{Literary Prostitution}[19th May 1990]

[Redbook7:138][19900519:1830b]{Literary Prostitution}[19th May 1990]

.1830

[continued]

I have had one of those bugs during the last few days* which do not lay me up but do tend to slow me down and physically de-energise me – so I have been resting from work on the house (new ceilings etc) and concentrating on desk- (and sofa-) work – accounts,** and the writing course.

Taking the writer’s*** school correspondence course represents a watershed – only possible after a decision to give up writing altogether, followed by an attempt to assess my talents in any direction (if any) which naturally came up with – writing. I regard writing for a market (as opposed to writing from within) as equivalent to prostitution. (When I mentioned this to [BD]),**** expecting him to categorise this as arrogance, he rather disconcertingly agreed with my own verdict.)

On the face of it, such a course of action is Outer Circle – but everything depends on motivation, and my decision is arrived at neither through love of money not through self-love, but from a desire to relieve my wife of the necessity of going regularly out to work (and also the need to publish something# in order to be able to say with a clear conscience: ‘I am a writer’ – I succumb!)

*{(& again c900625)}

**[Part of the remaining business, presumably; or possibly the accounts of the remaining business]

***[sic]

****[The writer’s former boarding school housemaster, living nearby, one of his referees for the ministry, & godfather to [s]]

#[A need which was met, not long afterwards, in newspapers & an Arts-Council-subsidised short story magazine]

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