Author: ivan

I am supposed to be writing some punchy and pithy prose for my employer (on my own time, for reasons I can’t remember but quite possibly because I’m avoiding writing the novel. Again.). I have observed all the textbook preparations – drunk far too much the night before so that I don’t flit about from thought to thought but instead plod mournfully from cliche to cliche. I have drunk tea. I have been to the shop. I have transcribed my notes. I have made a second set of notes from the tape. I have moved those notes between editing applications. I have put some meta themes on index cards.

And now, I’m looking at the pigeons walking around the furniture in a neighbour’s garden and wondering what the squirrel is doing in their big flower pot.

Funny how fascinating a big fat bird doing nothing much in particular can be. I feel like opening the window and shouting ‘wassup bro’ at it, in case it too is avoiding doing some really important crapping on things, and um, preening.

Watching the pigeons. I had a dream last night about some form of school trip or other bus outing where I saw both Elvis Costello and Someone Not Unlike Elvis Costello and wondering what the chances of that happening where.

About as likely as the pigeon (which is now cooing above my head, the bastard) beaking out some copy for me. Ok now – after me ‘children are the future…’

So. Was a word that I rarely used when I was younger. I would write longer sentences. I guess I’m getting old and simply can’t be bothered with the polysyllabic polyfilla. I would break rhythym with an exasperated ‘Anyway…’ which when the intertron started changed to ‘Anyhoo’. Americans. Bad influence.

But now I use ‘so’ as my stock ‘changeup’ word. I am liking staccato phrasing more and more. I guess it’s a move from sixth-form poetry to some form of Hegleyism. Or maybe it’s a secret yearning to write Catherine Cookson aga-sagas and have oodles of middle-aged women nudging each other in the Post Office. And no, that’s not a euphemism. I’ve never read any Hegley. Or Ism. Nor Cookson for that matter. Although I did once read the serial number of an aga. Or whatever those pretend-agas are. Raeburns. That’s it. Funny the total kibble you can dredge up from your memory if you really want to.

But I digress. My New Year’s Writing Resolution (surely a C86 ‘b’ side) isn’t going so well. I have spent some time looking at words that I have allegedly written. And indeed, I have even moved my pen and pencil in such a manner that would suggest cuneiformic intention, or at least Le Doodle (incidentally, is there a 2.0 company called Doodl yet? If not, why not?). However, little has happened in anger. Though some re-plotting has been done in sorrow. Back story has been buried so deep as to be in the garden of another novel entirely. C’est le turf, or vie or summat.

Anyhoo. I have finally installed Scrivener and I even read the tutorial that is how seriously I am taking my displacement tactics this time round. Still, I have to write close to 5000 words for work next week, so I should be so heartily sick of documentary that I will be positively flowing in the polychromatic visions of Tom and Flame Haired Parker.

No-one is out there, I know, but if you ever stumble across this, do say ‘hi’. And sorry if you’re a Raeburn owner and are now offended. Or love Cookson. Or God Forbid. You are a Hegley-ite. Let me just say, for now. A pre-emptive “HI” back.

Christmas distractions over with, I’m working to my first formal deadline for writing for a long while. The yearly ritual of looking through Writer’s and Artists Yearbook is over, and the same three names are on the list once again. Will one of them be a lucky name this year?

It’s not much of an update. But, you know, I need to write more ‘proper’ stuff and less nonsense. I’m hoping to keep a better track of the process of writing, but equally I may simply do that in a paper diary. Call me old-fashioned (or Mildred if you’re that way inclined), but after working for 13 years in online ‘stuff’ I’m a bit sick of screens and hankering after physical objects – paper, pencil and end results.

… that in times of stress, only the Wedding Present truly delivers that comforting ovaltine of a distorted guitar fix.

I never cease to amuse myself with my little discoveries. Like, there really can be too many extroverts in a room, to make the intros go bang. My Myers-Briggs score makes more and more sense, day by day.

He’s just a boy. Totally dressed in corduroy. Funny how it makes the world better.

Currently reading Myth of the Mousetrap, by Anne Miller, which despite obvious potential for thrillerdom is acksherly a book about creativity and getting your ideas adopted. I was sent a review copy at work and have found myself drawn in, despite the fact that it’s (a) work and (b) self-help. Although not self-work nor indeed semantic soup for the soul. Anyhoo, it’s tres enjoyable and a good kick up the cojones.

I have singularly failed to engage with NaNoWriMo. At least I registered. That’s got to count for something, right? I mean. At the end of the day whenever I do finish the novel and approach PFJ for representation they’re going to say ‘hey, this dude totally signed up for NaNoWriMo in 2007’ and they’re not going to say ‘poor choice of soup, feller, always go for a legume and pork combination’.

But anyhoo, the point of writing, ok blogging, is to remind myself that I can. And to remind myself that if I can write 40,000 words of this drivel (ok, I exaggerate, there was a post in February 2005 which was just ‘le bombe’) then I should be able to write 100k of stuff that I live, eat, drink and breathe. I call it Porterfiction. Because you can wear it. And drink it. And quite possibly ask it to carry your luggage like a mahout.

I was disturbed the other day to receive a whole sequence of spam messages that had titles not unlike my blog. I mean, one thing is reading Gibson/Noon. Another is being part of the pattern’o’t’ting.

Running another marathon on Sunday. I guess it makes up for not writing. If there was an 16 week writing schedule, perhaps I would stick to that instead. But the competition is so different. And you don’t get a medal. Or chip timing.

Beans.

So. I am writing a lot of things that start with ‘so’ nowadays. Which amuses me, in a kind of children’s hour style.

I finally dug out a copy of Tom, 19 days into November. And dutifully did what I do every single time I pick up the novel. I started editing the beginning. Again. Again. Again. It’s like sodding tellytubby land in my brain sometimes. Just move on. Move on. The beginning will sort itself out. It will. Accept it.

Sigh. I don’t like it at the moment. I’m still stuck between BBC2 comedy drama and um, I don’t know, something with some really weak Irish characters in it, like Bewitched.

Annoyed. But at least I can say I spent two hours writing in November. Ok. At least I can say I spent two hours repositioning buttons on toolbars in NeoOffice in November. And making tea. And polishing glasses. Similarly unused, except for these two hours in November.

Frustrating.

Baron Beelzebub was born on the fourth day of Ni-Gellah. The only festival on Urth where men were compelled to dribble and the females of the female persuasion where forced to point out that ‘she’s got a big arse, actually’ until they too started dribbling. And then everyone was dribbling. And lo, all the scrabble boards ran out of ‘B’s and the world was declared a disaster zone.

For anyone playing scrabble. Which at this time was all the Carpathians, Oxiz, Zeus and the Uqps, or at least this is true according to Miss Alethea Fillbottle, 93, winner of the last known game of scrabble before the universe exploded. Or she ran out of Tawny port. She’s not sure.

And these things can appear to be awfully similar sometimes.

Iain Banks is fepping brilliant by the way. Go read the Steep approach to Garbadale instead of this nonsense. Do it. Or I’ll play scrabble with you.

If they ever did made mouthfuls of words I guess I would have to be delivering them now. As it is, all I can process is the discordant dance of my four-finger typing on my keyboard, the gentle whirring of my Intel processor in the background (Mac temperature fans will be pleased that it is operating within normal parameters).

So…. NaNoWriMo. (Geronimo…)

As it stands, my life partner, while accusing bloggery of self-indulgence of the highest order (as it is), is trying to encourage me to Part. Ice. I. Pate. She wants me to be bald and cold. Witch. Which. I try. I really do. But. But. But.

Tumtitum. There is no critic bigger than the inner critic. Unless you’re successful. And then it’s Tammy Shalamar, editor of such illustrious tomes as ‘You always were fucked, you just didn’t know it’ and ‘Don’t eat cheese when you’re going to see the Pope’.

Shit happens. Then you die. And if you’re lucky. You’ve read Douglas Adams. The. End.

Well. I never. I thought that kind of behaviour had gone out with the ark. I mean? When was the last time you invited two giraffes to dinner? Dreadful scenes. Dreadful. Although strangely erotic. Amazing tongues, giraffes. They can lick their own ears. Apparently.

Funny how no animal can lick it’s own arse. Ah yes. The cat. Le humble chat. And yet, so much of a hold does it have over hooman kind that it can survive licking it’s OWN arse. I mean, we’ve spent tens of thousands of years perfecting the mechanisms by which we get other hoomans to lick our arse, or perhaps suffer the indignity of licking someone else’s. And yet. The cat. The humble mog. Has bewitched us into both caring for what is infinitely unsentimental. And also it licks its own arse. The more I think about this, the more disturbed I become.

So I won’t. I was having another thought then. But I was distracted. Possibly by a cat moth. Or maybe a Moth Cat.

I’ve been re-reading my favourite book. My reference book. The book by which I have always gauged that I can, in fact, as opposed to cat-lore, write. And I’ve come to the rather disturbing conclusion that it is a leetel beet juvenile.

Old farts and chats. Go out in the midday sun. And lick their own arse. Mainly because they can’t reach their ears…..

That’s what I should be made. And the chain of office should be made from refreshers. Or possibly the front claws of Siberian Church Mice, whichever is easier. And let’s face it, to my electorate’s taste. For after all, is it not the burden of those called to office but to serve?

If I could serve anything, it would probably be tea at the Ritz. Or more specifically, tea from the Ritz, but somewhere else. Ritzy’s in Tombland, Norwich, for one. Although I believe that shut down in 1994. Other things that shut down in ’94 include the Orinoco power station in North Orinoco, Orinocowa, and my belief in the UK’s political system. Although to be fair, the three things are not related.

My heart is currently gladdened by this story, although when I first read it, they hadn’t solved the mystery of who the guy was. Top man. There should be more anarchist sculptors in my experience. Although none of them should be allowed to put gargoyles on top of Orinoco power station, North Orinoco. Or carve political motifs on top of the lions that guarded the entrance to Ritzy’s. Or at least I think they did. Never went in the place myself. Too socio-political.

Anyhoo. Vote for me. Strike a blow for the corrugated man. I pledge to root out corruption and make it into tea bags, turn injustice into jam and allow mint humbugs the vote.

You know it makes sense. Emperor Big Poobah Chief Vizier Lizard. You heard it here first!