Welcome to my blog. I am not a very regular blogger, but I try to keep this site updated with news and information. If there's none of the above I may just share my random ruminations.

Monday, May 9, 2011

Fame

These days, it seems, everyone wants to be famous.  We scoff at the talentless kids who doggedly queue for the chance to gain their 2 minutes of fame on shows like the X-Factor or Britain's Got Talent. And the programme-makers feed our voyeurism by selecting some of the most hopeless to appear on our television screens.  We duly jeer or cringe, revelling in their self-delusions.  I'm as likely as anyone to laugh at them, but there's a secret bit of me that weeps for them too, that understands why they are there and why they subject themselves to the possibility of  humiliation.  I know what it is to crave fame. 

From my earliest years, I have always wanted to be famous. When I played with my friends we didn't play formal games, we always enacted dramas that I'd invented.  I wasn't just the creator, I was also the director and the star, in these play-acting games. And in my head I saw them unfold like a cinema film.  We weren't seven year olds running around in the concrete palyground.  We were 'Red Indians' and cowboys, handsome princes and beautiful princesses, leather clad motor-bikers and their girlfriends. Even on my own I often had the sense of another eye watching me - as if I was the subject of a documentary film which watched my progress through life.  Sad eh?
I might never have started writing down these imaginary scenarios, but when I was ten my teenage sister began to write her own Regency romance, inspired by her love of Georgette Heyer, and it occurred to me that I could do the same.  My 'novel' didn't have a title, not that I can now remember, but it was set in the olden-days.  The plot revolved around the visit of a group of ladies to a lighthouse.  Bad weather trapped them there.  My sixteen year old hero, son of the lighthouse keeper, suffered a fall on the rocks.  My sixteen year old heroine, one of the visiting ladies, undertook his nursing.  At this point, just a few pages in, my imagination ran dry.

Despite scraping through to Grammar school there was no clue in my educational attainments, or lack of them, which suggested I should become a writer. Apart, that is, from continuing to write (though I never finished anything) throughout my secondary school years.  Art was the only subject I excelled at.  My parents were both artists and though I wouldn't say I was pressured, there was a subtle understanding that art was where my future lay.  That was all right, I thought.  I would become a famous artist. 

I'd stopped writing when real-life began to supplant my fantasies. Adulthood also brought with it the knowledge that craving fame was ridiculous and immature.  I could laugh at myself.  After all, working as an illustrator in advertising was not a sure-fire path to celebrity.  But when I took a career break and had my son, I began to write again.  This was the most magical time.  It was as if, by giving myself permission to write something 'soppy', the breaks to my imagination had come off . I could fly.  Amazingly, I was published really quickly.  This gave me a completely distorted view of the world I was joining.  Fame had come back on my agenda. I even gained myself a few sentences and a photo in several of my local newspapers. But that was all.

My publisher went bust and the world of publishing changed. I only have two print publications to my name - Just Before Dawn and Desires & Dreams.  Finding fame through authorship is yet another unattainable dream. In fact, it would be far easier to get published in the mainstream again if I was already famous! Nothing for it then.  Where do I sign up for the X-Factor?  

3 comments:

Pauline Barclay said...

Loved you childhood dreams, but you are a little famous, we see you on Facebook and of course, you are on my Web site....a little famous already I think!" Laugh. Hugs Gilli xx

Arte Umbria said...

I'm commenting ! You are more famous than me ! You've had books published and everything. Off to water terrace now. Keep your blogs shorter people won't read long ones. Don't worry I got told off yesterday about the way I was Tweeting but an Uber Tweeter. It's all so complicated. Lots of love S xxx

Arte Umbria said...

PS No one has ever commented at all on my blog !