Bluewater books is launched

I have already mentioned that the first book in the bluewater books imprint is being prepared and will be ready by the end of this week. Why am I doing this?

Well, after years of dreaming about being a published writer – and struggling with the reality that there is not a living to be earned from writing poetry – I have finally found a way of breaking through all of this stasis.
The mistake is in thinking that I would have to make a living out of writing. I already make a living. Then it’s a question of re-framing the whole idea of writing and seeing it as something that isn’t driven by financial issues. Thus, I can produce a book as and when I have the spare cash to do so, and give them away to people who I think will appreciate them. That way I build an audience for what I am trying to communicate, rather than burying away my work on a shelf in the house.

Recently I was reading an old diary of mine, and found the following, which is relevant to all of this:

Quote from an interview with the artist Albert Irvin (in Stride #35, Storming Heaven): -

“The creative cycle isn’t complete until another human being is looking at the painting and hopefully responding…. I’d rather have paintings out in the world where people can see them and they can fulfil their function. It’s of no consequence if they’re propping up the walls in my studio. Painting is a language of communication – generally speaking, give me a wall and I’ll hang a painting on it.”

Is this as true for writing as it is for painting? Well, writing is certainly a language of communication – that’s tautological! So, the purpose of it is important.

In a truly Jungian synchronicitous way, I then stumbled across something else in a book which I have picked almost at random. The book, Julia Cameron’s ‘The Right to Write’, is a really useful book which builds on her ideas in ‘The Writers Way’ and ‘The Vein of Gold’. In this book she presents examples and ideas to spur on the writer and overcome writers block, lack of confidence etc. She talks about the need for the writer to have “friendly readers”. That’s uncanny! It maps exactly to the point which I had been exploring with the advent of bluewater books. It vindicates my idea that I need to get my work out there to people who will treat it sympathetically, and that this will help to motivate me to write more.