Well, it is the Year of Living Recklessly. But now there's probably no going back.
What happened was this: I told my landlady that I'm going to have to move out. Why am I going to have to move out? Because I'm off to live in a garret and be a writer.
Sunday, 3 February 2013
Friday, 18 January 2013
Allow Me To Play You The Song of My People
Jasper was excited for all of thirty seconds, and then was very
much more, "Yeah, no. Why is this fun? We're done here."
The sirens are going nuts here. I hope it's just the snow...
Wednesday, 16 January 2013
The Art of Procrastination
It's bad when I'm seriously considering housework over writing.
This is what editing does to me.
Don't get me wrong, I can do it. I'm disciplined enough these days that I can come home after a full day's paying-work, open the laptop, and, ignoring all objections, sit and bloody well hash out a few thousand words. And then I can take a day or so away from them, come back, read them over, and fix the bits that don't work. I can do this even when my inner 2-year-old is moaning and whining and stomping her feet because she doesn't wanna. But for some reason, editing to someone else's notes is just... terrifying.
Why this should be, I'm not entirely clear. The two readers I'm working with at the moment are fantastic: generous, intelligent, knowledgeable, and very clear, and they've given up hours of their life to do me what amounts to the biggest favour I've ever asked. They've actually reinforced my self-belief in a lot of ways, because they've been kind enough to be very positive about the book. Maybe it's because, in order to write, one has to believe that one's work is, essentially, transmitting itself fully-formed to its readership and suggestions for improvement knock that one right out of the water. It's not that I think my novel is perfect - far from it; I can't read over a sentence of the damn thing without wanting to pull it to pieces - it's more that the natural instinct of a writer is to secretly suspect that everything they create is crap, and a beta-read that's doing its job is going to gently encourage that part of the writerly psyche to throw a party.
Or maybe it's just me. I don't know, I'm blatantly procrastinating here so that I don't have to do my edits. Or my laundry.
This is what editing does to me.
Don't get me wrong, I can do it. I'm disciplined enough these days that I can come home after a full day's paying-work, open the laptop, and, ignoring all objections, sit and bloody well hash out a few thousand words. And then I can take a day or so away from them, come back, read them over, and fix the bits that don't work. I can do this even when my inner 2-year-old is moaning and whining and stomping her feet because she doesn't wanna. But for some reason, editing to someone else's notes is just... terrifying.
Why this should be, I'm not entirely clear. The two readers I'm working with at the moment are fantastic: generous, intelligent, knowledgeable, and very clear, and they've given up hours of their life to do me what amounts to the biggest favour I've ever asked. They've actually reinforced my self-belief in a lot of ways, because they've been kind enough to be very positive about the book. Maybe it's because, in order to write, one has to believe that one's work is, essentially, transmitting itself fully-formed to its readership and suggestions for improvement knock that one right out of the water. It's not that I think my novel is perfect - far from it; I can't read over a sentence of the damn thing without wanting to pull it to pieces - it's more that the natural instinct of a writer is to secretly suspect that everything they create is crap, and a beta-read that's doing its job is going to gently encourage that part of the writerly psyche to throw a party.
Or maybe it's just me. I don't know, I'm blatantly procrastinating here so that I don't have to do my edits. Or my laundry.
Saturday, 12 January 2013
One Does Not Simply Get An Article Pitch Accepted
So, I've been trying to pitch an article (no shit - that's what the title says!) to an online humour magazine, of which I am a regular and enthusiastic consumer. I'm pretty sure that no-one goes into something like this without secretly imagining that the editor will read their pitch and be dazzled into paroxysms of joy by the quality of this new, undiscovered gem of writing brilliance, but, delusions of grandeur notwithstanding, I didn't exactly expect that it would be easy. Plus, I know from experience that these things are always much harder the first time out than they are on the second or third. But, dear God, what a first time out it was. I think, by mid-week, I was already slightly deranged by sleep deprivation (full-time job, home, work on pitch, go to bed at 1am, and then, because the restless spirit of that goddamn paperclip that used to be the scourge of MS Word has apparently taken up residence inside my skull since being justifiably murdered by Microsoft, my brain would immediately flip into a two-hour cycle of, "It looks like you're trying to sleep! Would you like me to (a) endlessly recycle the past four hours on a three-second loop of crazy, or (b) Shut the fuck up and die? And option B is a lie.)
Tuesday, 1 January 2013
Sunday, 9 September 2012
Exciting Times!
So... guess who just found out they were shortlisted for the Bridport Prize 2012? (Hint: it was me. This would be a fairly random post if it wasn't). It was shortlisted and then completely failed to win anything, but I can't muster up the sads to worry about that - it was shortlisted! The Bridport Prize is HUGE and it's a Big Deal to get shortlisted.
I am OVER THE MOON!
I am OVER THE MOON!
Thursday, 22 September 2011
A Political One
I do try and keep this sort of thing to where it belongs - political pressure groups, private discussion, that sort of thing - but this morning I need an outlet and this is my blog, after all. I'm a member of Amnesty International and an opponent of the death penalty in all cases, but last night was a particularly difficult case to stomach.
Huge doubts remain about Troy Davis' guilt, and he was executed anyway. The method was particularly barbaric - not just lethal injection, with which I have plenty of problems to begin with - but the manner in which it was carried out. To have allowed the execution to progress to the last hours three times previously is bad enough, but last night he was due to be executed at 7pm (EST), and at 7.05 news came that the Supreme Court had delayed it while they considered whether to issue a stay. A little over three hours later, the stay was denied, and at 10.53 the execution went ahead. Who are these people, to toy with a man's life like this? As The Guardian's Ed Pilkington tweeted from the scene, it doesn't matter if he was guilty or not - no human being should ever have to go through that.
Seven out of the original nine eye-witnesses - a precarious basis for evidence anyway - recanted their testimony in recent years. Some of them cited police coercion. No physical evidence linked Troy Davis to the scene. A man died - a husband, a father and a son: his life was taken away from him as he attempted to help a homeless man who was being attacked, and the perpetrator should be punished. Of course he should - life without parole sounds fine with me. We don't need people like that in society. The thing is, if it turns out (as it very well might) that Troy Davis was innocent all along, then there's nothing we can do to reverse what happened last night. I make no bones about it - if anyone hurt or killed a member of my family, I would want to rip them apart with my bare hands just to watch them die. Absolutely I would. Does that mean I should be allowed to? Is it justice or vengeance we're after as a society? Because only one of those is the mark of civilization.
Huge doubts remain about Troy Davis' guilt, and he was executed anyway. The method was particularly barbaric - not just lethal injection, with which I have plenty of problems to begin with - but the manner in which it was carried out. To have allowed the execution to progress to the last hours three times previously is bad enough, but last night he was due to be executed at 7pm (EST), and at 7.05 news came that the Supreme Court had delayed it while they considered whether to issue a stay. A little over three hours later, the stay was denied, and at 10.53 the execution went ahead. Who are these people, to toy with a man's life like this? As The Guardian's Ed Pilkington tweeted from the scene, it doesn't matter if he was guilty or not - no human being should ever have to go through that.
Seven out of the original nine eye-witnesses - a precarious basis for evidence anyway - recanted their testimony in recent years. Some of them cited police coercion. No physical evidence linked Troy Davis to the scene. A man died - a husband, a father and a son: his life was taken away from him as he attempted to help a homeless man who was being attacked, and the perpetrator should be punished. Of course he should - life without parole sounds fine with me. We don't need people like that in society. The thing is, if it turns out (as it very well might) that Troy Davis was innocent all along, then there's nothing we can do to reverse what happened last night. I make no bones about it - if anyone hurt or killed a member of my family, I would want to rip them apart with my bare hands just to watch them die. Absolutely I would. Does that mean I should be allowed to? Is it justice or vengeance we're after as a society? Because only one of those is the mark of civilization.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)