Friday 22.5.09

Nick woke me up early this morning. He doesn't normally do this and most days I don't even notice him getting up. I came awake fast and was a little jittery, in the middle of one of those dreams where I'm under threat from an unknown force. I don't know if I acted a bit oddly, hopefully not, because Nick was very sweet. It was nice to spend some time together even if it was at a strange time of day (to be fair to Nick, the time was not that strange to people with normal sleep patterns, probably about 7am).

When I woke up again, I mistook the time and thought I had slept through 'till lunch. It was a couple of hours before I realised it was only 10.30am. I was horribly disorientated by that time. I had wasted time listening to Jarvis Cocker do radio interviews promoting his new CD. I've heard it a couple of times, and I don't think it's all that good, but I might change my mind. I didn't like This is Hardcore until the 20th listen, then it became one of my favorites.

Amazon sent me the final David Baddiel book, The Secret Purposes. It is an historical novel. I don't generally read them, so we'll see if I finish it. In my shallow way, I find that I don't like the cover, which is a kind of smudged ballroom dancing. It has started to put me off already. I've invested a fiver though, so I need to get on with it to get my value for money.

I got quite a bit of writing done today. Most importantly, I was pleased with what I wrote yesterday. I have over 3000 words to send down to Sami. There's just one problem. It's a technical issue, just like my old English teacher, Mr Fee warned me about. I have poor spelling, but thanks to spellcheckers that hasn't been so important since 1990. You can judge my punctuation for yourself, going by this blog, I don't think it's too bad. What you can't judge is my punctuation of speech. If you think about it, it's not a skill that's in demand generally, but I find that I need it to write the novel. I'm going to have to get hold of a book about grammar or the one or two people that I'm going to inflict the book on (I don't expect to be able to get it published) won't be able to work out who's talking. Anyway, I've got one chapter from the middle of the book to pretty much ready to show around. It's a sort of dark romance. If you fancy a read, let me know and if I like you, I'll email it to you. I never said it was any good mind.

The biggest thrill for the day was that I replied to a Richard Herring joke on Twitter, and he replied to me. It was a conversation about writing, so it felt strangely appropriate. He was writing from his hotel room in Geneva, I was writing from my living room in Coventry, and he was correct, he could have been anywhere. Anyway, he's done 8000 words this week, which is a lot more than me, and he's very funny. Git.

Nina and I went for a walk with Darcy this evening and she told me her plot for a book she doesn't think she'll write. It's brilliant. Much better than mine. Git.

Monday 18.5.09

I've just finished a second book by David Baddiel in a week. Have to say, this is quite impressive for me being as I generally manage a maximum of a chapter a night. I got so in to Whatever Love Means that I sat up in bed all morning to finish it. As I'm writing this, I'm trying to work out why I think it's good stuff. I need to say both of these novels were written at the turn of the century, but thanks to a chance comment by the author himself on Twitter, I've just discovered them. The Twitter comment alluded to an anal sex scene in the first book and I was curious as I have never seen anal sex written about in a work of fiction outside of porn stories. http://www.literotica.com/ has a fabulous repository, thousands of them.

Evidently, the books aren't scholarly or particularly smooth, I've seen the writing style described on an http://www.amazon.co.uk/ review as 'clunky'. In both books I think one of the characters is heavily based on Baddiel's long time friend Frank Skinner, which is distracting for someone who's read a lot of Frank's stuff. I always seem to enjoy a bit of art where I can feel the flaws, its like the pleasure of scratching a really itchy bit of skin, so I'm happy with the book's faults. Mostly I enjoyed the great plot of Whatever Love Means with the twist at the end that I didn't see coming. There is a bit of humour, which lightens it but not belly laughs which lets the plot keep its darkness. I am a bit alarmed in that I can see some parallels between my Two Hours to Taunton Deane in terms of one of the characters. This can only be coincidence, and just goes to show that nothing is 100% unique. It also makes me feel bad that I'm still groping for a plot for my masterpiece.

Last year, I read almost exclusively non-fiction, but I seem to be breaking away from that. If I was thinking tactically, I would be reading this year's prizewinning novels and working out how to copy 'em, but I don't have it in me. It would be like when I had a proper job and I used to read management manuals, calculating what would be good for my career. Well, it seemed to work for a while, but looking back, I can't believe I ever wasted my time with it. I'm just letting Amazon hop me from book to book, they seem to have someone there who is good at recommending stuff that I like. They are my bookish fairy (I don't like to think of worms), communicating through my laptop. In consequence, I've ordered Baddiel's third novel but not that CD by Elbow that's top of their list. I don't like that Elbow hit that's getting a lot of airtime, but who knows, maybe if I got the CD I'd think my familiar at Amazon was right again? I'm not going to though.

I need to start working towards getting some kind of job and on to a course for next September. I'm being very lazy about it because I've got too cozy sitting about the house entertaining myself. I tend not to experience boredom, and frankly, I think a lot of people you meet at work are gits so I'm deeply lacking in motivation. I need my arse kicking, and I'm relying on this blog to do that. If I don't start writing about my progress towards gainful employment I'll......oh forget it. I can't think of a worse punishment than having to stand behind another checkout.