"I coulda been a contender..!"

- and believing I still could be...

Marlon Brando in the back of a cab in On the Waterfront

Brando’s in the back of a cab talking to his brother (played by Rod Steiger). He’s bemoaning the fact that he had to throw a boxing match because some small time gangsters bet on the other guy. Steiger’s in a difficult position: he’s both Brando’s brother and he works for the bad guys (who eventually ‘rub him out’ when his conscience gets the better of him).

“I coulda been a contender!” Brando says, believing he has lost his one chance.

I know how he feels. Not that I’ve ever been in a fight or ‘taken a fall’. Nor have I sat in the back of cab talking to the brother I don’t have. But there comes a point in a writer’s life when - if you’ve not ‘made it’ - well, I suspect it’s only natural to think your chance has gone.

There’s a trickle of ‘could haves’. For example, I had an offer to study English at UEA (Norwich) and if I’d taken it I would almost certainly have plugged into their creative writing programme. Kazuo Ishiguro was there at the same time… How might that course and the UEA environment have changed things?

If you look at the inaugural Granta Young Writers list from the early ‘80s - most of them fairly recently released from University - the list is mesmeric: Ishiguro, Graham Swift, Willian Boyd, Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Pat Barker, Ian McEwan… Given how young they were, how they were ‘starting out’, is it any wonder that you might get the sense that you needed to be on the bus then? Is it unreasonable to think that with the appropriate guidance / connections / teaching etc. “I coulda been a contender”?

And that now you can’t.

Hindsight or bitterness? Probably both. Plus a fair dose of regret.

There are two ways to go from there. For far too long I think I took the easy approach: I wallowed, and I didn’t write much. That’s a combination which will only deepen the rut into which you have fallen, increase your sense of being ‘hard done by’, further denude any residual pockets of creative self-esteem etc etc.

Been there, done that.

The other option is to get back on the horse, to keep trying, to not give up. To think that - no matter how unlikely - the door might still be ajar; you might just get an opportunity to fight, you might not be asked to throw that fight, and you might just be better than the other guy.

Which is why, for the last twelve years or so, I have been writing, furiously, frantically; why I have this website, run Coverstory books, run Poetry groups, perform at events, mentor at writing retreats. Because there’s still a modicum of belief left that I have a chance. I’m stoking the fire, day after day and week after week, buoyed by the marvellous people who take the trouble to say nice things about my work, all the while hoping that at some point - before it’s too late - the door will finally open, the brakes will come off.

I can still be a contender!

Writing is a never-ending apprenticeship. And like any apprenticeship, the more you practice the less the master has to teach you.