Month: July 2009

I think I need a bee or an m.  A writing buddy.  Or a mentor.  Or some form of mechanical prodding.  In fact, make that eletrical prodding.  Pavlovian writing.  That might do the trick.  Bzzt.  Hundred words.  Bzzt.  Hundred words.  Of course the quality aspect might suffer.  Particularly as more and more neurons in the brain are fried.   Bzzt.  Hundred dodos.  Bzzt.  De do doe don’t dey do? Bzzt. What’s a hundred?  Etc.  So how to increase my output?  How do I get more word-goods to market?  Who’ll be my role model, now that my role model, has gone, gone, ducked back down the alley and declined any further mention of latte, cake or wii.

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It’s been an interesting week.  A week of clashes.  Between the old me, the new me and the whatever me.  On Monday, I did whatever the business equivalent of ‘not turning up at a friend’s gig because you don’t want to bump into old bandmates’ is, which was a little sad – in both senses.  But I guess I skipped the ‘getting over yourself’ classes at school.  Probably had my nose in a book.  A book about people who don’t get over themselves.  Or short stories about shitlists and wishlists and global mofo domination.  But not shitwishing or lists of lists.  You only buy those books as stocking fillers.  Anyhoo, I digress. Quelle surprise. (more…)

I went to see, or rather hear, Courttia (Arvon tutor, writer and the only person I know so far who has been able to comment with any authority as to the plausibility or otherwise of getting away with murder – at least in Shepherd’s Bush, anyway – and the answer is more likely than the BBC would like us to believe. And let me clarify that Mr Newland was in no way involved. He just hears things, you know?  And no, not ‘hears things’ in that way, at least as far as I know) read at a Tell Tales gig last week as part of the London Literature Festival at the Southbank. (more…)

I appreciate that I don’t often write about technique or the process of writing here, instead boring my few readers to tears with endless hand-wringing and noise about all the things that stop me writing.  Well, it’s time to give something back I guess.  I’ve written four of my ‘shoes’ short stories in the past ten days, which means the collection is coming together.  I think I’m up to eight now, in various drafts.  I’m beginning to get a sense of my own style, how I workm what I enjoy, and what I don’t. (more…)