Words happen when you least expect them but sometimes on the page

A writer writes, always.

Except for the dead ones.

Two questions have often occurred to me: one, hey, Nick, if you want to be a writer so badly, how come you don’t actually write very much and two, if you want to be a writer so badly how come you don’t seem to enjoy writing that much?

Well, smart-arse (he said to himself), the answer the first question is in the second question. Writing and not enjoying it does not appear to be that uncommon. Witness the parade of mopey bastards that the Guardian interviewed (Writing for a living: joy or a chore). With the exception of Will Self or thereabouts, they don’t seem to particularly like the act which has underpinned their (successful) lives.

For example: ‘Writing novels is no fun; nor is, generally speaking, reading novels. Reading people writing about novels is not always fun, either.’ – Amit ‘I Am A Human Sunbeam’ Chaudhuri. Or: ‘When I was young, I thought that the fun part of writing would be the "creative" bit, making stuff up and inventing things. The older I've got, the less fun this has become. I dread it.’ – Geoff ‘Sponge of Dripping Joy’ Dyer.

Of course, if you’re AL Kennedy – which I am not – I don’t suppose you’ve ever encountered joy anyway:




This is AL Kennedy on acid.

But the second question remains. Why the apparent lack of enjoyment? I guess it's partly fear of failure. Writing is important to me. I'm afraid I'll do a bad job. Ergo I don't enjoy it. If I were surrounded by an infinite number of validating monkeys then it might be easier. (Do you know any?).

If you can write unconnected from expecations of succcess or failure, actual enjoyment may be possible.

I've had a little more success in writing of late by forcing myself to write 500 words a day. I've stuck to it for about a month now, meaning my novel is now up to 62 000 words. The 500 words zip by if I have a clear idea of what to write. They drag by if I have to make up the plot as I go along. The last couple of nights I've been conscious of hauling the plot kicking and screaming in a direction it probably doesn't want or need to go in. The two short scenes I've written probably aren't that necessary for the plot -- and yet the very act of having written them is useful, I think. They may or may not make it into the final novel but doubtless something from them will be salvaged and while I'm writing, I'm er writing always.

I have this difficulty: I know that writing when the way is clear is much easier than when it is not -- but if I stop to plan a scheme I frequently grind to a halt. I tend to develop byzantine plots with uncomfortably large holes in them. Simply writing is often the best (or only, albeit painful) way to fill in these holes. If I sit around and order my brain to produce exciting plot-filla (tm), it tends not to oblige.

Soooo. The moral of this story is... The moral of this story. Is...

Arrgh. A hole. Will fill it in later. Or you, dear reader, can write your own moral.

In the lift

The lift up from the basement was crowded this morning. It's not that I don't like people, it's just that they're loud, coarse creatures with poor hygiene and a propensity for starting religious wars and sitting in front of me at the cinema.

To the fat guy who got off after just two floors at the offices of the medical research council: Taking the frickin' stairs is good for you. Read a medical textbook sometime.

To the IT guy who said to the other IT guy 'Blah blah blah windows message box of the web app blah blah blah': what?

To the naked opthamaologist in the clown-make-up chewing on cajun alpaca jerky: where were you?

It's true that I am no match for the risen living Lord Jesus Christ and and His army

In my mailbox the other day, I found a small piece of paper, about 5cm by 5cm which had been photocopied and cut (all-too-obviously) with scissors.

I reproduce the text on it below, as faithful as possible to the typography and spelling errors:

YOU COME AGAINST AUSTRALIAN FAMILIES (ESPECIALLY THOSE IN FOSTER CARE AND ‘WARDS OF THE STATE”) WITH YOUR WORDS, WORKS, WAYS, WICKEDNESS,LAWS,EVIL PRIDE,DECEIT,POWERS AND ALL YOUR UNITED VOICES, BUT WE COME AGAINST YOU IN THE NAME OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST AND THE POWER AND AUTHORITY OF HIS HOLY WRITTEN WORD WHICH YOU ARE DEFIEING [sic].WE DECLARE AND PRONOUNCE YOUR REIGN OF TERROR OVER ALL AUSTRALIAN FAMILIES (THE YOUNG IN CAPTIVITY ESPECIALY [sic])HAS FINISHED.YOU ARE NO MATCH FOR THE RISEN,LIVING, LORD JESUS CHRIST AND HIS ARMY SO THIS DAY HE IS HANDING YOU OVER TO US AS THE LORD WORKS WITHOUT REGARD TO ANY HUMAN MEAN.HE IS PREVAILING AS ALL ELSE IS FAILING.

I'm guessing that this little fibrous ray of light was mass-produced and then dropped in the letter-boxes of many homes in the Greater Republic of Ainslie.

Or was it!? Perhaps I was targetted specifically because the author (not to mention the Author or even the AUTHOR) knows that I despise and regularly 'come against' Australian families.

Or they may have confused me with the Government. Happens a lot -- we're both large amorphous entities that crush the hopes and dreams of countless people while simultaneously waging war on two continents.

Putting on the best darn school play ever

My friend David used to say as a joke: 'we're going to put on the best darn school play ever!' It was an ironic expression of the extreme saccharine positivity of a certain species of American movie. After all the (most likely farcical) challenges and knock-downs they'd faced, the characters were going to respond in the only way they knew how, by embodying the best traditions of American small-town life, come together as a community, rehearse their plump mono-saturated fat butts off (or if not 'off' exactly then at least 'around') and put on the best darn school play ever!

I was reminded recently of the 1983 film Testament (featuring Kevin Costner naturally) which is about a small American town after a nuclear war.

The things is: at the time the bombs fall, there is actually a school play in rehearsal. As civilisation unravels, the residents decide to keep going with it and actually try to put on the best darn school play ever to keep the community going and hopeful.

In reality, of course, they'd be roaring across desert wastelands in a souped-up Falcon coupe running down petrol-thieving mohawk-sporting neo-primitives. But maybe that's just me.

Rejected openings to a novel-in-progress #1

"Several moments passed after Gavin farted before he realised that the ipod he was listening to may have inhibited his capacity to determine whether his silent release had indeed been as discreet as he had planned it to be. He quickly looked from side to side to see if his interlocutors at the International Nuclear Weapons Disarmament and Counter-Proliferation Conference had noticed."

Apologies for opening this exciting series with a piece of scatology. But you know, whatever, as the kids say.

The following I'm story?

I walked into work this morning fulfilling the promise I made to myself and to the human race that I would start listening to GREAT WORKS OF LITERATURE on audio book on my Ipod rather than random young-person music.

I'm starting with Nabokov's Lolita which is arranged into five minutes chunks of creepy goodness.

The first part was a longish and dullish framing device by the supposed editor of Humbert Humbert's manuscript. Then it leapt to Jeremy Irons as Humbert Humbert describing him and Lolita shifting from squalid hotel to foetid motel in search of a nameless fugitive and an illegal good-time before changing gears again to talk about HH receving the gift of a box to hold his chess pieces.

It was fascinating stuff but I did wonder why the story lurched about so much. I mean, I like taking a chain-saw to traditional narrative structure as much as the next guy but I was surprised at how it slid imperceptibly from one thing to another without any particular logic that I could discern.

That's when I noticed my ipod was on "shuffle album".

On the way home I'm going to slavishly adhere to convention and listen to it in the "correct" "order". Sometimes, the dominant paradigm is dominant for a reason.

I am the last person left on earth with integrity and even I regard myself as fundamentally compromised

It's not like I'm stalking Hazel Blackberry's blog. Or if it is, it's nothing that would stand up in court.

But... I read this post:

http://liedown.blogspot.com/2009/02/i-cant-play-your-interviews-cant-hear.html

which features this exchange:

"Here's some music you probably won't like," I told New Girl.

"Who's this singer?"

"Bob Mould. Formerly of Husker Du."

"Formerly of the Planet Zark! When you talk about music I can't understand a word you're saying."

She listens to a lot of Kanye.

Before I got to the end of that, I had a thought (and yes it must have been a very quick thought): "formerly of the Planet Zark"? The Planet Zark? Is that some ultra-cool pre-Husker Du (I don't know how to do the umlauts, I'm sorry) vehicle for Bob Mould?

Husker Du? Bob Mould totally sold out when he joined those hacks after Planet Zark impoded during their first gig on a Tuesday night at an abandoned High School in western Kentucky. You haven't lived unless you've read the unpublished review of the unpublished cassingle (of which all copies were destroyed when the only copy ever made was accidentally left too close to a four-slice toaster.)

But no. My quick thought was quickly silenced by the brutality of the next lines. The truth is hard and cold. Not unlike an empty thermos flask.