Tag Archives: author parent

31 May 2013 · 2:40 pm

More from McMini

Some recent gems…

“Mummy I have an idea in my leg.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. I am full of ideas, I have them in my legs and my hands and my body and my fingers and my neck and my ears and my mouth and even in my eyes.”
“I see.”
“Yes. And this idea is in my leg.”
“Gosh. What sort of idea is it?”
“I think I’m going to go outside and ride my bike.”

A few weeks ago we went to visit a friend who has a son exactly McMini’s age. They live in Surrey, near Pirbright. In the afternoon we went for a walk in Brookwood Cemetary which is near there. McMini and friend stopped in front of this memorial to Polish soldiers in the second world war.

Polish Memorial at Brookwood Military Cemetery.

McMini and his friend stood in front of it lost in silent contemplation.

“What is that Mummy?” asked McMini.
“It’s a memorial.”
“What’s a memorial?”
“Well, some men from Poland came here to fight in the Second World War. They were killed and this statue has been put up to commemorate them, and how brave they were.”
Long pause.
“Oh.”
Another long pause and McMini’s friend sidled up to him.
“What did she say it is?” he whispered.
“It’s a special statue to remember a man who died in the war.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. He was a pterodactyl.”

Oh well, at least some of it went in. Just… the wrong bits.

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3 May 2013 · 11:30 pm

Note to self: Must buy fairy dust.

A slightly dodgy post tonight because my life is officially like pushing a rock up hill. I’m not sure what’s going on but the chaos gremlins won’t leave me alone… and I seem to be waiting… for everything. (sings, ‘the waiting is the hardest part… one more day sees one more yard’)

For example, I decided to put a thing on my bike and McMini’s bike that means the two are attached like a tag along.

In the whole container there was only one screw that was bespoke, that I couldn’t have replaced if I’d lost it. So after I’d put the rest of the contraption onto both bikes, which screw did I discover was missing? That’s right. And to be honest, while I know how to do some fairly comprehensively mechanical stuff to an engine, I couldn’t for the life of me work it out. I gave up. McMini has decided he likes the seat anyway, so we’ll stick with it.

My car. No fascia. No dash, no petrol gauge. The 50 mile journey to the garage down a road bristling with speed cameras… interesting. The solution, discovered by the garage, disconnect the battery. Doh! Why didn’t I think of that? Then again, if I had, I’d have only broken the alarm.

Other areas of life… Flat.

I think it’s book sales that’s getting to me. They look terrible, going backwards, but the demographic is different so I’m clinging to the hope that when I finally come to do the figures, it’ll be the same numbers over a wider selection of platforms. If it is, that’s good, but I have to face the possibility that my books may just be bombing.

Writing the books? Well at the moment, I feel like I’m chasing a mirage, the more I write the further away the end seems to be. I would like to finish the K’Barthan trilogy before I die but I’m really beginning to wonder if it’s going to happen. Rolls eyes. Yes it’s taking that fucking long.

Actually, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s a trilogy, I’m about a third into the last book and it’s already as long as the middle one but I think it best to finish it and see if there’s a neat point to halve it.

There are times, when I just have to accept that however ‘real’ writing feels to me I’m not really a ‘real’ author because the only thing I have the capacity to do full time is bring up my boy. Sometimes that’s quite hard, other times I wonder why it might possibly matter. At the moment it’s hard.

Different people have different commitments and also different capabilities – I really can’t write books unless I’m on my own in a quiet room. That does hamper me somewhat. I know other people who can sit to one side at a kid’s party and bash out a couple of chapters. I am in awe, and obviously, seething with professional envy. In any job you’re going to encounter this. There are going to be people who are more productive than you there are going to be people who succeed faster and you have to suck it up.

However, working within your limitations can be quite hard. I always knew my career was going to happen slowly but there are days when I wonder if it’s too slow. Is being an author like escaping the Earth’s gravitational field? Will it be impossible to escape the oceans of dross without rocket boosters? Will writing and producing books in slow motion render me a failure? Unless I achieve escape velocity will I be trapped here in the one sale a month club for eternity?  Only time will tell but very probably yes. Then there’s the really evil one. Am I deluded? Have I, actually, written two shit books? Is that why they are only read after prolonged begging… or at gun point?

OK, so we’ll put the maudlin, self-pity back in the box now and think about what can be learned. What are the lessons here? What have I learned that might be useful to anyone else? Hmm. Well it’s these things:

  1. Something that applies to pretty much any endeavour in life. Avoid looking at other people’s output except to learn positive things, like what works for them that might work for you, that kind of stuff. NEVER compare someone else’s output to yours. That way madness lies. Switch off the internet if you have to but don’t do it. Set your own targets. Make them realistic in the framework of your life and your abilities and then stick to them – if you can. Should you hit them feel glad and when other people produce six times as much stuff in half the time, chill. Yes you may not be achieving the standard norm but you’re achieving something and that’s better than nothing.
  2. Don’t worry about other people’s sales figures – yes I am a fool, I’ve been to kindleboards again and depressed myself reading the threads about how well everyone’s doing. There will always be people doing better than you and for many of us it will be most people. This is the way of the world, if you have less time, people who have more will write more books, faster and achieve success faster. Embarrassingly, people who are way smarter than you will use less time than you have more wisely and write their books faster.  Yes you will feel left behind. This is the harsh reality of life. Deal with it.
  3. Sometimes it will feel as if you are standing still and everyone is running past you and disappearing into the distance. Try not to think about it.
  4. Don’t start your writing career with a trilogy, or at least not unless you’re absolutely lulu. A series of stand alone books, yes, but a trilogy? No. Because a trilogy merely extends the first book angst for three books. That’s OK if you bash out a book every six months but if it takes you two years…? It’s been 16 years and counting. Mmm, I’m sure you get my point.
  5. Hard work begets success but unfortunately, so does luck and no amount of hard work will make up for that 1% of luck on top that puts you onto another level. This applies to anything. I’ve always had to make my own luck and to be honest, I’m piss poor at it! Phnark.
  6. Be patient; with your books and yourself. Yes Tom Petty was right, the waiting IS the hardest part. Aim to enjoy what you do and look upon anything else as gravy because however hard you work, the fairy dust may miss you.

So I reckon that’s some great advice, which I know and understand but seem to be pathologically unable to accept. Especially number 6. I think if I had the smallest modicum of patience, I wouldn’t be feeling quite so pessimistic. Or it could just be that it’s May and it’s sunny and although that’s absolutely lovely it does mean there’s a very high probability that it’s going to sodding tip it down for the rest of the year. If I’m not around so much it’ll be because I’m writing. I have to write because if I don’t finish my magnum opus this year, I fear I really will go crazy. After that it’s going to be short, commercially viable books. Oh yeh. No trilogies. Not ever, ever again.

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10 Mar 2013 · 10:33 pm

Hello. My name is M T McGuire and I’m an Authorholic

Jeez it’s a pain in the arse this writing thing. Let me explain. Chatting to a mate the other day I ended up having a debate about whether or not you have to be a little bit barking to be a writer… or creative generally.

I said, ‘no.’

Now, I’m not so sure.

There’s no doubt, in my mind that it makes a person a bit different. It’s not an accident that I’ve ended up married to somebody who’s had his ideas patented (yes we can all sleep safer in our beds knowing  that vending machines spit out a few less coins thanks to McOther, and less of certain brand of chocolate come off the production line stuck together, and robot hands can grip without crushing).

Sorry, going back to writing… I suspect a lot depends on why you do it. If you’re doing it to make money you’re on a hiding to nothing, that’s for sure. To be honest, I don’t know why I write, I only know that I can’t not. It’s a compulsion. My Mum was telling me about someone she knew the other day, who married, and then divorced, a compulsive gambler. Some of the things she described rang worryingly true.

Most of the time, I love writing. A big part of me lives in a fantasy world. It always has. I retreat there whenever I need to escape and recharge. I never spoke about it, I just went off on my own somewhere, sat down and daydreamed. It was years before it occurred to me to write any of it down. I am not really one for secrets, even good ones – long term, most secrets are battery acid to the soul – so writing my books has felt extraordinarily liberating in some ways. Suddenly, actual people know about something that has been as real and as necessary to me as air and food. But secret from everyone else. Completely. Utterly. Secret. For my entire life.

Now I am able to talk about Swamp Things, Grongles, Snurds and the like, to people who enjoy them as much as I do, without having to explain what they are. OK, so it’s a very select band of you who know – literally tens of people. But that’s not the point. The point is that, these days, someone, anyone, does.

That’s how it feels when it’s going well. Great. When it’s not… it sucks.

Everyone has a certain amount of ambient angst in their lives. I deal with mine by writing. Usually it works. I can control what I write – up to a point – and if it turns out well, I get a nice warm feeling of achievement. The thing is the basic business of being human involves the lives of others, live as an island and you might write a lot but you’ll experience little. However, if you want to live and love to the full you have to give up writing time to interact and you have to surrender control. You have to moderate your actions because they can affect those around you, people whom you love and don’t want to hurt, so you can’t write until four in the morning. Likewise, things that happen to your loved ones can affect you, whether you want them to or not, because you care for them.The more you love, the more you give; the more fulfilled you are but… the less control you have.

If things are dicey, there comes a point where the ambient angst gets too noisy and my heart too full to write. The quality and quantity of my output drops. More angst. There are times if things are a bit busy or just not going very well when every writer – unless they’re really lucky – has to stop spanking the monkey. If you’re writing a book with a really convoluted plot and things are going less than well, then, if you want things to ‘go’ at all, you may need to switch to a less complicated project, a short maybe, or possibly even stop until you are ready to resume. If your mind can’t even be bothered to wonder, the time has definitely come to call it a day for a while, and do things. Put stuff in.

If you are self-publishing, that should be easy, right? No publisher deadlines, no book-every-six-months anxiety for me. But it isn’t. People are expecting another book, some of them even want it and that makes for pressure.

The truth  is, I’m having a little trouble with the Real World at the moment. It’s encroaching severely on my writing activities. For the most part, it’s a pleasure. But when you’ve got two thirds through a very complicated trilogy it’s not helpful.

It’s a times like these that I don’t really like being a writer. When life gets a bit tricky, it can feel as if you are weathering a great storm in a small boat, rowing like buggery, and singing ‘For Those in Peril on the Sea’ for your life; and still you’re pathologically unable to remember what verse you’re on, or keep your eye on the ball – either ball – because I can’t even bloody write, either.

You see, I really, really do need my writing fix. If I don’t get it I am cranky, defensive and I lose focus on everything except my desire to set my thoughts in order and write them down. I start resenting every day administrative tasks of life. I ignore them and they build up. At the same time, I see them building up and start to worry or feel guilty, which impairs my ability to write. Sometimes I neglect my personal hygiene, choosing, instead, to spend that precious half hour when I should be having a shower, writing. Yes, if I’m smelly this week, it means I’m inspired and knocking out 2,000 words a day.

That sort of behaviour seems worryingly similar to the addicts of other drugs, who can concentrate on nothing but the next fix. Am I a compulsive writer? Is my addiction hurting people? I fear it might be. Should I try and give it up? Maybe.

For what it’s worth, I do know what’s at the bottom of the compulsion. It’s the feeling of wanting to know what happens to the characters in my head. I want to know so badly that I will stop at little to find out. Writing books is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Trying to strike a balance between writing enough to keep me sane, and yet giving up enough writing time to live convincingly among the normals, without harming them, can really do my head in.

Writing a book like watching a good film, you want to find out what happens, even if you’ve plotted it and planned it. You  want to savour every moment with your characters and yet you also live for the moment when it’s done and you can read it through and follow the plot from beginning to end.

Spare a thought, when you read an un-put-downable book, for the author who had to put it down at the end of every single sodding day, probably a lot sooner than he wanted to, for about six months (15 years and counting in my case) before that golden moment when he could finally know, for sure, how it all turned out. Yes, speaking as an author, I fear I may have been ill advised to start with a trilogy, or at least, to publish any of it before I had finished

While I’m having a good old moan, there’s another thing about being a writer that really gets on my tits. It’s the dichotomy between why I write and the circumstances in which I can. Obviously, I write because I enjoy it, and I’m reasonably proficient at it. As I mentioned earlier, it’s also a release, an escape and a generally wonderful thing. However, the more ambient angst, and therefore, the more I need to write, – the harder it is to do so. My writing Mojo is perverse, I think. No, it’s not perverse. My writing mojo is one of the most finely – or is that badly – tuned, temperamental things on earth. It’s prone to throw tantrums, down tools and get distracted by shiny things. As general bad behaviour goes you’d be hard put to beat my mojo. It’s about as co-operative and open to compromise as a 1970s union leader.

So here I am, a person who takes around two years, maybe a little bit more, to write each book (although it took eight years to write the first one because I had to learn how) and I decide to write a story that it takes three books to complete, which I can only produce any effective work on ‘when I’m in the mood’. Or to put it another way, not very often.

There’s me thinking I could control my desperate need for answers… I thought it would be OK… It’s not. I have never done anything this hard. I would love to go cold turkey, just give up on the bloody thing and walk away, kick the habit. But I am too stubborn, and people are waiting, and I want to know what bloody well happens and all. But if I write another trilogy, I’ll make sure it’s stand-alone books and I won’t publish it until it’s all done.

And don’t get me started on trying to produce any meaningful output with PMT (that’s PMS, my American friends). Gah! Next week I will mostly be writing… a short story. Although it’ll probably be lines and lines of ‘all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’ The Shining-style, because frankly, I’m not sure if this is a gift I have here, or whether I’m merely a little bit tapped.

Honey! I’m home.

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1 Mar 2013 · 9:56 am

Barren Island Books

Hello everyone, the peerless A.F.E. Smith has interviewed me, M. T. McGuire on her blog. It’s a bit like that radio show with the records only with books, phnark. So, if you want to have a look see it’s here.

I hope you enjoy it.

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24 Jan 2013 · 5:20 pm

I knew I shouldn’t have shown him that book on Florence Nightingale

McOther came home from work feeling terrible. He went upstairs for a rest. McMini and I arrived from school and went up to see if he’d like a cup of tea. He said yes please.
“When I’m ill I like to go to bed and have a little sleep and read my books, then I feel better,” McMini volunteered.
“Thank you,” said McOther.
“Come on, let’s go make Daddy’s tea,” I said and we went down to boil the kettle. While I was fishing a tea bag out of the tin and generally phaffing, McMini disappeared. When I went upstairs with McOther’s tea, there was our son sitting beside his Dad with a book on aeroplanes and a StarWars annual.
“I am just reading to Daddy, so he will feel better.”
“Good boy, do you feel better Daddy?”
“Yes I do,” said McOther’s mouth but his eyes said, “Help me…!”
“I think we should leave Daddy to sleep now though, eh?” I said.
“But I haven’t finished reading him StarWars.”
“I’m sure he would love to have a sleep first, it’ll be much more exciting if he has to wait for the next installment. Right Daddy?”
“Yes, that’s a great idea,” said McOther, with a certain amount of feeling.
“What d’you reckon?” I asked McMini.
“Hmm… Yes Mummy I think you’re right. OK Daddy. It is time for you to have a little sleep. I will come back to see you later and find out if you are better,” said McMini. “Let me turn the light off.”
He turned our three position bedside light onto medium, then bright then straight through off and back onto low several times, so I decided to save McOther’s retinas from a third searing by doing it myself.
“See you later Daddy,” he said.
I’ve managed to distract him with supper, TV and a game of football but he is very keen to take a star wars annual up to Daddy and read to him, even though it’s actually his Dad who’s doing the reading…

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25 Dec 2012 · 1:57 pm

Christmas Bonus

At least, I hope it is. I’m not talking about the Asterix character I mean a sort of present for you lot, who kindly read this. And it’s an excerpt. So what we have here, unedited, raw, unfinished but reasonably well polished is the first chapter from One Man: No Plan, K’Barthan Trilogy: Part 3.

This is just to reassure you, that despite the efforts of the Real World, it is still moving. Yeh at glacial speeds but that’s not the point. The point, the big point, is that it hasn’t stopped.

So here it is, Happy Christmas. The sample is a pdf and you can download it by clicking on the link below.

One Man: No Plan, K’Barthan Trilogy: Part 3 chapter sample

Next week, I’ll post another random excerpt from later in the story.

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15 Dec 2012 · 4:27 pm

Hang onto this…

It’s been a tough few weeks. Decidedly grim in fact. My father’s health has taken a turn for the worst. It’s age and atrial affibrilation – which is treated in such a way that gives you brain damage over time so if the person doesn’t die of a stroke or heart attack caused by the atrial affribilation they die over ten or fifteen years from the treatment. It’s a bit of a worry.

So two weeks ago, I had to make a mercy dash down to Dad and Mum. We sorted out a lot of things they will need to help with this, the new level. They have decided to stay home rather than visit my brother’s for Christmas so they will be alone. This is the right decision but it’s sad for my brother and for Dad and Mum. I know they’ll miss each other. As it’s our ‘turn’ to visit McOther’s side of the house there’s very little I can do to help because they’re having an even worse time of it.

One of McOther’s brothers died. Like my Dad, he was unwell but he managed his condition with good humour, common sense and intelligence. We thought he would be around for a lot longer than this. It doesn’t quite seem possible. We got home to discover that my Dad has had another fall but that he and my Mum didn’t want to worry us while we were down at the funeral. They are being well looked after by their ‘network’, which is reassuring but a worry because I can’t see any way I will get near them until after New Year.

McMini was excused school last week and we took him with us. Doubtless some of you will raise your eyebrows at the merits of taking a 4 year old to his uncle’s funeral. The fact is, we wanted to say goodbye and if we want to do something, McMini has to tag along. Because the buck stops with me and his dad. There is no-one we can leave him with. In the event, he coped extremely well.

However, as you can imagine, everything has felt a little unreal the last few weeks. I wondered if that’s why I seem to have kept a level head. Those feelings of unreality insulating me from the truth, but now I think it’s something else.

When we got home we had some parcels to pick up from the Post Office Sorting Office which they’d tried to deliver while we were away. So while McOther and his other brother stayed home with McMini I drove up there to pick up the parcel. On the way home, I went to the supermarket to get some milk. As I bipped my bottles at the auto pay station I could hear the automated voice of the machine beside me saying.

“Unexpected item in bagging area.”

The ‘unexpected item’ turned out to be a two year old girl, ‘helping’ her Mum. It made me laugh and I realised that it’s been these small normal things; shopping, conversations with McMini, washing up the dishes, stuff like that – and, yep, even writing – which has kept me grounded among the unreality of grief. I am a mum and I must look after my son many of these things which, on my own, I might have let slide, have to be attended to. And now I realise that these small events are the solid earth upon which I stand.

It struck me that this aspect of Real Life is relevant to writing fantasy science-fiction. If you want people to get their heads round bizarre creatures and outlandish locations you have to build these things on a credible bedrock. Your readers have to have that level place. There have to be certain generalities of geography or custom – or personality in your characters – for your readers to hang onto if you want them to ‘get’ the rest of it.

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2 Dec 2012 · 10:27 pm

A little of what you fancy does you good.

Today McOther whisked McMini and I off to a wine fair. We met up with another couple and agreed that the boys would taste wine in the morning while we girls nipped off with the kids, we’d have lunch and then the boys would nip off with the kids while we did some tasting.

It was a beautiful sunny day, blue sky, bright sun and we headed to a local garden centre to meet Father Christmas… but to meet him we would have to trek back to another part of the site, buy Santa tickets, come back and queue.

On the other hand… outside… was an ice rink. It was all white (real ice) and the sky was all blue and it was calling…

Mmm, would 4 year old McMini take to skating? Probably not. Should I be skating with my comprehensively bollocksed knee? Absolutely not but what the heck? The timings didn’t quite fit, the next session didn’t start for 15 minutes so we would only have 15 minutes to skate but that was good right? Time to get the skates on and 15 minutes, half a session. Time enough to have fun but hopefully not to break any thing.

We decided to give it a go.

Now, me, I am the ultimate urban jungle bunny because I grew up in a school. We lived on site. Do you know how much smooth concrete and tarmac the average boarding school contains? A sod of a lot, I can tell you. If there is one thing I miss about having two functional knees it’s the ability to wear wheels instead of shoes. As a kid in the 1980s, I lived on wheels. Even when, aged 11 I was banned from all sport because of my dodgy knee, I was allowed to skate on the grounds that it was “low impact” and “the child has to be allowed to do something”. I liked taking exercise and since I wasn’t allowed to do anything else, I spent every Saturday and every evening after school with wheels attached to my feet, cruising the concrete cloisters and smooth bricked quads… and hiding when the bell went and the big, scary boys changed classes for lessons.

My Mum decided to turn a blind eye to my preference for wheels over shoes So, I was a pretty dab hand at it. Even after I reached the point where my knee was utterly shot, when I couldn’t physically run, I could rollerblade, and did, although the tricks were way beyond me by that time. First rule of aggressive skating; don’t do anything on skates on that you couldn’t try out with them off first. So that, for me, was everything…. except going forwards, and backwards, and jumping over the odd small obstacle… but nothing ritzy. Eventually that got too much and about 10 years ago, I had to hang up my skates. I really, really miss it but it is just not possible to do it with only one proper leg and until they invent some kind of skater’s zimmer frame (phnark) that’s the way it’ll stay.

Back to today… there it was… ice, white ice, blue sky. Mmm. Not as easy as wheels but oh so tempting. So we gave in, we hired the skates and stood on the rubber bit at the side with severe misgivings and butterflies wondering who would break which limb first. Finally, we got on and the four of us made one disastrous circuit with two petrified children; McMini almost in tears and me realising that my left leg was really, really not working, at all and that it probably wasn’t safe for me to do this unless I could find some way of skating with a walking stick.

The answer was a thing that looked like a banana with handles. Seats two, slides beautifully and gives just enough support for the dodgy kneed lady. We had a gas! We slalomed in and out of the other skaters at speed – controlled, of course – and on the corners I could safely throw the banana sideways, shouting,

“Feel the drift!” while the kids screamed with glee and shouted.

“We are going faster than anyone else!”

As the banana went sideways I went straight… leaning on the handle. Jeez, I could actually do crossovers! I was safe and in control. Indeed, leaning on the handle, I could skate pretty much normally, with the banana taking some of the weight, the knee held up. And the kids shouted,

“Faster! Faster!” and well… it was churlish not to oblige.

Eventually the pain hit the warning threshold and I knew the time had come to quit while I was ahead. We’d had our 15 minutes, anyway, and we didn’t want to be late for lunch. So we parked the banana and skipped off the ice, two cheerful rosy-cheeked women with two (equally rosy-cheeked) and utterly gleeful bug-eyed kids. Sure, I could be walking with a stick for the rest of the week but… bloody hell that felt good.

So the point of this story is this: every now and again we all need to throw caution to the wind do something a little bit out there. I confess I thought I did, but clearly, not enough. Many of us live lives which are hectic or busy and we can’t vary the mix that often. But I have always believed that if an opportunity crops up, everyone should. And I suppose, in my case, the exuberant glee I’ve been feeling all day bears it out! Because that ten minutes on the ice, doing something I’ll be paying for all week, something I really shouldn’t have been doing but that I miss, left me feeling absolutely fantastic. It was a tonic. So there we are. A little of what you fancy does you good. Especially if it’s naughty and you’re not meant to.

Even better, right now, I’m buzzing with ideas. And I know why K’Barthan 3 isn’t clicking. And I might even be able to fix it. Funny how sometimes, the the best way to find a solution to a problem is to stop thinking about it; and the best way of writing is not to. I suppose, if you’re endlessly dragging ideas out of your brain it’s only sensible to do something off piste now and again; to put things in.

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30 Nov 2012 · 10:49 pm

When real life treads on your hands…

I’ve gone and depressed myself again by looking at one of those ‘uplifting’ posts on Kindleboards about people who’ve had an e-book out for half as long as I have and are making a gazillion times more money. Sod it, just making any money. Maybe you just have to be American to earn a living selling e-books. I dunno. Or maybe you just have to have time. Lots of time. And maybe it’s something that you just can’t do in tiny slices of time, slowly, over years, like I’d hoped.

You know I am basically a happy bunny, I am surrounded by sweet people, I’m happy, I’m cherished, I cherish  others… I’m blessed with a very happy family. I also live in a lovely house and drive a car that, as an incurable petrol head, I still can’t quite believe I own. There’s really nothing wrong with my life except that not everyone in that cherished, loved support group around me is as they should be. I’m not one to spill my guts over the internet but let’s just say this. There’s something they don’t tell you about heart disease. A lot of it gives you brain damage. Because a lot of heart disease causes a lack of blood to the head. Over time, this gives similar symptoms similar to those of exposure only they come on very, very slowly. Every day you get a little more fuzzy. Every day another little piece of you, the essence of you, is carried away. Slowly but surely, inevitably, you lose your mind. Add a succession of really hard winters, because heaven forfend that fucking sod might pull any punches and you’re in the poop. Big time.

So, one of my cherished people is in the doo doo and those years and years of bitty, incremental damage are beginning to show. And I can’t do a fucking thing.  And I’m miles away from them when I should be there. When the simplest thing becomes a marathon slog for them, I’m not there to help or reassure when all my life, I believed I would be. I’m not there to fix the computer when it freaks, or go through the paperwork or deal with the admin that escapes; things like tax returns or driving license applications. I’m trapped here at the end of the phone and all I can do is listen. And it feels shit. Because to watch the people I love suffer from a long way away and not help; people who have given me everything and made me who I am, people I look up to. That makes me feel like a special kind of bastard.

So the wheels have fallen off my writing a bit. I can’t stop, I’m addicted, but it doesn’t look like I’ll be hitting any deadlines, and I probably won’t be very professional about it either. In short, if K’Barthan 3 is ready by next Christmas I’ll be surprised. But in my defence, although I can’t name names and be straight about it here, there is a good reason. Real life has painfully, comprehensively, trodden on my hands.

I feel a bit like this. As Arnold the Prophet says in K’Barthan Three.
“Life is a gift, reach out and take it with both hands.”
And The Pan of Hamgee says.
“That’s all all very well for you to say but the gift I’m being offered looks suspiciously like a dog turd in a paper bag, to me.”
It isn’t all pants and it’s a lot worse for them than me but there’s a very, very sad bit and I have to accept that I can’t fix it. And that rankles. Big time.

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25 Nov 2012 · 11:37 pm

Glamour, glamour everywhere…

Reading another post today here made me think about whether or not being a writer makes a person a bit different. Is it one of those all-consuming jobs which all but consumes you or is it just necessary to be a couple of bricks short of a hod to even contemplate writing a book.

It would be nice if I could give you a snappy answer. Sadly, I’m not much of a one to give snappy anything. However, for what it’s worth, I do think that if you embark on the process of writing a book with even the remotest idea of what is entailed then you do have to be a little doohlally – or seriously addicted to that feeling of completion. To be honest, I think most people who write stuff do it because they can’t not. Trying to work out where it started in myself is impossible, I started daydreaming too early to actually remember the point when I began but I think something that has helped me to have ideas, or at least gestated the whole writing thing, is seeing the world cinematically.

Approximately 100 years ago, when I lived in London, I used to ‘enjoy’ if that’s the right word, a 50 minute commute – well it was 50 minutes unless I walked briskly up the hill to West Hampstead and took the train. Then it was a 20 minute walk and a 10 minute sauna courtesy of Network South East… if I took the tube, the sauna was 20 minutes but It didn’t begin until Baker Street. The exercise was nice but I have an idea that most people in the carriage with me saw their commute as a boring section of downtime – you couldn’t do anything constructive like read a book because by the time the train got to Kilburn (or West Hampstead if it was a non-rainy, let’s-do-the-20-minute-yomp-up-the-hill morning) it was rammed and a spare seat was rarer than unicorn pooh. For my own part, I saw it as an opportunity to listen to music without the remotest feeling of guilt that I should be doing something more edifyinge [I know, typo, but it’s so Pythonesque that I couldn’t bring myself to remove it… sorry]. So, even though you practically had to take out a mortgage to buy one in those days – a bit like buying anything made by Apple – I bought a personal stereo.

Nothing prepared me for the inside-your-head sensation of listening to a Walkman for the first time. Blimey! And when you actually… well.. walk about with one on, I mean, in a town. The minute the first notes hit my ears the rain-sodden drabness of North London was suddenly sparkling with cinematic fairy dust. Every dreary concrete vista gained a panoramic grandeur. My mundane, farty little life was all big screen drama. Soon it was impossible to go anywhere without the musical accompaniment required to turn each dull tramp into a music video, a cut scene from Bladerunner, a piece of film noir or a scene from StarWars… It wasn’t long before the music carried my imagination away beyond London, and every morning, while the rest of me blundered robotically through the streets; fodder for the foetid belly of the train, my mind wandered the roads and cities of K’Barth.

One of the few things I miss about my life pre-McMini is being able to listen to music like that. I miss the big screen experience of every day life. The curtailment of my own peculiar brand of ‘home’ cinema is probably one of the main reasons why I had to write things down. Because my brain had become used to wandering off and wouldn’t come in from the wild.

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