Perro ... K ?

2011-08-18T10:00:00.003+02:00

2010-07-10T13:27:00.010+02:00

Zero: tree-shaking and jelly-making

“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.“
Oscar Wilde

I’m in the throes of writing a novel at the moment, which is fun but also a bit intimidating because it’s something I’ve started a couple of times before. The first time was a couple of years ago and that time I scribbled down ideas, arranged them in a pretty pattern like shiny little pebbles and the started to write them. And then all of sudden I ground to a halt. I didn’t know what happened next. I sat around waiting for the characters to tell me what to do. The characters sat around waiting for me to tell them what to do. Nothing moved.

Second time around I thought, okay, I’m clearly not a writer who is able to bang it out by the seat of their pants. So, I thought, I need structure, structure and a plan. If I plan things I reasoned. I can make sure there is enough depth in my characters and a compelling premise that will support a longer narrative. So I outlined and brainstormed and resolved not to put pen to paper until I was absolutely hundred percent sure of exactly where I was going and with whom.

And that time the problems were two fold: firstly I found that outlining just led to more and more outlining. Secondly, writing linear outlines never seemed to generate anything very intriguing plot-wise. Consequently, I never could come up with an outline that looked sufficiently detailed and complete for me to think that I might not run out of steam halfway through it, nor interesting enough that I would want to write it. More importantly, outlining is a lot less fulfilling than writing. (Let’s face it. No-one ever goes to a dinner party and says, “Me? I’m an outliner.”)

So, armed with a smidgen of hope and a search engine I sniffed about to see if there was anything that might get me out of this conundrum. That's when I came across the concept of the Zero Draft. Using this method you get a shortish outline together, set yourself an overall target of words for the project and daily quota. Then you just open up your word processor and have at it each day until you’ve reached your target.

So this is what I’ve been doing for about a week. Admittedly the first couple of days where hard, but that’s because I have a well established way of working, one that flies in the face of Zero Draft. (My internal editor is a very loud and obnoxious individual who likes nothing better than shouting, “yes, but this is poo!” while I type.) Thanks to the support of a couple of lovely individuals I stormed ahead anyway and have come to the key realisation that what I'm writing is more an exploration of ideas and characters than anything else. It isn't supposed to be a definitive anything. Once I committed to that, the words have come easier and don't seem to have been utter shit.

Let’s see how long it lasts, eh?

Related/useful links :

http://thewritingwheel.blogspot.com/2010/03/draft-fast-edit-slow-zero-draft.html
http://www.carolewilkinson.com.au/news/2009/06/05/writing-process-3-zero-draft/
http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/2009/11/02/nano-tip-no-2-the-zen-of-first-zero-drafts/
http://fuzepublishing.com/tapping-the-muze-010-the-zero-draft

2010-05-31T20:59:00.007+02:00

New Dawn fades*

I'm aware that this may all be quite academic, now that the dust has settled and our tanned and toothy overlords have settled into their high castle, but this was the first election for a long time that I felt obliged to get involved in (in an admittedly microscopic way), and (perhaps sadly) my motivation had more to do with a wish to stop the Conservative Party from winning rather than from any particularly positive feelings about what the Labour Party or the Liberal Democrats had to offer.

So, I did a load of leafletting and on polling day was posted to a station half-way across town. I'll admit that I felt a little exposed and uncomfortable standing there with my Labour Party rosette on (but at least it went with the colour of my eyes). The main reasons for this were my reservations about the Iraq war. Certainly, if someone had come up to me and asked me to justify supporting the government that had perpetrated it, there would be little I could say.

The big and hairy "but" that floats around these sentiments though, is the fact that the Labour Party has actually done a lot of good over the thirteen years. Yes, yes. There are a lot of things it could have done a lot better, but I can't imagine that (god forbid), if the Conservatives had been in power for at least a small portion of that time that things would have improved to the extent that they have. Yes, the gap between richer and poorer is bigger than it's ever been, but can you imagine how much worse it would have been if Major, Homunculus Hague or IDS had got in?

Britain is a more liberal society than it was when Labour came to power. Witnessed by the fact that the political centre of gravity has shifted leftwards to the extent that the Tories felt the need to detoxify themselves (image-wise at least), in order to have any hope of winning power.

For better or for worse we have a new coalition government in place now, and while its civil liberties agenda is laudable, there is a lot of breathless guff circulating about the dawn of a "new politics". The truth is though, the coalition could not be more rooted in the establishment. Far from being new, the coalition sees us return to a form of patricianism that we've not seen in Britain since the time of Macmillan. I'm sure that I'm not the only one who finds it difficult to stomach declarations of a "new political era" from a cabinet that contains eighteen millionaires, let alone the austerity doctrine or superficial declarations that "we are all in this together". To paraphrase Orwell, some of us are more "in it" than others. (Easy to trash the Child Trust fund when it's not going to impact your milk-fed princelings. Eh, chaps?). New politics? This just sounds like the same old power and money game that's been going on since Julius Caesar was unexpectedly ventilated on the way to the senate.

*with apologies to Joy Division fans everywhere.

2010-03-20T18:21:00.007+01:00

William Melvin Hicks (1961-1994) - he's not the messiah, he's just a very naughty boy.

Bill Hicks changed my life.

And I am not alone.

Get a Hicks fan talking about Bill and you'll see their eyes alight with the fervour of the true believer, the jihadi fan, the stalker nut-job. They will unspool routines, blather about legalising pot, hop around and gibber: "...and now here's Tom with the Weather."

More than any other comedian (except for perhaps Belushi) Bill Hicks typifies the duel notions of professional iconoclast and tragically unfulfilled potential. He inspires religious devotion.

Why should this be then, sixteen years after his death?

Perhaps it was his own rigourous standards of purity ("no ads, not ever and that's not because I haven't been offered 'em")
His relentless and scatological pillorying of the great, the good, the bogus and phoney? (His Rush Limbaugh routine is still one of the most unsettling segments of "black poetry" I've ever heard.)

Either might be true. More than anything, though, I think it was these two things:

Firstly, (and my inner cynic finds it hard to type these words) his deep and abiding love for the people on this planet. This may come as a surprise. Looking at Bill Hicks' quotes on the web they sometimes come across as cold, cynical truisms about man's inhumanity. ("Why are you bothering with this miserable dead old man" - someone cleverer than I commented.) But that's because much of Hicks' material depended on its context and his energy, delivery and passion for its impact.

When I heard him for the first time, I felt that here was someone who ridiculed how bleak and cruel the world was, yet at the same time radiated hope that things could be better. The light that spilled from that little window inspired me. I wouldn't be writing fiction now if it wasn't for hearing him. (Yes, yes. Mixed blessings for you lot, I know. But you can't win them all.)

Secondly, his own messianic pretensions were born out by the fact that he died young and it's hard to deny that this adds poignancy to his material and purity to his myth. If he had lived and ended up running his own show on CBS would we still be listening? Maybe not. But I like to think he would have avoided being compromised.

Ultimately, the real tragedy about his death is that as hilarious as he was he was really only just beginning to realise his comic potential when he died.

It's almost worth believing that there is a God, just so I can imagine Bill sitting next to the almighty, chatting to him about the details of evolution and dinosaur bones before sharing a cigarette with him.

[See more of Bill Hicks here]

2010-01-17T21:28:00.005+01:00

The shoes that ate Brighton.

These shoes work in the café that I write in at the weekends. Most of the time they are attached to a pair of attractive and slender legs, but sometimes if the weather is inclement they recline at the bottom of a walnut wardrobe smoking french cigarettes and reading Sartre. Occasionally, on these days off, they get into heated discussions about the finer points of de Beauvoir's "Second Sex" with a highly strung pair of ballet flats. The shoes are quite reasonable and if you talk to them in low, soft voice and don't make any sudden movements, they will let you take pictures of them, as you can see. At some point I'll buy them a few drinks, wait till their guard is down and interview them properly.

2009-08-29T14:05:00.006+02:00

The bushes scream when my daddy prunes.
It's taken a long time for it to get into print but it's great to see my story h=G+V+C in print in New Horizons issue 3. Maybe my mum will actually believe I'm a writer now.

2009-06-02T21:05:00.011+02:00

My annoyingly brilliant friend.

I've wanted to post something on this subject for a while but exam timetables have intervened and stopped me. Finally, all that’s out of the way so as I sat here twitching and pulling blue fluff out of my navel I realised that now was the time to write something about my annoyingly brilliant friend.

Warren Pleece and I have known each other for about twenty years. We met at college in Brighton where he was doing illustration and I was doing something unspeakably dull by comparison. My abiding memories of that time were of me working as hard as I could (which was not very much) to stay on my terrible course (something I spectacularly failed to do), rehearsals for the ropey indie band Waz and I were in and the occasional break to run down to the news-agents on Thursdays to buy Britain's only half decent comic at the time, 2000AD.

Waz on the other hand seemed to spend most of his time sitting around eating cream cakes until the last three days of each term during which he would disappear into his room (a place we gleefully referred to as the “Pleece station”), drink copious amounts of gritty instant coffee before returning triumphantly with a number of brilliant “hopper-esque” paintings. These allowed him to breeze through to the next level of his course like Super-Mario with an unlimited power-up. (Bastard).

Once he left college it didn’t take too long for the comics world to work out that he was good. Really good. Based on the excellent, self-published Velocity co-created with his equally annoyingly talented brother Gary, he ended up providing the pencils for loads of quality comics: Hellblazer, Deadenders, Kinetic and most recently the excellent Incognegro and Life Sucks.

Waz is a charmingly modest man (unlike ... oh me ... for instance) and a ludicrously talented one to boot and it provides a nice sense of symmetry that these days you're just as likely to see his distinctive work in 2000AD as anyone else's. That plus the fact that he lets “Funny uncle Phil” over to upset his kids and never mentions my opium pipe or overly tight britches only make him even more of a hero to me. (I love you, mate.)

You can catch up with Warren Pleece’s excellent Montague Terrace here and follow one of his creations, clapped out pop crooner, Paul Ian Gregory on Twitter here.

2009-04-29T00:58:00.005+02:00

Lazy dawg
I read an interesting post today by this herbert that I urge you, gentle reader, to read. Quite a lot of it chimed with me and inspired me to write something about my first year abroad. But. My life revolves around revising at the moment. So, no time to blog anything. Instead, being something of a lazy dawg, I'm posting an article that was commissioned a couple of years ago:

Fear and loathing in Mexico City
I moved to Mexico City seven years ago, lured there by my friend Jon and his tales of endless summers and the good life. Telephone conversations between Jon and I typically went like this:

“How are you?” I would ask.
“I’m up on the roof, drinking a margarita and soaking up the sun. Life is good. How about you?” he’d reply.
“I’m cold.” I’d say. “It’s damp and cold. I’m damp and cold.”

It was only after I moved to Mexico that I discovered that Jon conducted these conversations from the dank confines of his lounge, wearing a roll-neck sweater and wrapped in a blanket. Mexico City in summer is wet and the houses are dark. It feels like it rains every afternoon. And if it doesn’t rain, the pollution is so bad you wish that it would. The air is thick with heavy metals, car exhaust and best of all, something which experts refer to as “fecal dust”. Yes, that’s poo in powder form.

Normally, one of the most daunting things about moving to a new country is establishing a social life. However, when I arrived in Mexico City, I inherited all of Jon’s ex-pat friends, and he had a lot of them. My introduction to ex-pat culture was at a “cocktail” run by a promoter called Sebastian. Sebastian was tall and tanned, his thick glossy hair piled up on his head pompadour-style. His shirt opened to reveal a hint of chest hair. A trail of solemn, pouting and malnourished girls followed him everywhere he went. After talking to him for fifteen minutes I wanted to follow him around as well.

Sebastian possessed schmooze-power and charm in hypnotic proportions. He could get most people to do something for him and a few people to do anything. He had the persuasiveness of Obi-Wan Kenobi and the looks of George Clooney. Rumour had it he was a lord.He was immaculately dressed. A feat that he managed by “borrowing” clothes and neglecting to give them back. While we were at the cocktail he complained to Jon that the shoes that Jon had leant him had not worn well. Jon, looking blank and hypnotised, apologised and promised to buy a better quality pair next time.

In England I didn’t know anyone who’d had cosmetic surgery. By contrast, in Mexico many ex-pats were having work done because it was so cheap. In fact, after I’d been there for three months a nose job and a tummy-tuck felt like a natural part of the ageing process. Following one too many jokes about British teeth, my English girlfriend bowed to peer pressure and went to a local dentist for a makeover. The dentist pulled out several of her teeth while singing “The Girl from Impanema”. He then installed a roll of barbed wire across her incisors. She spent the next three years picking broccoli out of her retainer at dinner parties and hiding “difficult” foods in her napkin.

Apart from cosmetic surgery, the other common topic (at least amongst ex-pats from the U.S.) was circumcision. It transpired that I was less than hygienic because my undercarriage still sported all its original features. I considered getting “cut”, but the prospect of someone singing to my genitals while slashing away at them didn’t seem very dignified. I opted to remain unhygienic, but intact.

For many English-speaking ex-pats, Mexico is a state of mind rather than a place. It’s somewhere they can come to slum it, do some social tourism and wait for their trust funds to mature. I think this explained why many of my new acquaintances had “fabulous” careers. Photographers-that-acted rubbed shoulders with actors-who-wrote and all exchanged air kisses with artists-who-modelled. Of the other people that I met at cocktail parties, a high proportion seemed to be 007 fantasists.

There was Barnaby, a man who combined a tactile nature with the habits of serial nose-picking and crotch-scratching. After two martinis he confessed that he worked for MI5 “on the side”. I was confused. Two martinis and he was already blabbing? Where was his stiff upper-lip? He introduced me to “Mad-John”. John was from New Jersey and spoke mandarin. He (allegedly) had been recruited by the CIA at university. In Mexico, he had set up a private dojo at his house where he taught martial arts to all-comers. You could spot his students from their extensive facial bruising and bandages.

“You should come to one of our practice sessions,” he glowered at me.

He crushed my thin arm with a hand the size of a boxing glove. His eye-balls popped. It seemed like he was using every ounce of self-control not to snap me in two. I declined his offer and backed away, maintaining eye-contact.

I’m ashamed to admit that after six months of being surrounded by minor celebrity and plastic surgery, I began to worry. I began to worry about my English teeth. My encroaching baldness. My paunch. My dull, dull ordinary job. I wasn’t fabulous. Not even a bit of it. Where were all the non-fabulous people?I wanted to return to England. England, my England, where people sported teeth like Red Rum and let their uncircumcised foreskins flap in the breeze. I looked at cosmetic surgery brochures and wondered wistfully if they offered a package deal that included male liposuction, teeth straightening and a hair transplant.

And then I met Enrique and his wife Martha. Enrique had an earnest beard and wore wide rim glasses. He looked like Ned Flanders from The Simpsons. He was an ex-catholic missionary. Martha could drink more than anyone I knew and hugged people a lot.Neither of them liked going to cocktail parties. And so, I stopped going to them.

In retrospect this solution to my problem seems self-evident, but when you emigrate the first casualty can often be your sense of, well, the bleedin’ obvious. The experience of my first few months in Mexico City taught me two things:
1) When moving to a new country avoid large groups of your fellow countrymen as much as possible.
2) If you break rule 1), then when you do attend “cocktails” look any Barnabys in the eye and tell them that you are an actor-director who does a bit of espionage between films. It may not be true, but it will spare you trips to the dentist and your foreskin may even send you a thank-you note.

(c) Guardian Unlimited 2007

2009-04-04T11:40:00.010+02:00

Bleat, bleat.
I'm not prone to fits of ennui, but I've just had a story rejected 4 hours after I'd submitted it. Aghhh. I know I should be thanking the editors for turning it around so fast (and I do because they are thoroughly good eggs), but I mean really. Give me a break. I know the maxim "if you can't deal with rejection don't be a writer". I really do. I know it better than you, gentle reader, could possibly imagine and most of the time I deal with rejections with a remarkable amount of sang-froid. (well, like so much of this blog, you'll just have to take my word for that), but for some reason getting it tossed back at me after just four hours out there seems especially cruel. And yes ... I appreciate that this is just the flip side of getting the last piece I sent out accepted after a couple of weeks but bah. Bleat. Bleat. Bleat. Okay. Enough. Shutting the fuck up.

2009-03-01T15:39:00.014+01:00

William Melvin Hicks (1961-1994) - he's not the messiah, he's just a very naughty boy.

Bill Hicks changed my life.

And I am not alone.

Get a Hicks fan talking about Bill and you'll see their eyes alight with the fervour of the true believer, the jihadi fan, the stalker nut-job. They will unspool routines, blather about legalising pot, hop around and gibber: "...and now here's Tom with the Weather."

More than any other comedian (except for perhaps Belushi) Bill Hicks typifies the duel notions of professional iconoclast and tragically unfulfilled potential. He inspires religious devotion.

Why should this be then, fifteen years after his death?

Perhaps it was his own rigourous standards of purity ("no ads, not ever and that's not because I haven't been offered 'em")
His relentless and scatological pillorying of the great, the good, the bogus and phoney? (His Rush Limbaugh routine is still one of the most unsettling segments of "black poetry" I've ever heard.)

Either might be true. More than anything, though, I think it was these two things:

Firstly, (and my inner cynic finds it hard to type these words) his deep and abiding love for the people on this planet. This may come as a surprise. Looking at Bill Hicks' quotes on the web they sometimes come across as cold, cynical truisms about man's inhumanity. ("Why are you bothering with this miserable dead old man" - someone cleverer than I commented.) But that's because much of Hicks' material depended on its context and his energy, delivery and passion for its impact.

When I heard him for the first time, I felt that here was someone who ridiculed how bleak and cruel the world was, yet at the same time radiated hope that things could be better. The light that spilled from that little window inspired me. I wouldn't be writing fiction now if it wasn't for hearing him. (Yes, yes. Mixed blessings for you lot, I know. But you can't win them all.)

Secondly, his own messianic pretensions were born out by the fact that he died young and it's hard to deny that this adds poignancy to his material and purity to his myth. If he had lived and ended up running his own show on CBS would we still be listening? Maybe not. But I like to think he would have avoided being compromised.

Ultimately, the real tragedy about his death is that as hilarious as he was he was really only just beginning to realise his comic potential when he died.

It's almost worth believing that there is a God, just so I can imagine Bill sitting next to the almighty, chatting to him about the details of evolution and dinosaur bones before sharing a cigarette with him.

[See more of Bill Hicks here]

2009-02-14T11:01:00.013+01:00

How I stopped worrying and learned to love the Dewey Decimal system.
I remember in the mid-80's those doyens of cafe-socialism the Style Council brought out an album called "Our favourite shop" (and putting to one-side their enthusiasm for petit bourgeois shop-keeping) I'll take inspiration from them to wax about something a bit closer to my shrunken heart: My favourite library.

As an external student at the University of London I get to slink around the Charles Holden designed cornish granite loveliness of the Senate House Library. The building resembles the set of one of the pre-rubber nips Batman films. It towers over the eastern rim of Tottenham Court Road and the black,wet brick of Bloomsbury. A thing of monumental and toe curling beauty.

I wouldn't describe myself as a book fetishist, but inside, the smell of all those inky words, yellowed leaves and desiccating cellophane rises to a glorious papery fug. Get there early (pre-11AM - these are students we’re talking about here) and you can snag a table with a window view and sit there typing away for hours.

And the books. A whole floor of Spanish. A whole floor of Latin American authors.

Most importantly the library has no wireless network access so ... no frackin’ Twitter, Facebook or IM to fritter away your time on. A blessing indeed. Oh, and cute librarians. Did I mention cute librarians? Worth learning the relative merits of Dewey Decimal and UDC just so you can push them into the the modern language section and flip through their frontispieces.

2009-02-07T12:41:00.004+01:00

Workshop Shy Fop
Funny old things workshops. I love 'em to death. But sometimes. You get lots of notes. And they are all great ideas and so you re-write and re-write and shovel them all in. And what started off as quite a taut story turns into a bloaty everything but the kitchen sick monstrosity.

So then you have to go through the piece and pull them all out again.

And you end up back where you started.

2009-01-25T12:05:00.005+01:00

The 400.

Far be it from me to whine about the dismal state of the modern novel. No. Much more like me to make my own specific contribution to its demise.

There are only four hundred words here but they may be the most important four hundred words in the english language.

What I can say, without reservation, is that coming as they do at the beginning of this novel they are probably the most important four hundred words in it.

I thank you.

2009-01-23T11:58:00.007+01:00

Menage-a-blah
I thought I had quite a bit of time cleared away to get on with a novel. (Bureauista's voice: "Then why are you sitting typing this oh-lame-ass pretender?")

Well, just work actually. Being a free-lance prostitute of various skills means that I have to follow the money all the way down to the docks if necessary.

But enough of my feeble excuses - just noticed that the fabulous Pen Pusher is relaunching in March.

For those of you unfamiliar with said organ. Let me take your trembling lilly-white hand in my own and lead you to its website. There there, don't be frightened. Let my avuncular charm (yes, I really do smell like fresh bread) wash over you and remove all of your anxieties and doubts.

Bite your bottom lip, relax your virginal thighs and make a donation to keep the magazine going.

There, that didn't hurt too much, now did it?

2009-01-18T14:46:00.005+01:00

So,

I've been tagged by that marvelously warm human being Maria i Lavis to write six random things about me. So uh, here goes:

1. I've run four marathons.
2. The word 'throb' excites me. I am all about the words.
3. My favourite song is "Once in a Lifetime" by Talking Heads. Probably.
4. I lived in Switzerland for a year. It was a loooong year.
5. I had a gun pointed at my head in Mexico City. But that happens to everyone sooner or later.
6. I lie to myself all the time.

------------------------------------------------
If you are on the list below, you've been tagged to post about 6 random things about you!

* The Bureau
* the rambles of my headspace

THE RULES (for this game of tag):

1. LINK TO THE PERSON WHO TAGGED YOU
2. POST THE RULES ON YOUR BLOG
3. WRITE SIX RANDOM THINGS ABOUT YOURSELF
4. TAG SIX PEOPLE AT THE END OF YOUR POST AND LINK TO THEM
5. LET EACH PERSON KNOW THEY ARE TAGGED AND LEAVE A COMMENT ON THEIR BLOG
6. LET THE TAGGER KNOW WHEN YOUR ENTRY IS UP
7. DON’T BREAK THE CHAIN (not actually a rule)

2009-01-03T21:03:00.004+01:00

Mishapes#2
Aurora’s first race was in the spring. Carlos had arranged for Alberto Reyes to lend him the plumber’s van. We rode in the back leaning on the cold metal doors, our feet sticking to the tongue of old carpet Alberto had laid in there. The mountains rolled past, brown and naked.

We arrived early and went to drink cups of thick, sickly cafe marrón while Carlos took Aurora’s wicker basket to the starting run.

The Tesla’s arrived late in a flat bed truck that belched black smoke. The truck careered into the meet and parked at an oblique angle.
Tesla senior stumbled out of the cab smelling of beer. Tesla junior, looking not much smaller than his father tumbled out of the far truck door.

The other birds were loaded. Carlos and Tesla squared up to each other. Carlos clacked his dentures and looked his enemy in the eye.

They nodded at each other.

The sky darkened as the pigeons soared upwards in a feathered cloud that blocked the sun. I looked up into the sky and shielded my eyes with my hands.

Aurora won, of course.

2008-12-04T00:05:00.004+01:00

Yes, I really am working. A blurry picture of a slighty blurry draft. Note trace evidence of substance abuse. Fresh from the fiery ring-hole that is the workshop process. Should be ready for shipping out in a month or so.

2008-11-28T15:43:00.008+01:00

Gender-Blender
Warning. This is a transgender blog. Apparently.

Thanks to the lovely A.V. Flox for this link.

Man Crush

2008-11-28T11:57:00.000+01:00

Is it wrong to be so happy that Stephen Fry is following me on Twitter?

I can only hope my tweets are firm and juicy enough for him.(Mr Stephen Fry)

Mobile Blogging from here.

2008-11-27T20:42:00.014+01:00

Stow yer bits up
One thing that I've struggled with for a while now is finding somewhere to save my work. Don't get me wrong, obviously they reside as a puddle of 1's and 0's in my macbook right now but what, god forbid, if I drop that, or (and being a spec fiction writer this is more likely) that I get hit by a meteorite.

I do have a MobileMe account but the hilariously large amount of space they provide (20Gb for file storage) is undercut by the snagette that you would get better upload speeds on one of Steve Jobs shoe laces than I currently get from the servers that throb at the heart of mobileMeMeME.

So, I have reluctantly cut a deal with the devil. Or Google to be more specific but they come pretty close (and yes I know they own Blogger the b*stards.) Now, for absolutely nothing (except my first born's browsing habits) I can shunt Word documents and pdfs up to my Google account.

Picture from the vault of the ever-lovin' Chris de Davidson, the man who some get to call Dr Cocker.

2008-11-27T20:27:00.008+01:00

Do you give good crit?

I like workshopping. The deadlines are great and since writing is something of a solitary pursuit (just like masturbation) The chance to see how someone else does it is fascinating (just like masturbation).

Problem is I like workshopping too much. If I get my hands on someone else's ...fiction most of the time I pull it apart and give a lot of er ... notes. Which is only a problem in that it takes a lot of time to do ... and I've got no bloody time at the moment.

The marvelous thing, though, is that from the one I'm currently on, I've got two stories written and another lurking in shadows and winking at me lasciviously.

2008-10-04T20:33:00.002+02:00

And without getting all Polyanna about it Catherine Hyde has an excellent article on the subject of rejection over at Gillmertrain: http://glimmertrain.stores.yahoo.net/hydeb15.html

Calle Princesa

2008-10-04T20:30:00.001+02:00

Calle Princesa

2008-10-03T17:00:00.001+02:00

Barcelona in October: brittle sunlight and the velvet skies over San Felipe Neri. Bikes leaning against the hollow steel railings of the Mercat and muffled people sitting outside Cafe Catalina smoking early morning cigarettes and reading the papers. Yep, it's bleedin' cold. It doesn't seem that long ago that I couldn't sleep at night because it was so humid but I like it.

Got another rejection today, which is no big thing. I do actually appreciate the time magazine editors take to read submissions. And on the upside the Guardian contacted me to say one of my old articles is being picked up for a paper reprint. So two steps forward one step back.

2008-07-22T12:51:00.002+02:00

You can't really argue with this can you?