So here I am sitting in the beautiful natural grounds of Greenways, Agatha Christie’s home in Devon. Grounds which gently roll down to the River Dart. In her day Agatha would not have known, even all zee little grey cells would know what biodiversity is but here I am in biodiversity heaven. The sun is shining through the naked branches of the trees, what a special place this is. How fortunate Agatha was to have been able to buy Greenways and make it her home.
She paid £6,000,000 for the house and park in 1938. In today’s money that is about half a million pounds but you could not buy beauty like this in the twenty-first century for half a million pounds, you could not buy it for one million pounds and you could not buy it for ten million pounds. No way, not never, no way !
Agatha Christie plots are as twisty-turney as the pathways on the estate but I do not think said pathways inspired the plots. Did Agatha Christie ever sit where I am right now to write her stories ? I doubt it. She was able to buy Greenways because she was a mass-selling commercial author. She could not have upkept this park selling just one story from the old lady living in Saint Mary Mead., no she needed a conveyor belt of commercial novels. Factory produced stories she was very good at churning out.
The air where I am sitting
to write these words is alive with inspiration, why did Agatha not grab hold of
it ? Why did she stick to a mono genre
of writing and not experiment with her imagination ?
I need to sell more books, a lot more books. Agatha move over and let my sales increase beyond the thirty-nine I have sold on Amazon today. How wonderful it must have been to have lived here. The rooms are larger than in my own home and there are more of them but each is warm, cosy and very homely. I could live here in Greenways no problem. Agatha your tastes in furnishings, décor and collectables is exactly the same as my own.
Across the year 2021 I want to write one million words, forgive the hyperbole if I lived at Greenways I could write one million words a day ! The whole place oozes inspiration. Agatha Christie’s output probably totals somewhere in the region of four million. Agatha, Agatha, Agatha what went wrong ?
As a writer who is achieving a miniscule fraction of your success I always say that an author writes for himself, for his own enjoyment. It does not matter if anyone reads what b is written or not. If someone does read what is written then that is a bonus. If the reader enjoys what they read then that is a double bonus. If t he writer makes any money then that is incredible. Importantly money and readers are not important, the act of writing is what it is all about. Putting words in an order to create characters and guide them through a storyline is a writer’s task.
Agatha you created characters, totally unbelievable and eccentric characters but create them you did. You guide them through story lines but your stories are factory mass produced.
Yes, people do read your writing. One billion sales and still counting. Let me check my sales on Amazon for the month so far. Eighty-seven, an average of fourteen and a half a day. Agatha I bet you could not count so low a figure could you ? Obviously, while I do not, people enjoy your stories. Congratulations.
Agatha I am sorry, I began this little piece, so far I have written 1,461 words, I began by saying I am not one of your fans and shortly I will conclude by saying the same. Like the characters in your stories I have not been developed. However, Greenways has inspired me beyond that I could explain in one hundred million words. Over the coming months I want that inspiration to grow and grow and grown within me. Later in the year, in the spring or summer, I will come back not Greenways and take the inspiration of your home and turn it into a story of my own.
Thank You Agatha Christie. Thank You.
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