Casting Bread: A Practical Example, by Ben Jeapes

Photo by SHVETS production from Pexels 

In I, Claudius by Robert Graves, Claudius wonders if these thoughts he is jotting down will be preserved and remembered. He decides in the end that, even though he is now Caesar, they have a better chance of posterity if he just leaves the scrolls lying around for them to be discovered randomly in a century or few.

Fictitious, I know, but who knows exactly how long their written works will last? You can pen what you think is a masterpiece and it blazes into obscurity. You can jot down a few pensées and have an accidental bestseller.

I wonder if Paul ever realised or guessed that one day the letters he was firing off to various churches around the Middle East to deal with their local problems would have a higher status with Christians than the Hebrew scriptures he revered so much? (I suspect not, if only because he surely would have added some more clarifying comments. “Obviously, this is particular advice for you Corinthians in your situation; it should not be seen as a universal law because I have a very high regard for women speaking and prophesying, as should be clear from my other writings …”)

Ecclesiastes tells us to “Cast your bread upon the waters” (or “Ship your grain across the sea”, in the NIV, which is less confusing for anyone wondering why the Teacher is suddenly talking about feeding the ducks). You just can’t know what the outcome of a venture will be – but you can know that the outcome of nothing will be nothing.

(Note for the humorously challenged: I know perfectly well that passage has nothing to do with feeding ducks.)

All of which is a very roundabout way of saying I’ve reached the latest stage of what accidentally became my main project for 2024: writing Ghostwriting Novels: A Guide for Ghostwriters and the Ghostwritten. Writing novels is what I do best and enjoy most; I was lamenting the fact that I had no inspiration for one of my own, and no one was asking for help in writing theirs …

And then I would love to say I was vouchsafed a vision, as of a piece of bread floating down a river, with the words WRITE SOMETHING ANYWAY, IDIOT written on it. It was not quite like that, but it did occur to me that here was an opportunity which might also serve as a shop window. A mere few months later I have 30k words, a Foreword by Ralph Turner, a fantastic cover by Liz Carter, and a lot of hope.

Files uploaded to IngramSpark yesterday; ISBN and title registered with Nielsen; publication due end of October. My bread is floating.

Ben Jeapes took up writing in the mistaken belief that it would be easier than a real job (it isn’t). Hence, as well as being the author of eight novels and co-author of many more, he has also been a journal editor, book publisher, and technical writer. His most recent title is a children’s biography of Ada Lovelace. www.benjeapes.com