I started to draw again, dabbling with coloured pencils and markers...planning to switch to watercolours - my true love - if this worked out. Apparently I should step away from the finished draft of my memoir, the experts said, so I could tackle the revision and editing with fresh eyes? They recommended a month, and that's what I did. Some assorted blank canvasses from the two dollar shop, a shoe box full of coloured pencils and markers and off I went, doing something I never expected I'd revisit in this lifetime.

It's crap. I know. Art is not like riding a bicycle. I thought it might possibly be but sadly, the botched canvasses lying around my bedroom said otherwise. After much head-shaking I had to concede defeat.

I reasoned it would be the same if I - say - started writing after many years of silence? One does not suddenly become a writer again yeah? It takes countless words, a myriad scrunched up papers, or these days, ruthless, continuous taps on the delete button. What had I expected? Pulling a visual masterpiece from my arse the moment I picked up a coloured marker?

So I stopped drawing, concentrating on this writing instead. Some days, revisiting the first draft too and fidgeting; moving words around then putting them back the way they were. It didn't feel like the first draft of many, as it was supposed to - it kind of felt finished to me?

In-between, I flirted with the dozen or so open tabs on my screen: Check email; check the new Facebook page, created under my pseudonym and despite acute and I mean acute disdain from my sons; read news updates; find a story on Wattpad that hasn't been written by a seventeen year old girl with non-existent grammar, peppered with 5,000 "like, you know, like, he said... like..."

The last few days, having stumbled across the site and this confounding concept, I struggled to understand it, let alone appreciate it. I even called Dylan for help. Notice the word "even".

"See, they post their writing for free here, and everyone can read it and make comments."

"And?"

"You don't find it odd that so many people are just giving their work away?"

"Almost everything is free on the internet these days mum." Sigh. Not a good sigh. I knew his sighs well.

"Yes, but... how do these writers make a living? I mean they're sharing it; most of it is not even protected by copyright. And look at it!" I carried on, furiously clicking on random 'books'. "Most of this is trash! Spelling errors, punctuation, structure... all bullshit!"

"That's just your opinion mum." He was so calm. I wanted to scream!

"What do you mean my opinion? Look at the comments! People are saying they "loooove" this drivel. What the hell? Where are we going?"

"You don't get it." Why did he keep repeating this phrase? I was hearing it a lot these days.

He clicked on a random profile and then on a couple of links at the bottom. "See, here's her Facebook page and this is her website and she has a blog too and a twitter account. You can buy a few of her books here," he added, showing the tiny Amazon logo.

"Why would I bother buying if I can read them here for free?"

"You can choose to support her by buying, or liking or following. See, she has 165 thousand followers." He pointed to the right of her web page. "She advertises too, which brings in money every time someone clicks on one of the ads."

"So it's more about being followed then? Gathering people. More about self-promotion than-"

"Stop."

I stopped.

"It's ALL about self-promotion. Trying to get someone with a lot of followers to notice you and follow you in turn. Besides, you're getting in too late."

"Huh?"

"The site's been around for a few years. The ones who got in first have an advantage. You're trying to buy Microsoft shares now see?" A pause. I held my breath, hoping I wouldn't hear-

"And why didn't you buy Microsoft shares back when they first released them anyway?" he asked, with all the nous of a seasoned trader. "And if you'd sold them back in 1999 - you know, when Marcus was born-"

"Stop!" Oh, I was in that place again. The 'how could you not have figured out technology was where you should have parked your money?' place.

"So I've missed the boat, you're saying."

"Not answering that." He was obviously still calculating sums in his head.

"How do I promote myself? Hang on, don't go!" He hung on, barely inside the door.

I struggled to bring my Jurassic brain up to speed. I wasn't almost eighteen; I was two hundred million years old, still munching on tree leaves while these teens were brunching on shared comments and tweets, relishing the taste of: "cute.. frienship "  and "nice1" and "My mom died today," "Oh... I'm so sorry. :( *Hugs*","  which I definitely considered a weird thing to post as commentary on someone else's novel?

"Am I too old?" Oh there was so much pleading bleeding out of me! I felt pathetic. Like the last time age had cropped up:

Can't remember if it's in my memoir, but I have this fascination with mail boxes. Don't know about where you are, but over here, especially in country towns, they're works of art. My plan was to retire, buy a Combi van and travel the country. I was going to have this blog see, called 'One Million Mail Boxes' and I'd just cruise and take photos...

I ran it past number one son. "What do you think?"

"Um... you'll be dead way before you reach the first hundred thousand?"

"You sure?"

"Yep."

To his credit, Dylan did pause a little this time before: "It's more - you just don't get it mum. Everyone is giving their stuff away for free because it's how you get known."

The walking away happened then, with a final I can't be bothered trying to explain the world to you again look.

"Wait! Wait! Come back! What do you mean get known?"

"I don't want to talk about it!" I heard as he wandered off. "No one is forcing you! Why do you have to make everything so complicated?"

Give "my stuff" away for free so I become known? I'd been so enraptured by the act of writing, I'd not ventured past the act itself. Now I was supposed to give it all away? The angst, the anguish, the trauma... hell, the ripping apart; a hand reaching inside and wrenching bloodied words out... for what? A throng of followers who said illuminating things like, "I love love stories! <3 Gives me inspiration for my own c:" and "Hold on wasnt Marcus the guy who was voted for "cutest butt" and "most beautiful eyes"? Followed by, "Once I saw threw up all over the school I'm like "I love it all ready!!"

I thought about it after he left. I did. It wasn't about the money, it was more about holding that tightly bound book in my hands, smelling it, flicking the pages... seeing my name on the hard, dust-jacket covered facade...

I even put that thought to the side and browsed through every listed category, from ChickLit to Random, picking out several books in each one; holding back judgement, ignoring language horrors and focussing only on the idea, the raison d'etre. Thousands of people had adopted this new way. I could do it too, right?

Attention! Attention! The words screamed in-between the words! "Look at me! Look at me! Follow me! Like me! Tell me how much you like me!!!" This single shared premise constant, at times bullishly insistent.

It wasn't the content! (Light-bulb moment.) It didn't matter what one wrote or how one wrote it. There was a system in place, a mutually assured admiration pledge, much like a pyramid-model where the one per cent dined on the cream of adulation and the other ninety nine scrambled and squabbled and climbed, a little gold star at a time, a little gold star at a time, envying the dizzying heights above; the numbers numbing yet inciting this insane craving! Another follower. Another follower. Count. How many now? God I'm so far behind! How do you get from one to 1.5 million?

Did I have enough time?

Wattpad is life. An economy of words heaped on more words, a race for a constantly vertically shifting finish line. Wattpad is an industry. Production flowing upwards, buoyed by the labour of those on whose work others sit, supporting others in turn, an endless stream of consumption and upwardly-mobile written offerings. Seemed I was getting somewhere.

Or was I the pompous, arrogant know-it-all? Deigning to place myself above these mediocre and mostly written-to-a-formula attempts at garnering attention by spouting any amount of bullshit, under a pretty heading and an alluring, (read impossibly-perfect-human-form) cover photo? I went back to the other tab and found a passage I'd written in my memoir:

"I've missed you. Missed me more, this self, igniting, melting, melding, mending even broken-down dreams. I surely crave the lips through which I drank reckless abandon, never expecting they'd shut silent, or that I may be outside one day so fucking thirsty, watching them pour life yet unable to reach in and take some taste. Some other woman stepping in,and drinking everything in my place? Who'd ever think?"

These words could never fit here! The writing out of place, out of context! Too old for this site, too deep for this generation of whom one contributor-now-friend collectively asked: "Does your mother know you're on here?"

Most of the stories running instead along this theme: "I looked up/gazed up/ curiously/nervously/shyly, my eyes meeting/holding/seeing a pair of intense dark/blue/brown eyes... my hand twitched/trembled/shook under his and I let out a small noise of objection/admiration/surprise... he simply/arrogantly/sternly stared down at me with those intense/deep/gorgeous eyes of his, taking his free hand to slide it through his dark brown/blond/wavy locks... he spun around to the exit, a sour/mean/deep/intense expression on his handsome/gorgeous/perfect face..."

9.7 million others 'followed' this one particular writer, and 320,000 of them had given the 'story' a little gold star! The figures were mind-boggling. Almost ten million people had read this fill-in-the-blanks pulp and used their collective admiration to push it and push it, in the hopes they were noticed and in turn lifted, and lifted... That's how it worked! I had the formula!

Me being me, of course I ended up posting something anyway. I thought, why not some poetry? Who buys Poetry Collections these days right? I could give those away for free. So I set up my profile:

"I have grown to detest... blah blah blah... If you like what you read, then thank you. If you don't, I am sorry I have wasted your time. It's that simple."

I posted twenty poems over a twenty four hour period. 48 reads the first day, (do my own count and if so how could I know who else had stumbled across them?) yet not a single like, or follower. My son wandered in.

"No one following you yet?"

"Nope. Do you think it's my profile?"

"You reckon?" he asked, rolling his eyes as he read through my "arrogant and unfriendly" introduction. "Also your profile pic looks like a toilet bowl."

"What? No it doesn't, it's a white coffee cup with sugar left at the bottom shaped like a love-heart!"

"It's a toilet bowl. Once you see it you can't un-see it. Sorry."

I looked at it again. It was a toilet bowl! My attempt at an artistic representation of said coffee cup had resulted in a round image of one corner of a toilet bowl with what looked like toilet paper at the bottom of it! Crap! (Funny!)

Actually, I kept it in the end, since it summed up my experience to date nicely. About the only bright spot was discovering an ex-cop, who wrote as he saw. I read through all his work, falling asleep in the middle of "I Blame My Selfie" a rather scathing and at times overly candid opinion piece about technology and its effect on the young. Ah, the blessed relief of finding another adult! The words had been a lullaby...

... So I began writing, hour after hour. Two in the morning, I'd be saying goodnight to the boys as they headed off to bed - having just woken and making the first coffee before sitting in front of the monitor. Writing about anything and everything, like the floodgates had opened and the words were gushing out. Where was all this stuff coming from? I had five word documents open, five different stories and I alternated between them, a paragraph here, a chapter there, some revision...

In-between, checking Wattpad... like every hour... like... I had only one follower, the ex-cop with the strange blue thingy as his profile pic. I asked Dylan what he thought, a week after my joining Wattpad.

"You need to write simple words, so people understand mum."

"Simple words?" I was insulted. "Hey, I write what comes out!"

"Yes, but no one knows those big words. You need to think about your audience right? They're not going to read if you use big words or long paragraphs."

"What? I have to go back and make everything simple? Like I'm writing for five year olds?"

"You don't get it." Still? I thought I'd gotten it!

"Make me understand then. I want people to read my stuff!"

"Stop using big words no one knows. And stop being so precious about everything."

"You don't get it! I can't control the words! I know them, I am used to them, and it's how I think!"

He gave me that look where I again felt out of touch, left behind and with roles reversed... being lectured by my child.

"Mum. People don't give a shit about errors and punctuation and big words any more. You want an audience; you have to give them stuff they like! Think Game of Thrones!"

"What? Fan-inducing stories full of sex, violence and fantasy?"

"Fan-inducing? See what I mean? Who says that?"

"I just said it. And it's true!"

"You go out there with that attitude you'll be hunted down. Or ignored."

"That's what everybody reads now?"

"Don't say I didn't warn you. And get rid of the toilet bowl."

I got rid of the toilet bowl. Found some literary maid and plonked her in the little circle.Found another image of book pages forming a love-heart and used that as the background. Changed my 'about me' attitude, made my profile warmer, more welcoming.

I even uploaded some thoughts I'd been mulling over. Then more of them, then thanks to my very first follower in the little blue suit who still refused to give up on me, I bit the final bullet and uploaded the first few chapters of my 'draft' memoir.

I still don't get it. But hey, maybe there's nothing to get. Maybe it's just about the constant anticipation and satisfaction of gaining another follower, another little gold star...