‘See the world’ – naval reminiscences

Fifty-two years ago today, I joined the Royal Navy.

I was seventeen-and-a-half and had been working in Newcastle Upon Tyne as a Junior Clerk (an office boy) for a shipping and transport firm; handling bills of lading, calculating charges, traipsing from dockside offices to the bank to the airport. The managing director, whose office was down the corridor, lived in my home town of Whitley Bay; I remember my mum saying, “Why don’t you ask him if he’ll give you a lift to work?” I didn’t, of course. I did ask for a pay rise when everyone else received one, but I was told I hadn’t been there long enough. The job was “dead man’s shoes”, so I looked around for an alternative place of employment.

I applied for a creative artist job with a Newcastle firm, but although my samples of artwork were highly praised in the interview, I didn’t have appropriate qualifications or experience. At the time I left school with two GCE O levels, the University changed the admission requirements for their course in Art & Design; I didn’t have enough GCEs, even though one of them was Art (distinction). The other GCE was Geography. Yes, I failed English!* (Perhaps I spent too much time writing a novel instead of studying or learning to pass exams…)

One lunch time, I walked past the Naval Recruiting Office near the main rail station, and then popped in on the off-chance, out of curiosity. Two of my cousins were in the RN, and my uncle had been in the Merchant Navy during the war. I lived close to the sea. Maybe some of that brine was in my blood.

My parents were naturally ambivalent about my joining the navy. It meant leaving home. But it offered what was then considered a secure career. And all the adverts said I’d ‘see the world’. I applied, sat the fairly basic exams in the Newcastle recruitment office and within a short while was accepted and given notice when to join.

I joined HMS Raleigh (Torpoint, Cornwall) on 19 October, along with several other raw recruits. I was a Junior Writer. Thus began my six weeks’ basic training – Part I training. Part II training entailed going to HMS Pembroke in Chatham, Kent . Here, I trained in secretarial (my score: 96%) and Pay (96.5%) disciplines; I also learning to touch-type (96.5%, 25wpm). I passed out from there to join HMS St Vincent in Gosport, Hampshire as ship’s company and on my birthday became a Writer. The latter establishment is now a college.  The touch typing has certainly been useful! Incidentally, part III training is reserved for submarine recruits.

As the adverts predicted, I was fortunate to see quite a bit of the world in my time. I believe that is no longer the case for RN recruits these days. They get to see the sea, mostly. There aren’t enough ships…

Here's a picture of me with a couple of Arab horses in Bahrain in the late 1960s, just before a race. Camel racing followed...

Fifty-two years. Blimey. Where’d the time go?

* I subsequently passed several GCE O and A levels and obtained an OU degree.

Jory Sherman, R.I.P.

‘Since 1965, the phenomenal Jory Sherman has published over 400 novels and 500 short stories and is currently writing books in several western series for Signet and Berkley.’ – Write a Western in 30 Days, p8 (2013).

Jory Sherman has died after valiantly fighting many ill health issues for well over a year. He was a writer through and through. Earlier, even when his eyesight was failing, he continued to write, embracing the new technology and utilising large print on his computer and, despite pain, communicating with fans, friends and social media contacts.

 

He was not only a writer, a poet and an artist (his paintings graced some of his later reprinted e-books), but he was more importantly a generous and kind man. I was in contact with him only fleetingly through a couple of writing groups. But I gleaned the kind of man he was from the many anecdotes and comments from fellow writers as the seriousness of his latest illness became common knowledge.

Jory was born 1932 (possibly, according to a scant Wikipedia entry) and began his literary career as a poet in San Francisco in the late 1950s, in the midst of the Beat Generation. His poetry and short stories were widely published in literary journals at that time. He won awards for his poetry and prose and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Letters for his novel Grass Kingdom. He won a coveted Spur Award from the Western Writers of America for The Medicine Horn.

In 1995 Jory was inducted into the National Writer’s Hall of Fame.

Throughout his career, he conducted writing workshops and was always happy to offer advice to budding authors. His writing guides are definitely worth studying, no matter how much writing experience you have under your belt. Indeed, it’s impossible to measure how many writers of today owe something to Jory’s tutelage, advice, friendship or, simply, his poetry and prose (they have to be grouped together, as his prose was often poetic).

In 2012, he received the Western Fictioneers Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2013 he was the recipient of the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Contributions to Western Literature.  

A couple of days ago, one of his friends announced via Facebook that Jory had asked to leave hospital, no longer wanting to undergo the painful procedures. He wanted to see his last sunsets from his home, with his family. I truly hope his last sunset was a splendid one that would appeal to the artist and poet in him. Truth is, the sun won’t set on his work; it and he will live on through his prodigious output of writing and through the many friends and acquaintances he touched.

 
Rest in peace, Jory.

My condolences to his bereaved family and many friends.

 

‘Don’t misquote me’

We are all liable to misquote from time to time, whether that’s due to a faulty memory, using a suspect source or from pure laziness.

Currently going the rounds on Facebook is a quotation from Isaac Asimov: 'If my doctor told me I have six minutes to live, I’d type faster.’

Amusing, and typical of the prolific Asimov. But it is patently wrong.

As a scientist, Asimov wouldn’t say that because – a) no doctor would give anybody just six minutes; 2) no matter how fast you type, you couldn’t achieve much in six minutes.

The actual (if less pithy) quotation was: ‘If my doctor told me I had only six months to live, I wouldn’t brood, I’d type a little faster.’

 

Isaac Asimov - Wikipedia commons

Asimov knew all about fast production. He would write up to eighteen hours a day. Typing 90 words a minute, he could clock up about 50 pages a day. He said, ‘Thinking is the activity I love best, and writing to me is simply thinking through my fingers.’ He let nothing interfere with his concentration. How he would have coped with social media is a moot point, perhaps, but he did say ‘You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn’t look up – well, maybe once.’ I can imagine him saying that with an irrepressible twinkle in his eye.

To counter his argument for speed writing, he stated, ‘To write quickly and to write well are usually incompatible attributes, and if you must choose one over the other, you should choose quality over speed every time.’ I suspect the phrase ‘usually incompatible’ applies him, regarding his unusually prolific output.

The prerequisite for good writing is constant writing. Some writers have said you need to write a million words before you can become a writer, or words to that effect! Certainly, beginning writers need to write, write and write some more. Asimov said, ‘It’s the writing that teaches you. It’s the rotten stories that make it possible for you to write the good stories eventually.’ [My italics].

There’s one other requirement for writing: ‘The one absolute requirement for me to write,”’ Asimov said, ‘is to be awake.’ In other words, he lived for his writing. And it served him well; he published in excess of 300 short stories and 500 books. With regard to style and characterisation, he wasn’t a great writer – but he was a very popular author, with books in 9 out of the 10 major categories in the Dewey Decimal Classification; no mean feat.

 

Isaac Asimov - 1920-1992

 

 

 

Eating the elephant

There’s an old African saying, “You eat an elephant a mouthful at a time.” This means that no matter how large the task, if you start it and persevere, you can accomplish it. As this blog has a literary bent – i.e. it mainly pertains to reading and writing – then this saying can be applied to both these pursuits.

The Writer

For a writer, it’s a daunting idea to begin and then embark on writing an entire novel, comprising anywhere from 40,000 to 150,000 words. Yet it only takes that first step, that first word, followed by another, and so on.

Yes, some of the words and ideas committed to paper or screen might not survive as the work progresses, but that’s not important in the writing stage. It’s the doing that counts.

All you need is the imagination and the time; and anyone can make time, if they’re determined enough.

The Reader

The same goes for a book. Recently, I’ve read some thick tomes, over 800 pages. Those pages have been read quickly, fortunately, because the authors have the happy knack of making their narrative impel the reader to turn the page. Again, time is the issue.

A few years back (1995) I conceived of the not particularly original idea of publishing novellas, under my imprint Manatee Books. These were 92-page perfect-bound paperbacks, and I felt that they would appeal to busy people who have little time to read a normal-length novel. Alas, I was lacking in marketing skills and the Internet outlets were somewhat limited then, so after only four titles I shelved the idea. Interestingly, Penguin took the same route some years later, with several best-selling authors. Now, of course, novellas and even short stories can be purchased for e-readers, so the market has been transformed both in accessibility and reading-times.

This is a long-winded way of saying that short stories can offer a great deal of satisfaction. I was prompted to write this by a recent book review on Amazon.co.uk (many thanks, jlbwye):

SPANISH EYE

22 cases from Leon Cazador, private eye.: e-book here

By jlbwye

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Stories to keep you wanting more ... and more. Tales of reminiscence by a sleuth in sunny Spain which ensure you keep your eyes open until you've reached the end of one in time to let your head fall on the pillow - until morning. Thank you Nik, for making my nights unbroken and worth waiting for.

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A book of short stories does that. You can indulge your reading bug and leave off after one story. Come back for more helpings another time. The flow isn’t interrupted by life or sleep. And, hopefully, there's that anticipation of another to read...