Some silly things

Monday, December 31st., Hotel Belvedere, Mont Pelerin sur Vevey, Switzerland.

Dinner. Games. God save the Queen, and varied songs at the hotel. God save the Queen (or King) in various languages. Servants watching eagerly at nothing from behind a curtained window. I say 'at nothing', but the sight of a crowd of middle-class English people determined to enjoy themselves, and fuelled by over-indulgence in alcohol, may indeed be worth watching. I would rather have been watching than participating, but there you are; life is only occasionally what you make it.

I have never worked so hard as this year, and I have not earned less for several years. But I have done fewer sillier things than usual. It is a constant quandary for me, whether to focus on 'serious' writing which is professionally and intellectually rewarding, but unremunerative, or to write to make money. I have tried to do both. I will probably continue to do so because I do enjoy the rewards of financial success. Such as winter in this hotel. 

I wrote "Buried Alive", three quarters of "The Old Wives' Tale", "What the Public Wants", "The Human Machine", "Literary Taste: How to form it", about half a dozen short stories, including "A Matador in the Five Towns"; over sixty newspaper articles. Total words 423,500.

Looking back through my journals I see that it has become a habit to record the number of words written each year. I think this has been a record, but I have not been consistent in what I include, journal for example. Still my output is considerable by any standards. To think that if my working life extends to say forty years, at an average of 300,000 a year then I will have written 12 million words! That is a figure to conjure with indeed.

The turn of the year is a time to take stock and, for many, a time for new resolutions. I am not inclined to the latter, having seen so few actually carried through. I wrote in one of my self-help books this year that "the chief beauty about time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoiled, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your life. You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose." I still think that is good advice. I resolve to follow it!