career, at least an interest, I could compete in one respect with great writers such as Wodehouse, I, too, had my rejection slips. The blind would-be writer, however, has one advantage over his sighted counterpart – he just can’t see the wretched things. Also, contrary to what is alleged about some blind people, I have not acquired keener sense of hearing. Consequently I have not always heard and been depressed by the dull thud of returning manuscripts dropping through my letter box.
Publishing
Spared the worst visual and audible indications of failure, I might have gone on indefinitely with benefit only to the Post Office, if I had not received a helping hand. It came from a friend I had met in rather different circumstances some year earlier, when in full possession of my sight, I had been seeking with a co-author to interest a publisher in a technical bibliography we proposed to compile. Eventually we were recommended to see Lewis Phillips, then the technical editor of a firm of publishers.
I had never been in a publisher’s office before, and I wondered just how it would be organised. Would it be modelled on the lines of one of those high-powered executives’ offices I had encountered? The sort that had a withering secretary to greet you and kept you cooling your heels for an inordinate time. When you were finally ushered in to the great man’s presence he scarcely acknowledged you, as from the far side of a large bare table he remained engrossed in the paper before him.
Listening for the nightingale
Lewis turned out to be the very reverse. Beaming, he came downstairs to greet us and Ied us back up several somewhat rickety flights of stairs to a room which even now, fifteen years later, remains vividly in memory. Everywhere there were books in cases, on side tables and even on chairs, while his desk was smothered in galleys and page proofs. A bookish man indeed. Putting aside business, he first enquired about our interests, our families, the difficulties of travel, wasn’t there a famous priory at Malvern? We had barely touched on the subject of our proposed book when, seeing how the time had gone, he invited us out to lunch.
His publishers accepted our proposal to compile a technical bibliography and whenever in London we had a lunch date with Lewis. These occasions were enriched with anecdotes about his long life and varied interests. He spoke of his work as a licensed lay reader and of the Sunday morning sermon which he customarily preached at St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London. On Christmas Eve, he told us, how slept in the belfry of that church, an eerie experience surely in a deserted city. Because there would be no transport next morning, only thus would he be able to attend early morning service on Christmas Day. To celebrate the publication of our technical work, he entertained both authors and wives to dinner. On our way, ho stopped among all the traffic in Berkeley Square held up a finger. “Listen”, he said, “for the nightingale”.
A helping hand
When Lewis heard that I was blind and was trying to make a start as a writer of fiction, he offered to help place my stories. First of all he got valuable advice from an editor. Up to then I had naively followed the command given by the White Rabbit to Alice: “Begin at the beginning, go on to the end and then stop.” The White Rabbit, it seems, was speaking before the days of expensive newsprint. I must now write to fill the precise space available. I tried again and once more passed the result to Lewis. Immediately came a reply from the editor of the children’s page of a famous Church weekly, not only accepting my offering but promising to consider any further stories on the same line. It had not even occurred to me that such an austere journal would run a children’s feature. I didn’t exactly stride down our country lane telling all and sundry of my breakthrough. Nevertheless, I had the same sense of elation as that felt by Scott Fitzgerald when he ran down Broadway, New York, and stopped strangers in the street to tell them that his book This Side of Paradise had been accepted.
Later, more soberly, I took to pondering whether or not this was a flash in the pan. I had recorded on tape some sobering thoughts by a mentor whose name unfortunately escapes me. He gave this advice: “When you have discovered that you are able to make people see what is in your mind, to understand what you are trying to say, then comes the discipline of cultivating that muscle of writing, as the athlete cultivates his muscle.” The question thus remained: was I capable of cultivating such writing ability as I possessed?
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image credit: geoftheref
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