Diary of an author, still waiting, part 7.

My editor just told me my book, The Fate of the Artist,  has gone back for a second printing even though I’m still waiting for the first one to come out. I have decided to pass the time by having a ‘thought for the day’, whether i feel like one or not. Today’s thought:

Genius is a nuisance, and it is the duty of schools and colleges to abate it by setting genius-traps in its way. 
–Samuel Butler

Now, I don’t wish to imply that I see myself in this quotation, that I claim to be the genius mentioned. I would only think such a thing after one bottle of Retsina. And after two I would be no less than the king of Persia. But it reminded me of that day away back in 1970 when, at the age of 15, it was my turn to front up before the school careers advisor. I candidly informed the man that I wished to spend my life drawing comics. He had never in all his days heard of such a low ambition and tried to dissuade me from my course. I can only thank my finely tuned instinct for self-preservation that I kept to myself my whacky theory that the great story of our times could be aptly told in the form of a kind of extended comic strip.