DrakeNews #128: October 14, 2022
Dear people,
I am now 77. I had a modest dinner party in a restaurant for family and a few old friends. Jonathan and his wife were present, also grandson Tristan, now a sophomore at ECU, and his girl friend. I now have a tee-shirt reading ECU grandad.
Tristan’s an athlete like Jonathan, only built for quickness rather than power. I’d say I was proud of both of them, only I didn’t have much to do with it. Click here for photo.
I got to thinking about success. I always figured that a writer could expect three material things from his work: money, readership and awards, I wanted enough money for a comfortable life and enough readers to sustain that income. I never cared about awards.
My friend Eric Flint wanted a fourth thing: fame. How different that is from the other three was driven home when his widow had to declare bankruptcy. Eric was a good writer and apparently (to me) successful. It turns out that it’s expensive to keep up the appearance of being successful–being famous, in other words. Eric spent more money on this than he earned, so he died famous but owing a lot of money.
I’d seen this before with Karl Wagner. In that case I’d been close enough to have seen Karl pissing away money–travelling frequently to the UK and buying Jack Daniels for his friends. As an imported liquor, Jack Daniels was extremely pricey in the UK while even in the US Karl had briefly switched to lower-priced George Dickel to save money. He decided he preferred Jack Daniels. He never made a serious attempt that I saw to stop drinking before it killed him because his image as a hard-drinking writer was more important to him than his life.
I didn’t see what Eric overspent his income on. But he also died broke, with a major reputation in the field which he sustained with loans.
There are other writers that do the same. They may be good writers and nice people, but their image is more important than their writing.
My writing was always been the main thing to me. That’s why I’ve retired from writing. I can no longer keep a whole work my head, so I can no longer write to my satisfaction. I don’t want to turn out inferior stuff, and I’m not financially required to do so.
For now I’m signing off. Be well, people, and be as nice as you can to other folks.
—Dave Drake
Chatham County, NC 27312
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