A Return to Office Mandate
August 25, 2026
My history of writing seems to have been one of restarts. Hopefully the engine won't stall again this time.
Writing - as every writer knows - is not a lucrative business. For me, writing had been relegated to hobby status again, because I couldn't justify spending much time while I needed to earn a living. My main career in IT had always been a lucrative one. Now the vagaries of the IT industry have given me the time and opportunity once again to embrace writing. It is challenging to return to it "cold turkey" (my relationship with words in recent years has been in the form of computer code!) It feels like my writing is stilted, very "right brain." I need to get back into the discipline first - into the writing gym so to speak - and practice the art again, to find that flow necessary for prose and fiction, and to re-find my voice.
To start this time, I intend to focus on short stories and articles for a while before I launch into something as significant as a novel.
There is a sadness also that gives impetus to my return to writing. My uncle passed away recently. He was an author, a broadcaster, and an educator. Teaching never left him. Even in the months before his death he was still doing school visits, inspiring pupils, and encouraging them to use their imagination and their talents. I remember the words he wrote to me when he read my novel: "What an achievement!"
He was a friend of the late poet Seamus Heaney, and was fond of quoting his work. In fact, my uncle's memorial card carries words from the poem Station Island. The same words were spoken by my uncle many times to encourage budding writers. In the poem, the author imagines the great Irish writer James Joyce speaking to him, encouraging him. They are words that speak to me now, from many sources.
...‘Your obligation
is not discharged by any common rite.
What you do you must do on your own.
The main thing is to write
for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust
that imagines its haven like your hands at nightdreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast.
You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous.
Take off from here. And don’t be so earnest,let others wear the sackcloth and the ashes.
Let go, let fly, forget.
You’ve listened long enough. Now strike your note.’
Standing on the shoulders of giants, I owe it to all those generations of writers - now gone - to strike my own note. I cannot hope to match their talent, but I can only (and must) strive to use my own, and not let this generation end without making my written contribution.
Time to return to my office.
Entry Filed under: Writing, Observation & Musing