A different view

I've taken a bit of a different direction since the catastrophe of the Jamie book launch. I've been wondering what it was all about in a way that has given me a new path. Yes it was fun to write, but how many people will read my book? How many will grow their own food or buy local as a result? What was it all for? The amount I spent on acupuncture when my back gave out at the end - as it always does after a book - just wasn't worth it. The money I spent on the train fares to the food festivals that I arranged still hasn't been reimbursed and I've yet to hear, after three months, of any press coverage other than in Heat magazine.

After the inevitable existential angst (maybe that's the role of the modern publisher; if you can't sell a book, you can at least get the writer to question the whole point of writing. It must save a fortune on rejection letters), I've swapped seats to see what it looks like from the rear window. It's not that I'm leaving it all behind, but that I'm driving off into the sunset to have a look at what the next horizon has to offer.

Writing, I've realised, is about much more than selling books. I teach one day a week at a local university and waft through the corridors of dubious excellence as a visiting lecturer on others. If this is where the next generation of writers is being trained, being at the helm (or lectern) gives me a kaleidoscopic view that informs my own future as a writer.

My students are a rich blend of British youth; there are those who are straight from school or the street and can barely spell, but whose thoughts, occasionally pure and beautiful, can blow the cobwebs off their stereoptypes. There are the victims for whom no deadline, coaching, handouts or advice will ever prise them out of their self-loathing and who throw their petulance at me as pointedly as my 13-year-old does. But even they reveal a depth in their blogs and occasional essays that makes me proud and I wonder what I was ever doing ploughing all my energy into a book that no-one would ever see.

And then there are the nice middle-class creative writers whose modules take them from literature to language and send a new band of PRs and publishers, book reviewers and language teachers polishing their phrases into the workplace. What a breath of fresh air do these well-educated, nicely behaved young people provide. For now at least. But will they write for a living? Yes, probably, but will it be books they write? They're more likely to sell writers like me. I've seen the future and these nice girls with their dolly shoes and long legs are the ones who won't read the books they have to then sell and who will apologise on the day of the author event for failing to get any press and who will then put the phone down and bitch about the writer who's just so demanding. It's not their fault. It's what they'll be taught to do.

And then there are the writers who emerge from our retreats with a new sense of awareness. The writing exercises they do while they're taking time out to feed their souls might not make professional writers out of them but the process is profound. And that, maybe, is what writing is for. It gives us all a clarity of thought, a focus that a chat over a glass or two with a mate just can't compete with.

My friend, Andrew Clover has written a wonderful book called 'Dad Rules'(Penguin 2008)which documents his adventures in having kids in a way that I haven't seen before. Horribly honest and very, very funny, he reminds me of those moments that I know that all middle class parents go through but which are only given form in the telling. Writing gives him licence to think about them deeply rather than cracking open a bottle of mother's ruin when the toddlers finally go for a nap. He grabs the moment in a way that would make any Zen master spit with envy. And ok, so his book is a great success,and I'm sure that he'll go on to write brilliant books on parenting pubescent teenagers too but it seems like it makes him happier too.

What I get from the writers I teach is the moment. And in a publishing world which is all about tomorrow's sales and next year's figures, I think it's probably a far more satisfying thing to do. So rather than pitching book ideas, I'm going to get a little Zen this winter. I'm going to write every day like I tell my students to do, and blind myself with realisations of what's happening in my own mind. We'll move house to a place where The Sussex House Party will really come into its own with its acres of space - and a calmness that living in a community could never quite allow -and invite artists and poets and singers and songwriters to feast with us while our eyes water at the beauty of those moments that only writers produce.

And I'll be back in the Spring with another book launch. This time, it's with a different publisher. And maybe, just maybe it'll be different this time.