There was that time – you won’t remember – when this man knocked on the downstairs windows of the house. The curtains were drawn and I was in my underpants. I opened the curtains and the man was crying. He asked for my mum or dad. I got on with crying too. He asked for help; came in sodden and wilted over the steam of a brew. Turned out he’d hitchhiked with the wrong kind of man, had his legs touched while the door was locked. And then he’d barrelled straight over our hedge.
PS3
I have a fear of doing that’s made worse by not doing, and solved only by doing some more. And it happens with writing more than anything else I can think of.
Bear with.
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Story
Metazen published a weeny story I wrote. It’s called The Omelette, and it isn’t about mashed eggs.
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Odds
Here are the odds.
It starts with thousands of us. Not ten, or a hundred, nor a creative writing class’s worth. It’s more like a legion, or several, with millions of words between us. It’s not just you at it, either. It’s me, and it’s him down the road, her in the next town — the vicar in his vicarage. It’s your grandparents’ awing memoirs. It’s stuff by vampire fans, fans of boobies, fans of football games of the seventies. Actually, it is all of us, us writers and poets and journalists. Us playwrights and students and columnists.
So they’re long odds, really.
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Dear Dan Brown
I’m sorry.
In the last six years, I called you a lot of naughty things. A bastard and a hack; some kind of pestilence and another sort of joke. I said you were the worst writer I’d read, oh, the worst by far. Happily, I threatened to set your point-of-sale stands on fire. And I told my friends and my family they were chumps for bothering with your latest. And when I moved into my flat, I put a copy of Angels and Demons on my bookshelves, for a laugh, so I could point and go, if that bastard’s there, then so can I be. Sometime.
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Like Bees to Honey | Chapter 17
Well, I’m chuffed to be hosting Chapter 17 of Caroline Smailes’ brand new novel, Like Bees to Honey. Chuffed because Caroline’s a full-blown champion; chuffed because it’s ace to be part of a grand idea.
So: if you’ve come here from the last chapter, a warm hello to you, and if you haven’t, I’ll do my level best to explain:
Caroline’s new book spans 32 chapters. Each of these chapters is now spread across 32 blogs. Below, I’m linking to the next one along, but if you’d like to read the whole thing before it’s released by the Friday Project next week, you can bimble over to Chapter Zero which is now live at the Smailes mothership.
If you haven’t read Caroline’s stuff before, try and bag a look. Her writing is made of brilliant. Here’s why:
Open publication – Free publishing
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Finished? The lovely Cally is looking after Chapter 18 over at Writing about Writing.
And you can grab your own copy of Bees here.
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You’re a writer and nobody really cares*
There was no way to prove — actually prove, really prove — that that man was me. The story was familiar — I knew I had written it — but that name on the paper still was not me. It was a symbol, a name. It was alien. And then I realised that even if I did become successful at writing, it would never mean a thing to me, because I couldn’t identify myself with that name. It would be soot and ashes. So I didn’t write any more. I was never sure, anyway, that the stories I had in my desk a few days later were mine, though I remembered typing them. There was always that gap of proof. That gap between doing and having done.
– Ray Bradbury: “No Particular Night or Morning” (from The Illustrated Man)
Look: that’s Bradbury nailing what writing’s really about. The doubt you feel; the doubts you share. It’s Bradbury on the middle-point of a novel you started, a short story you sacked off, a poem you thought was going somewhere. For me, it’s that exact reason you stop writing a work in progress. The loathing and the loss of confidence.
But your parents don’t really care that you’re writing. Pay your bills and manufacture some handsome grandchildren — that’s what they care about.
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Manchester 10K
I’m doing the Bupa Great Manchester Run to raise a bit of cash for the National Literacy Trust this Sunday.
I hated running. Really. I bobble at the best of times, don’t I; a bunch of pale meat with noodles for limbs. That’s why when I’m really motoring – which is more of a wonky canter, and even then basically a limp – I look like a fast pile of sticks, with some ginger wig in there.
So I hated running. It’s walking, which is the most boring pursuit in the world, but with a greater risk of death.
Plug
I’ve something in a real-life book from Metazen’s sister publisher Housefire. It’s a themed anthology called Nouns of Assemblage which collects sixty-three tiny stories written around collective nouns. I went with ‘army of caterpillars’. Who knows what my mother will make of mine but it’s definitely a story about a man eating the Eiffel Tower.
A lot of my characters eat things they shouldn’t.
So far it’s only available from Amazon.com but then those big fat planes make the Atlantic seem so small.
I’m in a real-life book from Metazen’s sister publisher Housefire. It’s a themed anthology called Nouns of Assemblage which collects sixty-three tiny stories written around collective nouns. I went with ‘army of caterpillars’. Who knows what my mother will make of mine but it’s definitely a story about a man eating the Eiffel Tower. A lot of my characters eat things they shouldn’t.
So far it’s only available from Amazon.com but then those big fat planes make the Atlantic seem so small.