Gerry was one of my best friends at school and through my first attempt at university. I helped him get his Ph.D. in Maths, and he helped me 'get real'�. It was a fair trade, from my POV, although he could never see it.

You see, Gerry introduced me to the idea of 'soda'�.

I find that most tasks come easily to me. So easy, that I often have a hard time understanding why other people find those same things hard. I'm not saying this to brag, but it's a fact: people who are good at many things tend to get lazy and rather pompous, which you might find applies to me. It's a hazard that some of us constantly face ' we don't think we are better than anyone else, but it sometimes seems that way.

The occasion was my first published stories. I was crowing about how good I was to be published, and that I was now 'famous'�. At least my penname was. He glanced over the stories and said 'Soda!'�

I was not sure whether he was insulting or suggesting we go for a drink. Hell, even if it was an insult, I knew that I had those two cheques in my pocket, more money than either of us had ever had at one time. I was a Writer! So, I smiled, and said 'Let's have a dram and a chaser!'�

'Soda!'� Gerry repeated.

'What do you mean?'�

'List'n t'yursel'. Ya'd think ra sun shines oot yur arse, and ye'd be Brendan Behan hissel'! Ya think yerra onnyyin t'get intae dose mags? Yur afuckensoda!'�

(I'll skip the dialect from now on, but the above gives some of the flavour, less most of the fucks, fuckings and bastards. Just put them into the majority of the spaces between the words and sometimes between syllables, and you'll be very close to what he actually said.)

Obviously, he wasn't talking about getting a drink.

We'd been brought up in the same neighbourhood, ran and played in the same streets, gone to the same schools (although different classes), and we were at the same university. We often went out together and chased after the same girls. We both talked the same slang and delivered the same level of insults. But this 'soda'� one was totally new to me.

It dawned on him that I didn't get his insult.

'You're a pseudo-writer! You know damned well that those two pieces are just romantic drivel. But then those magazines are always looking for more pap to feed the brains of tasteless people.'�

'But, Gerry, I got'�'�

'So, they published stuff you know is rubbish. So what? Peter, I know you. You just want to go down to that pub where Brendan Behan is hanging out, and lord it over those other SODA-writers who think that writing is about rubbing shoulders with someone famous who will make them famous too.'�

'No, I don't!'�

'Yes, you do! You're thinking that you can take a few pounds, buy a few drinks, and they'll all come flocking to you, after he goes back to Ireland. You'll be the one with the Name!'�

'No, I don't!'�

He looked at me straight in the eye.

'No, I don't!'�

The next denial stuck in my mouth.

Gerry was right. I didn't give a damn about being published. He was one of the few people to whom I'd admitted the authorship and that I didn't care for the stories themselves. What I really wanted was to be larger than life, like Hemmingway, or Virginia Woolf, or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Brendan Behan was a local version of the same thing, one I had actually met and shared a Guinness or two.

'Damn you, Gerry!'� I cursed weakly.

Later, I cashed the cheques, putting aside the funds for another year at University, but I never made it to the pub where Brendan Behan and his brothers held court among the 'sodas'�.

It took a couple of weeks to realise just how close I'd come to being completely what Gerry called a 'soda'�, a wannabe of any kind, pretending that he/she has made it. I've met many such people since. They want the writer's life so bad that they create excuses to make it happen.

Some do it by hanging around their 'heroes'�. That's the easy way. It doesn't matter if you don't get published. You are getting what you want: becoming famous for being famous or being with the famous. After all, the famous aren't going to hang out with non-entities, are they?

Then there's the hard-luck 'sodas'�. These are the ones who suffer for their art. They make a tragic tale about how publishers don't understand them, or that publishers work only with people who have already been published, or a hundred different versions of why they have their art, and they are staying true to their art, by sharing their poetry or stories only with a few selected people who 'understand'� what they mean.

And there are the ones who make it all sound better, the ones who publish the hard luck 'sodas'� and pay them nothing. They might even ask for a few dollars to offset their expenses, like buying contributor copies. They offer hope of publication in some way, and deliver the publication, but the hope stays exactly that ' a hope that someone with the right taste or the right connections will discover them. It happens just often enough to keep the hope alive, but the odds are very much against it, especially with 'freebies'�.

Which one am I now? Am I a 'soda'�?

Thanks to Gerry, I discovered something. Being a writer is not about writing - anybody can write and many non-writers can write well. It's about making your life revolve around your writing. You need to incorporate the writing into everything you do.

Teaching? I write and re-write the standard materials to my own flavour. The better I can do this, the more understanding my classes have of the subject. My writing's involved inextricably with the teaching, the adding value to information.

Computer programming? I write and re-write the stories that become the programmes and applications. The better my writing, the easier it is for the user to follow the program/application and get the results he/she wants. My writing's involved inextricably with the programming, the adding value to make something workable.

Inextricably, writing forms part of every relationship I have ' friends, my marriage, how I deal with my sons and my grandchildren. It's my way of adding value to everything I do. It doesn't matter what I do, and publishing is irrelevant, except as a little bit of icing.

Writing is inextricably involved with everything I do in this life.

And the nice thing about it all?

I get paid for it, either directly in cash, or in results achieved!

And, best of all, Gerry can't call me a 'soda'�!

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