Notes On A Lack of Scandal

I'm comfortably listening to Radio 4. Suddenly I hear a demented but tooth-grindingly familiar melody. I drop my mug of coffee on the workstop where it will bounce a couple of times, and launch myself headlong at the radio, one arm stretched out ahead, to connect to the off button on the radio. All in slow motion of course - I sail through the air, a look of pain on my suddenly pale face, splashes of coffee gracefully ascending from the worktop, and there is a slowed-down shout of

Nooooo!

It's The Archers, of course, and if anyone else in Britain is anything like me then I'd imagine there must be a sudden drop in power usage on the national grid at that moment.

Foreshadowing

Why the gap in blog posts? Was I on holiday again? No. To tell the truth, I was planning a post after reading the Iliad - it just lasted me a little longer than I'd first anticipated. Don't know why that should have occasioned me such surprsie, given that it runs to 24 books. But then you get caught up reading footnotes, and one thing leads to another, and...

The subject this time is foreshadowing. It's almost a dirty word in storytelling. 'Little did young Christopher Plumley he know, when he first joined the service of Count von Dastard D'e'Ville, of what horrors would transpire...' Who would write such a sentence now? It seems quaint, from a period when the world was Newtonian, effects followed causes, and clockwork inevitability seemed a fact of life. I suppose this is what would traditionally have been called fate - a subject that doesn't come up in fiction too often. But more's the pity?

What Microsoft Visual Studio thinks of my internal monologue

Public Sub TestMethod1()

If everybody had an ocean across the USA Then everybody'd be surfing like californi-ay

End Sub

Ten Openings That Never Went Anywhere - #3

He flexed his legs under the table to stave off cramp.

There were times, of course, when conducting a particularly boring meeting at this record company, that he would pass from one agenda item into the next and as the conference phone crackled into life, and someone in A&R began the longest possible explanation of why they were not entirely redundant in the workplace, with worked examples - and he would actually pass out with the boredom. Just for a second. One moment he'd feel himself falling, and then arrest his collapse back into his chair with a jolt, usually before anyone had even noticed, and with the A&R man still waxing boringly about the future of rock and roll. People regular blacked out during this label's meetings, and it wasn't as if he was likely to miss out on the next big thing in the space of a mere second or so of unconsciousness, but he'd never heard of anyone blacking out during their own meeting.

On Beauty

A note for your diary...
  

Do, I beg you, come and see my story 'Loveliness Raged' performed at this month's 'Are You Sitting Comfortably?', this Friday (21stOctober), along with several others on the general theme of Beauty.

The venue is :
Arts Bar & Café, Toynbee Studios
28 Commercial Street
London
E1 6AB

Tickets are £8 and from personal experience I'd suggest it might be worth booking, as it has been known to sell out. Box office is 020 7650 2350, or you can book online at www.artsadmin.co.uk. The doors open at 7.30pm, the stories start at 8pm sharp, the evening winds up story wise around 10pm, but the ever-ready bar outlasts them all. And chip butties and ice creams are on the house!

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The Republic - a new translation

How then may we devise one of those needful falsehoods of which we lately spoke - just one royal lie which may deceive the rulers, if that be possible, and at any rate the rest of the city?

What sort of lie? he said.

Classical birdwatching

'Let us consider an albino crow. Is it not said, by the great poets, that such creatures have been seen? And there is, I believe, an old Phoenician tale regarding such an occurrence. But is a white crow not a crow nonetheless?'

'That it is, Socrates.'

'Then it is true that all crows must be white?'

'That must be correct.'

'Then what would you say is that black corvid, under the tree over there?'

Why Doesn't This Writer Have An Agent? #1b in a series...

I've had it in mind for a while to promote other writers' work wherever I can - there is nothing more depressing on a blog than pure self-promotion. Sebastian Aston, keeper of the wonderfully dry Notes From The Noon of Life blog, kindly gives me permission to show off his talents this week with an extract from his short and as yet unrepresented novel, And A Funny Feeling Of Being Lost - see what you think. I am very keen to hear from anyone else who would let me big up their work in a similar way. Providing it's, y'know, good...

People Are Our Greatest Asset

A company’s reception area is often the first point of contact for outsiders. It’s a window for them to the rest of the organisation and should reflect the company’s image. Our reception area is a cold mix of glass, metal and laminate, which gives it a very professional gloss. It’s much like our receptionist, Samantha, who is receptionist pretty, too heavy on the gloss, and almost certainly part laminate.

It’s gone nine as I rush in, glance her way and say, “Morning.”

She doesn’t respond as she is talking busily on the phone. I hear her say something about Madonna and hot pants. On days when she does acknowledge me, she usually curls her lip. This I put down to me not being senior enough, not looking like Brad Pitt enough, and not trying to chat her up enough. Or maybe it’s because she thinks that I stereotype people. Above her head, on the wall, in sleek inspiring graphics is written Vigora. The company used to be called Enterprise Technology Ltd. until last year when some American investors bought it with big plans to overhaul the whole organisation. They spent millions of dollars giving it a new name and logo and left everything else the same. In place of new strategy we got new mouse mats. The new branding is meant to indicate power and vitality. My suggestion -which nobody asked for- was WankAthlete. I even drew a logo.

The recently renovated office is open plan. It has been specifically designed to increase the interaction between teams. There are ergonomically shaped Formica desks scattered around forming little islands. It’s like a Formica Maldives located on the fifth floor of a dull office block in central London. The modular low-static carpet is granite grey, the fully relocatable partitioning walls are silver grey, and our high performance worktops are blue grey. Officially, there is no grey grey here. Unofficially, I would say there’s some plain grey in the kitchen but maybe I’m not picking out the hint of avocado.

As I make my way between the desks, I spot Steve, my boss, sitting in his office. It’s a large glass-walled room off to one side and is styled with executive beech furniture. His boss sits in an even larger office next door. His room is styled with executive walnut furniture. He also has his own printer, a gratuitous sofa and a picture of the Dordogne where he frequently mentions that he owns a property. I arrive at my island where David and Charlie are already sitting. Our Health & Safety certified workstations are separated from each other by low partitioning screens which we have attempted to personalise. David has put up a photo of the West Ham squad, and Charlie has some drawings by his little girl. They’re quite good, almost Impressionist, especially the one of him where he looks like a testicle watching a sunset. My screen is filled up with Dilbert cartoons.

“Morning,” I grunt, sitting down and logging on to my PC.

“Afternoon,” says David, looking at his watch.

“Evening,” says Charlie.

“Check your mails,” says David. “You won’t believe it, they want another spreadsheet filled in by end of day.” He has piercing blue eyes and, if I was a girl, I would probably fall for him like they all do. I would also soon be tossed casually aside, broken, like they all are.

“Another one?” I say. “What do they want this time?”

“An action plan for all your accounts,” says Charlie, who is only a couple of years older than David but, balding and with a beer pregnancy, the two years look like ten.

“But I don’t have an action plan,” I say, “because I spend all my time filling in action plans.”

“Maybe you can say that’s your action plan,” says David.

“That sounds like an inaction plan,” says Charlie.

“They’re going to ask for those later in the week,” I say.

Their smiles quickly disappear as they glance over my shoulder and start acting busy.

“Timon, can I have a word?” a voice says behind my back.

“Sure, Steve,” I say, getting up and following him to his office.

Steve sits at his executive beech desk as I close the door. “Please try and be on time, Timon,” he says. “We start punctually at nine here.”

I check my watch: it says twelve past. Then I pull out my .44 Magnum, point it at his chest and pull the trigger. He explodes backwards out of his chair, eyes struck wide in surprise. As he falls to the ground I pull the trigger again. The Magnum roars as another bullet slams into his body, the recoil shooting up my arm. Say hello to my leeettle friend! I pull out my 9mm Uzi with laser sighting and let rip with a few short bursts, the crack of the gunfire covering up my mad laughter.

“Yes, I’m sorry I’m late,” I say. “There was a problem on the tube.”

“Tell me, how did your presentation go yesterday?” Steve has a square face, a weak chin and is very ambitious. His main ambition is to be American and he dresses and acts as such. He slicks back his hair, wears tasselled loafers, and uses words like doable.

“I think it went well.”

He stares at me and raises his eyebrows.

I add, “I’d be surprised if they didn’t want to take it to the next step.”

“Good stuff,” he says. “So what’s the driver behind their need?”

“The driver? I couldn’t see his face, he was wearing a helmet.”

He stares at me and frowns.

I clear my throat and say, “Well, their immediate need is for better tracking of their customer requirements…”

“But is that a business issue or just a technological requirement?”

“No, it’s a business issue. Their current legacy system is very costly to maintain and isn’t capable of handling their growing volumes of business.”

“I see. So how did you pitch the benefits of our solution to them?”

“I told them we could consolidate and improve their whole process with an integrated solution which enhances and streamlines current processes, reduces their costs, and gives better customer tracking and service.” Expialidocious.

“Good stuff,” he says. “I just wanted to check on progress and make sure we can put this one to bed. We need this business, Timon. You need this business. You only have a few weeks left to make your target.”

“I’ll close it.”

“Be sure you do. New York is watching us very closely. Okay, thanks Timon,” says Steve, who’s from Wall Street in Croydon.

I walk out and close the door. Note to self: use a flamethrower next time, and remember to piss on the body. I go to the kitchen to make myself a coffee. It’s empty and I take a moment, take a deep breath. In and out. Then I punch my order into the machine and listen to it whir and click.

“No, he won’t get away with it, the little kid was there,” says David, as I arrive back at my desk.

“Yeah, but she’s blind, she doesn’t know what she heard,” says Charlie.

“You don’t think he’ll go after her?”

“I think he’ll try and blackmail her mother.”

They’re talking about the big news event of the day, front page of the papers, somebody killing somebody on some TV soap. It must have been a quiet night in the Middle East.

“What did Steve want?” asks Charlie.

“He told me he was beginning to self-loath for working here.”

“Really?” says David.

I sit down and check my emails.

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Insight, Conversation, Action, ?

In the beginning, I started out producing what I would have described as intensely psychological prose, creating entirely interior worlds, interior dilemmas, interior struggles... It seemed almost writerly. A chapter would involve one person, walking in a park, thinking. Or perhaps only sitting on a park bench. Perhaps this was because the thoughts came to me that way, and I didn't quite have the wit to dress it up more. This, I might call the Insight stage. Irony, hey.

I grew past it, in time. I started having two or even three people in a scene, even interacting sometimes. This, finally, was proper writing. They began to talk to each other, sometimes at length. They were (sort of) demonstrating things, through dialogue at least. No longer did the author clumsily illuminate via his eighteenth century narrator. Sometimes the characters even misunderstood each other, or talked across each other. Or were unreliable in their knowledge. I felt advanced.

But a different kind of pattern emerged. Each chapter, it was politely pointed out to me, is just people talking. Yet again. They were right, naturally. What was actually happening? I counted ten chapters in a single novel that each consisted in some part of two people talking at a checkout (mostly in coffee shops, but also, through a burst of wild imagination, in a supermarket).

Conversation isn't action, of course. Only action is action. Which is not to say a building blows up in every chapter, but at last I am deleting entire chapters that had seemed integral only months ago, and expressing a good thing once instead of a dozen times. It's the same thought that has football managers screaming at their daft winger to stop turning the defender and just bloody cross the ball.

I wonder what the next stage is?

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Not proud. Just saying...

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The writing season

The weather has changed. Being away, I didn't see it happen here, but I'd imagine it's much the same anywhere you go. I return from holiday to find a cooler, windier, wetter London. Trotting round my neighbourhood the colours have changed, and its not just that the housing estate has been repainted in battleship grey.

In the Eurostar magazine on the way home, an article heralded the change in seasons with the suggestion that autumn is the start of the cultural year en France, unlike ever-dynamic, always on London. I'm not so sure we're any different. The Wednesday writing group I go to has been low in numbers all summer, and suddenly in September the attendance has doubled. The deadlines of literary competitions seem to cluster around October and November; perhaps if you're interested in these things, now would be the time to prepare for them. The signs are everywhere.

I'm sure real writers don't ever slack in summer, even if real-world writers do. At least we're finally liberated of the fantasy that we might just spend the day lying in the park instead.

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What kind are you?

No update next week, as I'm on holiday. Guess you'll just have to get by with this in the meantime...

 

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Do I lose my single person discount on Council Tax if Paulo Coelho is living in my wardrobe?

I've always been able to console myself that despite lacking an agent or a (conventional) publisher I am still, at any rate, the most successful writer in my lone occupant household.

Sadly, even this turns out not to be true.

I got a letter last week addressed to "Paulo Coelho", who has given the Metropolitan Police my address in connection with an incident they would like to talk to him about. I'm not sure where in the flat he's been living but I guess it's a sign that I need to be a bit tidier around the place; clearly I'm providing too much habitat for writers. I cleaned out all the kitchen cupboards before the riots, but maybe he's been putting his head down in my wardrobe. Note to self: really must be more careful.

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Good books

The morning pages experiment continues. On the face of it, this has been spectacularly unsuccessful. Today's session was spent getting ready for Barry The Tiler coming round at five to eight. Does getting my kitchen done count as procrastination?

I had an insight. I was listening to someone the other day struggling to describe in straightforward terms what they liked to read, other than chick lit. It shouldn't be this complicated; we all know instinctively what this other genre is, even if we can't quite define it. It's the section in Waterstones or on Amazon we would all home in on, if it existed. Kind of speaks for itself, really:

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Morning pages

I had a routine of sorts. I called it the witching hour - that period of relative calm between about eleven in the evening and two in the morning when:

a) local people had stopped having daft accidents and requiring constant attention from paramedics from Europe's largest A&E department nearby,
b) the Napoleonic army of unfit, generally cow-like but nonetheless extremely noisy people popularly known as the Metropolitan police had finally gone to bed and were no longer using my street as their own personal Santa Pod, and
c) I used to have the stamina to still be awake to take advantage of the peace.

Magic happened in that witching hour, albeit not particularly publishable magic.

I must be getting older; for some reason I feel like more like sleeping when it gets late at night. So I am thinking of becoming an early morning person. If I can knuckle down to write before I go to work, I can be fresher and write before my mind has become distracted by all the nonsense of the average day. It's a good theory. So far it has worked only once in the two weeks since I decided to try it. Recent early mornings have been spent organising parking and, this last week, entertaining builders. Another morning's attempt failed on account of having already been woken four times at various small hours in the morning for call-outs. But what I did achieve in that much-abbreviated attempt at morning pages was the thought 'blog entry'. When life gives you lemons, hand them off to your readers  I mean, make lemonade.

The attempt continues.

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Trust

One thing that the late and unlamented News Of The World was respected for (and for that matter, its sister paper the Sun) was its sports coverage. By this I think we all know we mean football; I'm sure Mr Murdoch didn't get where he was today by aggressively pursuing the Crown Green Bowls-playing demographic. There's no hint on the tabloid back pages that papers have any bias towards particular major players or teams, whatever skullduggery might or might not be going on under the surface. This independence reflects the isocline between the players and managers on one hand and the press on the other, and the suspicion with which the former regard the latter. Long may that remain so, if the alternative is the cosy punditry of Alan Shearer.

I mention this not because I care deeply about football, but because of envy. Sometimes I wish I could read a review in the Guardian's Review section, for example, and have the same confidence that the journalists were not mixing for social drinks with novelists; that novelists did not have a career path into journalism; that journalists did not have a career path into novel writing. There is a telling lack of honest loathing in our book talk, and when we do it, our criticisms are so broad-brushed that we can barely discern the guilty party. But we know that books can really suck, don't we? And not just collectively, when they're out with their mates. Sometimes particular books can suck, all on their own, in their own special way, whatever the hype in the media. And just occasionally, I suppose, writers work to live up to that hype they never deserved at the start.

I wrote a much more honest version of this, ten minutes ago, and thought better of it... By way of analogy, I might have called it Steve McLaren, England Manager.

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Hot & Bothered

Liars League, tomorrow @ 7:30, The Phoenix, explores a theme of 'Hot & Bothered' featuring

- Underneath by Erinna Mettler
- Brothers' Eyes and Curtain Rods by Robert Long
- This Isn't Heat by Richard Smyth
- Pampas Grass by James Holden
- Kenny by Frances Clarke

I'll be there, and I'd encourage you to be there too!

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M*a*s*h (u*p)

Why the asterisks? Because it pains me to be so modern when the thing is so old, and the fashion comes and goes. This is, depending on your bent, might go back to Laurence Sterne, E.T.A. Hoffman et al in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, or was reinvented with Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. At it's simplest, it might be a pleasant parlour game (though possibly not so compelling when approaching it sober: see what you think - me, I'm distinctly underwhelmed). Or, why not a whole novel?

Personally, I'm not sure there's very much more to be achieved by this than a certain comic effect. It's a bit much to hope for pathos:

I was a shade perturbed. Nothing to signify, really, but still just a spot concerned. As I sat in the old flat, idly touching the strings of my banjolele, an instrument to which I had become greatly addicted of late, and you couldn't have said that the brow was actually furrowed, and yet, on the other hand, you couldn't have stated absolutely that it wasn't. Perhaps the word 'pensive' just about covers it. It seemed to me that a situation fraught with embarrassing potentialities had arisen.

'Control,' I said, 'do you know what?'
'No, sir.'
'Riemeck's dead.'
'Yes, indeed,' Control declared.
'Awkward, what?'

That, you may have identified as P.G. Woodhouse (Thank You, Jeeves), with a sprinking of two or three lines from John Le Carre's classic The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. This is in fact only the smallest extract of an exercise I did for the sake of exploring the concept for this piece; I need not trouble to include any more of it here as I think the concept is clear enough (and I have no wish to bring upon me the wrath of the copyright police). My personal taste forbids the union of concepts that simply jar (Jane Austen + Zombies = a first year undergraduate's desperation for effect, in my book). In this case though, I thought there was actually surprising common ground between the two novels I was sampling, not least in the characters of Control and Jeeves. At the start of both novels, both these characters utter the very same words in response to the main protagonist - 'Yes, indeed.' Both stories are grounded in English culture and manners, albeit from slightly different backgrounds and eras, and have a similar interest in what Bertie Wooster might have called sportng behaviour, or the lack of it.

How far could this have gone? In all honesty, probably not that far. The best sampling probably comes unconsciously to both the writer and the reader. It's also quite hard to do well. If nothing else, it should make anyone complaining of writer's block reflect that writing from scratch might actually be easier.

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Confessions of a second hand book addict

Now here's a question: When is it ethical to buy books second hand?

Possibly when the author is already dead, and I'd have to admit that most of my current reading matter falls into that category. Hard-hearted as I am, I don't feel the same pity for the affairs of late authors' estates as I might for the living. Nonetheless, I may be an outlier among readers in my dustier literary interests at the moment, and it's an accepted wisdom of publishing that if readers buy books second hand, they are denying proceeds to the (living) author and thus undermining publishing. In a forum on the ethics of book buying on the writing site WriteWords, I came across one particular comment that encapsulated this view, and a little more:

"I would never buy a book second hand if it's available new, as I'd be depriving the author of a sale they'd otherwise have had - and that'll be me soon. That's the realisation on which PLR was founded, after all. Just as I never use pirated software. "

Put like that, it seems clear - new writing must be directly impeded if it is no longer possible to make a good living from it. This does seem to ignore the fact that most aspiring writers are educated enough about the state of publishing to know that very few published writers do make a living from it; and the motivations of writers may have more to do with art or status than financial reward. It could be argued that to reduce the proceeds of writing might even encourage those who are writing for higher reasons than profit.

The piracy claim is a new one to me though. I'd always assumed that if a book is sold second hand that this might inherently be a comment on the (perhaps disappointing) quality of the book, and that it might be expecting a bit much for the author to be expect to be paid again on account of their book being less worth holding onto. Certainly there are many goods that we do buy second hand without scruple. Is there reason to suppose that the trade in second hand cars is piracy, for example? Was I tearing bread from the mouths of assembly line workers when I bought my chav-white Renault Clio second hand? Well, yes, I suppose I was.

Perhaps I have learned something today. It may even encourage me to buy new books a little more often, when I can find it within me to trust an author sufficiently. One of the reasons I've always been prepared to experiment with an author I might not like is that if I buy their book second hand, I'm not risking rewarding bad writing, which in my (admittedly disproportionate) mind is a crime comparable to funding terrorism.

So I admit I may have done my part to keep other writers penniless/honest. Shoot me now. Before I die though, allow me these parting words - I feel for fellow writers, and I feel for publishing. But it turns out I really hate William Gaddis. If he were alive, I'd hate him too.

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Bullying (for the purposes of fiction...)

Since I started being more prim about my coffee instake, my life can no longer accurately be measured in coffee spoons. Nonetheless a week rarely goes by without me feeling the need to bore someone with my grand unified theory of Life And Fiction, and this is a sufficiently regular event that it might do just as well. The thought is this - that a good life makes for bad fiction, and vice versa, and if your life resembles a particularly boring novel then you are probably much the happier for it.

Clearly, bullying is A Good Thing*. Plenty of novels succeed without it, but the inclusion of a bully is a pretty good way to establish sympathy with a protagonist, particulary when that protagonist is no angel him or herself. One of the most blatant but nonetheless effective examples is the opening of Wolf Hall, in which Thomas Cromwell is kicked and beaten by his father. There is a crucial caveat here though: a hero cannot be a victim without putting the story in great peril. Thomas Cromwell may be beaten* only because he is a brave youth who will not be cowed, and we see his courage and quality from the manner in which he takes his beating. We know, or a least strongly suspect, the tables will be turned in time. If he had been established as an innocent, doe-eyed child with watery eyes, we might have had a different novel altogether; specifically, a less interesting one. One thing strikes me though - we have rather less patience for victims now* than perhaps we had in the past. This seems most obvious in our national culture.

Take for example Trollope's The Way We Live Now. It is built around the central bullying character of the recent immigrant Augustus Melmotte, who is arguably rivalled in a more personal context by the 'wildcat' American Mrs Hurtle. A modern reader is liable to find the native English characters so insipid and long suffering that there would be almost greater satisfaction in them being successfully crushed or manipulated by their foreign superiors* than in triumphing at the last. There is far more to be admired in Mrs Hurtle's threats to whip her fiance for his cowardice* than in Paul Montague or Roger Carbury's ethical mithering, or in their hand-wringing fear of a female planet.

Our traditional identification with decent and timid protagonists carries through in the novels of Patrick Hamilton. In The Slaves of Solitude his heroine Miss Roach is bullied equally by a German emigre and a blustering old Englishman, but in particular it is the constraints of English manners that stops her from fighting back. When she finally escapes her tormentors, it is only by providence. In Hangover Square, George Harvey Bone eventually takes a murderous revenge, but it is neither a triumph of righteousness nor courage. Unlike his enemies, he has not even lived well by his own code, and only exacts revenge through a mental illness that prevents him being conscious of his actions. Far from overcoming his tormentors, he can then only commit suicide.

So does that mean that in fiction, fire must always fight fire? Surely conflict is what it's all about? Well, yes. Up to a point. Stepping beyond that point, that's when I encounter the epically tedious violence of Cormac McCarthy, or Bukowski's alter-ego Henry Chinaski trapped in an endless cycle of sad fisticuffs. Me, I just want the bullying* - not a bloody martial arts movie.
* for the purposes of fiction

Ten Openings That Never Went Anywhere - #2

The First Sixty Seconds of A Searcher

He'd heard it said that sometimes - in other people's lives, this would be - an adventure starts with a knock on the door. Which might have been a lovely thought for people who didn't get out much, but it wasn’t quite the same when he was the one doing the knocking.

This, here, now, was a matter of getting out on his feet and walking. Initiative. Journeying. Coming to the mountain. Mike knew that real adventures didn’t start that way. Only Outward Bound trips started that way. He was on the wrong side of the door. Fate abhors initiative. The universe hates a searcher.

Through the frosted glass, a shadow grew within a shadow, and the door opened. A short, slightly stocky man answered the door and looked at him; immediately he realised he’d be a stranger here.

‘Mike Briggs,’ he muttered by way of introduction, and flashed the wallet containing his Oystercard as if he’d done this a thousand times. ‘Cake Police.’

‘You can leave chuck your stuff in that room there,’ said the man regardless – possibly one of his cousins? – at any rate, the figure shuffled off towards a handful of people drinking from paper cups in the living room.

Mike didn’t have a bag. It wasn’t his way, and nor was a polite drinks session in the living room; which was odd, because nothing he’d ever done in his life would have remotely suggested otherwise. He went into the kitchen instead, and looked for signs of life. Nothing doing. An empty kitchen? At a party?

Some fifteen seconds or so after entering the party, he saw the kitchen door. He took it. Within thirty, he was round the back of the house and slumped in a plastic chair in the garden. He puffed his cheeks, and looked up. Shades of grey hung in the sky, not even mixing. It seemed set like concrete. Through the patio doors, he could see more shades of grey talking inside. No chemistry there. One test tube of water was being poured into another.

T+35 seconds after first entry, he realised he wasn’t alone. A man in a dufflecoat sat huddled atop of a large black rubbish bin in the corner.

‘Random,’ Mike muttered to himself.

Five more seconds passed. In the background, he could hear the passing traffic just the other side of the house. Slow, doleful rumblings. He watched the man, hoping for some sign of animation. The man watched him back, with no little suspicion. Perhaps he should introduce himself. Maybe this time he could avoid complimenting the house, asking the guy where he was from, talking about the weather, pretending he wasn’t just here for the refuelling. Was that too much to hope for?

‘Fucking delayed gratification,’ Mike finally said. Quietly, of course; he was pretty much a virgin when it came to free speech. Still, the chattering of the birds seemed to cease that moment, as if they were shocked by his language. He looked at the man more closely. A gold watch peeked out from under his sleeve. He was round shouldered, with slender hands. An accountant perhaps? A lawyer? A squash racket in its soft case, presumably his, lay leaning against the wall next to him. Possibly no-one had ever said such a thing in this man's hearing before. Almost certainly, in fact. He was probably someone’s husband. Involved in the community. Respected. But also, sitting on a rubbish bin.

The silence ended. It seemed like the dawn of a new age.

‘Word,’ said the accountant.
‘Not enough people here who could say fuck.’
‘Fuck no,’ said the accountant.

A thought struck Mike.

‘Are you cousin Vinny?’
‘Yeah. You Mike?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Fuck, we’re predictable.’
‘Your lot going on about the weather too? The delays on Junction 14? Their lovely holiday?’
‘I expect so.’
‘And you fit in with it too? Nicey nicey?’
‘Like a fucking glove. And I wear the marigolds when I’m washing up. Practically grafted now.’
‘You swear like this normally?’
‘Fuck, no.’
‘We’re back yard people, Vinny. Under our sensible coats, anyway. We’re not house people.’
‘Cousin, let’s liberate a bottle from the wine rack. Something with a dusty label.’
‘Oh baby, we’re so good for each other.’

Slot Together Animals

It's not only that I'm lazy this particular week. I'd always hoped to have more of this thng in my blog, if nothing else to guard against solipsism - but one must have standards of course. Have a look at the works of Tom Sears, whose illustrations and short stories have an imagination and life about them that is distinctively his own. Me, I like the slot together animals. Particularly the gorilla.

Ten Openings That Never Went Anywhere - #1

(or, Why My Enthusiasm About Other People's Promising First Chapters Is Inevitably Tempered By Premonition Of Later Disappointment)

The Squareness of Cows *

Chapter One - On First Looking Into Loxton’s Cow

 It occurred to him, while leaning over his neighbour's rusty farm gate, that this spectacularly squarish animal in front of him, its back and arse forming a perfect right angle, its spine rigid and straight, its four equal legs at the four corners of a body the proportions of a standard bale, and a neck that allowed it to tidily fold its head right down to the ground - above all, this animal was designed to be stackable, much like the chairs in the village hall, and farmers before him had missed a trick in not realising the space-saving potential of the bovine form.

It further occurred to him that such intelligent design was evidence of the existence of God; possibly a Swedish one, at that. Evolution could not possibly provide an account of why cows would need to be stackable by more than the cow-plus-bull configuration necessary for mating purposes, and even that arrangement, when he thought about it, was more like a lean-to than a proper stack. This was no accident of biology. Yes, there was a God, he was sure; and a personal one too; and most importantly, He was going to make him very rich.

* A traditional X of Y formula; see this post for more details

The curious incident of the dwarf, a rubber band and your best mate in the night time

So what is storytelling? On the face of it, it's everything between the two covers of a book. Anything outside of those pages comes under another some other jurisdiction. The suburbs around it, we might call Promotion, for want of a better name. Everything beyond that, is just Life, Non-Fiction, The World, call it what you will. At the very least though, we're positive that the blurb on the back of a book that sucks you right into the story is definitely not part of storytelling. Nor is it when you write a synopsis; or put into practice that ten second elevator pitch; or when someone is telling you I just bumped into that old friend of yours in Sainsbury's, you know the one you thought was dead - I'll tell you all about it later. All that, we would call promotion again, and promotion, as all respected authorities will tell you, is Wrong. It is the opposite of storytelling. Not keeping it real.

Except...

You meet your friend at the pub. Have you heard, X says, almost bursting, what just happened to Y? Well you know what Y is like, don't you? That thing he has about dwarves? Well I heard the other day that...

None of this is the story yet, of course - this is all promotion. A serious, out-and-out reader would be paying no attention. But in truth you only came to this pub in the first place because you heard someone whisper something about Y and dwarves and rubber bands, and a prurient streak in you wanted to know more. That too is Promotion, and that too is Wrong. You wouldn't ordinarily care about the problems of dwarves and rubber bands at all, but in this case it has intersected with your world. Y is actually someone you know, so suddenly the story is relevant and universal, and as for the rubber bands, well there but for the grace of god - the rubber band issue is something quite personal to you too, though heaven help you if anyone finds out about that. This story you're going to hear is something more in the context - not just about some dwarf with a rubber band - who would care about that? Now it's a story about a dwarf with a rubber band and already, it connects with your life. Because the thing about the dwarf incident is this - you would never have made such an embarrasing mistake in the dark, would you? Almost certainly not. Probably not. Although perhaps you might. And it might have had unwound for you the same disastrous way, that really wouldn't bear thinking about. And anything that doesn't bear thinking about, pretty much gets itself thought about. Boy, you're stuck in a web of story now.

Sometimes I wonder why I post illustrations here of the events in my novel. Why I write my blog at all. And then I think, oh yeah - it's storytelling, isn't it? It begins here, and carries on to the last page. And if it really, really works - it keeps going...

Cake - an exhibition of FriggArt, 19th-26th May

An artist's rendition of the Cake in the chapter titled, "Cake". The work, in pen on paper, is a commentary on the insufficient description of cakes throughout the novel, and explores the nature of visual writing in a literary form increasingly influenced by the conventions and symbols of writing for the screen.

A celebration of Halloween. I'm struggling to recall what part of the novel could possibly have inspired this. Is it possible the readers had other things on their minds than my story?

Who ate Lisa's Cake? Microsoft Excel's Cake Chart feature provides the answer.

It's just, like, a word cloud.

To this day I do not know what this comment was meant to say. The suspense...

This, I have decided, would be the official bookmark for Darlington Frigg. I have not yet made a decision on action figures or cartoon series spin-offs, and strangely, no major toy manufacturer or TV company has approached me either. It's a cruel world.

Thoughts that go through my head while editing

Kate and The Other One Get Married, Souvenir Edition (with apologies to Tristram Shandy)

Covers I Have Gazed At

For this Thursday's entry, I thought I'd return to the superficial. In case anyone thought the real me had been kidnapped these last two weeks and replaced by a thoughtful imposter...

Now it's true that you can't judge a book by its cover. Put another way, a nice cover is a thing apart, and I'd wager that many of those who'd have dismissed covers as facile and trivial a few years ago would now leap to their defence now that the physical beauty of a real book is one of its last defences against the electronic form. Some books have great covers and equally great insides; I think this is a happy coincidence, when it happens. I've just done a survey of my favourite covers from bookshelves - results shown below:

Fig. 1 Cool cover, good writing.

Fig. 2 Unknown Pleasures-ish cover, interesting story

 Fig. 3 Pink cover, but very good novel (wooo!)

Fig. 4 Fabulous cover that actually rather put the novel in the shade, when it came to it

Fig. 5 Strangely soothing cover, interesting and spiky set of novels

Fig. 6 Subtly disturbing cover, unsubtle but admittedly well-written novel

Fig. 7 Truly beautiful cover, and slightly depressing novel that probably ended a friendship of mine due to a daft misunderstanding that arose when I explained the plot...

Huck Finn

Let's be honest. Little makes the heart sink faster than the words 'Great American Novel'.

Notwithstanding this, I set upon reading Huckleberry Finn recently. My primary motivation was that I liked the sound of the title, and have always had a strong attraction to stories named after protagonists - I'll always remember a good strong, metrical Huckleberry Finn over the The [Insert Noun] Of [Insert Noun] formula, or anything that relies on the words 'Tiger', 'Heart', 'Love', 'Book', 'History' or 'Piano'. Does this make me shallow?

I'd heard dim rumours of its controversy in book groups, around the use of the 'N' word and the possibility of censorship. Laziness prevents me googling to put flesh on these rumours, but suffice to say that the use of offensive language is if anything the least potentially offensive thing about the novel. Publishers dream of novels that have 'Book Club Potential' - that will divide opinion and provoke debate, and if ever there were a novel that could do that, this must be the one.

Like many others, my own idea of discussions of American race issues was initially informed by Harper Lee at school. While To Kill A Mockingbird is undoubtedly a fine novel, its black and white treatment of black and white seems to reflect something like a patrician attitude on behalf of white people. I think can think of enough reasons why I might have written the story the same way - not least that it is dramatically stronger for a persecuted minority to be defended by another party whose selfish interest lies elsewhere, than for each character to simply be fighting for their own interests. Yet one can't be human without feeling uncomfortable about the rather cardboard nature of black representation in that novel.

This is at least as true of Huckleberry Finn. There's no doubt that the escaped slave Jim is described in terms that have him childlike in his ignorance and innocence, and it's not merely the attitude of the narrator colouring our perception of him. But this is a different kind of novel - one both bolder, and more subtle. There is not a white character to be found who we could acquit of racism; not one who would consider an accusation of 'abolitionist' to be anything other than the vilest slur on their character. Even Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, though risking all to protect Jim, are products of their environment, and Twain does not flinch from showing us Huck Finn's upside-down moral struggle of what he believes is right (ownership of slaves as property) against what he feels is right, but to him is intellectually immoral (helping Jim to evade capture). Under Tom Sawyer's direction, there is the darkest satire of good intentions; the two boys conspire to free Jim in the most inefficient, 'stylish' way possible, such that Jim is reduced to the status of a plaything in a children's adventure. There is apparently no 'learning' to be had; the boys appear not to achieve any kind of conscious moral epiphany. The decent, brave, loyal Huck Finn, even though he has effectively endured slavery himself under his vicious captor and father, never makes the intellectual connection between his experience and escape and Jim's.

The genius of Mark Twain is in telling a tale in which his own view is entirely invisible, and the lessons, such as they are, are revealed only through events and irony. In the end, apart from a rollicking, absorbing adventure story, this is a tale in which the heart is shown a surer guide to morality than the intellect. Twain describes it better; it is "a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat".

It's not a Great American Novel, thank heavens. It's a great novel, full stop. And that, without the capital letters to lessen it, and without a nation, is something altogether greater.

Walden In The City

Today, I thought I'd justify the tagline for once. So, for the same reason we don't sit atop Greek ruins to read the classics, or stand in queues in a nest of bags to read chick lit, I've been reading Walden in the inner city. After all, without the contrast, where would be the journey?

Sometimes, Thoreau is like a poet; sometimes a naturalist, or a philosopher, or a libertarian; and sometimes he is Holden Caulfield. His early declaration that 'the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation', though beautifully expressed, seems to fall into that final category. Isn't it just the voice of a young man justifying his superiority over 'phonys'? In a previous post, I even attempted to find a word to describe this shade of purple, and all I can suggest is that this is an example of prose being well-observedose instead of well-observed. There must be something impregnated in the cover of the book that does this to the book-end pages. The end-piece of this work, the lectures of a man in a hut on the evils of big government, merely serves to illustrate the spraining effect of isolation on sanity. It is not so much observed as declared.

But... the main body of the book is a calmer and mercifully less considered affair, and the insecurity of the slighlty older man introducing his experiences gives way quite unconsciously to the finer observation of a naturalist in the moment. When he talks of men always coming home from the nearest field, with their shadows having travelled further than their steps, there is humanity of a kind you might struggle to find in Oscar Wilde's otherwise similarly broad-brush epigrams. For the most part, it's a pleasure to read. Thinking as an ecologist by training, I wonder quite how Walden Pond was created and survived in woodland without eutrophication destroying its clarity. Equally, I wonder how this kind of writing survives in modern forms. I have no doubt that it does, in little pockets that have not yet been trammelled by the wheels of mass publishing. Thoreau does like that word, 'mass'.

I wonder whether Walden, which seems in its quieter moods to be more relevant than ever, could quite be published now. In my opinion it isn't for the most part an intellectual work, least of all successfully so; but largely it talks to the human being and not their economic fingerprint. Other times it is political, partial, frequently wildly unconvincing, and in all honesty, it probably doesn't have a lot to say to the average modern reader (if, as we are told, she is an aspirational woman juggling concerns of career and family). It does not address the concerns of key publishing demographics very well at all, and perhaps is all the more worthwhile for it.

Though I like the thought of his editor asking whether there might be more shopping in it.

This Writing Life

I saw a novelist and self-proclaimed 'New Puritan' do a reading the other day. Apparently he even has a film being made of one of his books. When he finished and was offering to sign his books, I went straight to the gents (and yes, I did wash my hands), came out again, gave my regards to the host and walked off to the tube station. To my surprise, New Puritan was already there on the platform, cutting a forlorn figure with his carrier bag full of unsold books. What a life.

The Birds And The Bees

I've decided - Thursday is Blog Day. As we've been operating some time now with no ill impact on the environment, I may as well introduce an element of consistency. I'm pitching these Thursday updates for the key it's-Friday-I'm-bored-with-work-let's-surf, everybody-else-has-gone-down-the-pub-anyway demographic.

For those with iPhones, here's a bagatelle for 59p: The Birds And The Bees, as performed at the Toynbee Studios last month by White Rabbit. The story's available from Ether Books, via their free downloadable reader app.

A desperate couple seek medical advice on how to conceive. Crunchy peanut butter just isn't working, and it's all Huw Edward's fault.

I would be most interested in any reader's experience of this, as this kind of publishing is a step into the unknown for all of us. Hell, it's possible you might even enjoy it.

Him next door

Sir Paul shares space with E3 White Male, 5'11"

Does this mean my story is on sale? Does anyone have an iPhone?

Writer's self-awareness exercise

So what did I write?
He prompts me. 'What about you then? I am a navigator of...'
Shan't. Not going there.
'I am a navigator of...?'
I know one or two defensive moves in the ancient art of No Can Do. Move on please.

It's all just constant cake these days

... oh, and sex.

I knew that would get your attention. Or to be accurate, I hoped that would get someone's attention. Then again, maybe I've failed in even that.

I'd like you to come along this Friday to Are You Sitting Comfortably at the Toynbee Studios on Commercial Street, E1 6AB. Doors open 7:30 for 8:00. You can have free chips and cake, and unless you've sampled them aurally (yes, the spelling is important here) you'll be able to hear my take on the birds and the bees - as interpreted by people who presumably know what they're doing. I thought about calling it Conception - maybe I'll save that for when Hollywood calls?

Of course there is always the worry that it will turn out to be some kind of Roman orgy. History does not have much positive to say of the quality of their baking.

Donald Rumsfeld

As I Lay Dying (Of Boredom)

"I don't know what I am. I don't know if I am or not. Jewel knows he is, because does not know that he does not know whether he is or not. He cannot empty himself for sleep because he is not what he is and he is what he is not... and since sleep is is-not and rain and wind are was, it is not... Yet the wagon is, because when the wagon is was, Addie Bundren will not be."

Can I just have a T please?

Before:

Makeover:

Disappointingly, my newly-designed Lit Crit Medium font looks if anything slightly more elegant than the original handwriting from which it was derived. I was hoping to recapture some of the original's drawn-left-handed-in-blood quality. Admittedly I'm lacking a number of capital letters too. I'm also trying to think of a way to provoke the author into scrawling numbers. At present, I'm limited to Roman numerals. Mostly in lower case, too.

I suppose completing a font is very much like collecting stickers for the old Panini sticker albums. Except that you can't swap letters with your mates to complete the set. Or send off for the last fifty. Hmmm.

Writers' Rooms

Word clouds

My novel, Darlington Frigg, as a word cloud. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, references which come up the most frequently are represented largest. Quite simple, really. On the whole, I'm fairly pleased with this result. I just need to refine my use of "just"...

Wordle

Things to do when you should be commenting on writing, #1

A spin off from the "Things to do when you should be writing" series... Many thanks to all the artists / critics involved.

The St Petersburg Times

What is it?" she asked once more, scanning Raskolnikov intently, and weighing the pledge in her hand.

"A thing... cigarette case.... Silver.... Look at it."
"It does not seem somehow like silver.... How he has wrapped it up!"

Trying to untie the string and turning to the window, to the light (all her windows were shut, in spite of the stifling heat), she left him altogether for some seconds and stood with her back to him. He unbuttoned his coat and freed the axe from the noose, but did not yet take it out altogether, simply holding it in his right hand under the coat. His hands were fearfully weak, he felt them every moment growing more numb and more wooden. He was afraid he would let the axe slip and fall.... A sudden giddiness came over him.

"But what has he tied it up like this for?" the old woman cried with vexation and moved towards him.

He had not a minute more to lose. He

 

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