A Day In The Life of a Writer. Yesterday.

I wake up. First thing I do is check the time. Have I overslept? I got home from work last night at 11 p.m. and then watched Question Time on the iPlayer. The one glass of wine I intended to have turned into several. Question Time turned into The Week. I like politics, especially when I’m drunk.


Sun is coming through the curtains. My mobile says 8:45. This is not ideal but ok. If I don’t write in the morning then I can’t write at all. Usually I like to read in bed for an hour first. If I do that it’ll be nearly 10 o’clock. Then by the time I’ve checked my emails, usual internet sites it will be 11.


I start to panic. I’m not going to get any writing done.


Downstairs there is a knock at the door. I know it will be the postman. He’s the only person who knocks on my door. I am naked.


I don’t always sleep naked. Sometimes I like to have a sweatshirt and underwear and I regularly have two duvets and a sleeping-bag on my bed.


I’ve ordered some books from Amazon. I imagine that’s why the postman is knocking. On top of the nakedness I have an erection. Why does the postman always come when I have an erection?


I can’t very well go downstairs like this.


I used to do door to door sales in Australia. Sometimes when I was doing areas by the coast you’d get surfer dudes out of bed. I used to hope they’d come to the door naked. It was a boring job and the mind tended to wander.


As it happens, it rarely happened. This is just one way in which life is different to fiction.


I stumble into the spare room and pull on yesterday’s work trousers and a cardigan. I either looked dishevelled and interesting. Or a tramp with a hard on. No time to check in the mirror.


Postman done I make a cup of tea and go back upstairs to bed. The books I ordered were ‘Jack’ and ‘The End of Alice’ by A M Homes.


A M Homes is getting to be one of the writers of whom I have read their complete works. In this she will join Rupert Thomson, Magnus Mills, Haruki Murakami, Kazuo Ishiguro, Raymond Chandler, Raymond Carver, Andrey Kurkov, David Mitchell, Timothy Mo, Sarah Waters.


She will be, I note, the only woman on the list. Except for Sarah Waters.


I spread the books out on my bed. The two A M Homes ones and also Nocturnes by Ishiguro. I have recently bought this too.


I haven’t got too long.


I choose the Ishiguro and read the first story.


So far I haven’t mentioned much writing. That’s the thing about writing. A lot of it is in your head. The rest of the time is not writing.


So when I am sitting in bed naked, books spread out before me, drinking tea, I am actually very busy. Convincing other people of this is sometimes a problem.


I have just finished six days in a row at work. Therefore I haven’t had much time to write. In fact, I haven’t done any. Prior to these six days I’d had five days off. In those five days I’d written 8,000 words.


Writing is like that for me. Once I start it’s easy to carry on. Once I stop it’s difficult to start again.


Once downstairs, and dressed, I open up the document.


I stopped right at the end of a long section in which a character on a boat to the Antarctic is telling a story over the phone to another one of the characters back in England. This story is about his time in Iraq and it’s kind of a love triangle.


The character on the end of the phone is in love with the character telling the story.


This 8,000 word section from my previous days off is this story.


This novel is a novel of people telling stories to each other. I like all the characters and the stories but I wonder if it works as a novel.


I have a cup of coffee.


Also all the stories are about death. Would someone want to read about so much death?


Someone slips under a tram, gets hit by a car, falls into a vat of acid, loses their hand in an industrial accident. But pulls through! Loses their feet to frostbite, is the victim of a serial killer, dies of cancer, dies in a water-skiing accident.


And so on.


As I don’t know if it works I am trying to establish a life / work balance. I don’t want to spend a whole year doing this and then have to delete it. If I’ve done other things I can look back on those things.


Like drinking tea in bed. Drinking wine and watching Question Time on the iPlayer. For a few years I didn’t do any of those things. I used to write all the time.


I follow pretty much the Stephen King model of writing. I try and do 1000 words and then stop. Like him, sometimes this can take hours and other times I can rattle off 1000 words in an hour.


While I’m writing though I am constantly checking things on the internet. Looking at the news, Facebook, my blog, YouTube and so on. So often I don’t feel like I am writing. When I stop I feel useless and berate myself.


“You’ve wasted your day. You’ve spent it on the internet.”


But I do hit my target.


At three o’clock I stop to go to the gym. If I’m going to sleep naked I owe it to myself to look the part.


Also I’ve managed to stop in a good place. David non-Dave has built a city out of toilet rolls for the miniature person who was living in his bum. This is a person he killed earlier in the book. He’s about to show it off to the other characters. His city that is and not his bum.


David non-Dave is having a nervous breakdown I should say and it is not a real miniature person living in his bum. These miniature people made an earlier appearance in another story of mine, ‘Neighbours’.


That’s another tip. Recycle.


After coming back from the gym I go straight out food shopping. This is on foot as I don’t have a car.


It’s a beautiful sunny day.


As I walk I wonder if I’m wasting my time with all this writing. There are other things I could be doing. I would like to be in the countryside somewhere walking by the side of a canal.


Then I imagine falling in the canal and getting attacked by a shark. It bites off my legs. But how would a shark get in a canal?


There was a lorry heist. They expected cash but instead found themselves with a shark on route from one aquarium to another. They don’t know what to do. Under cover of darkness they release it into the canal.


One of them has a favourite film of Jaws. During the heist he says, ‘We’ve got ourselves a shark situation.’


It could happen. There are sharks in the world. There are aquariums. It’s just the question of thinking it.


When I get back home I reopen the document.


I’ve been thinking about the beginning. It needs re-writing. I pour myself a glass of wine. I pick up Music For Torching by A M Homes and re-read the opening. It’s a good beginning. I’d like something like that, but Homes has already used it.


Shit.


I need more humour. The characters need to stand out more. Perhaps I should scrap the whole thing.


I drink some more wine. I make dinner. I watch the Pulling special. This is reassuring because it is more rude than my books. This is important to me but I’ve already gone on enough.


At ten o’clock I go to bed. I read ‘Jack’ for two hours.


I drink two beers.


I fall asleep.


Tomorrow it starts again.

Currently reading – see above


Currently listening to – Friendly Fires by Friendly Fires

Drew Gummerson’s first novel ‘The Lodger’ was published in 2002. It was a finalist in the Lambda Awards in the States. Drew’s latest book ‘Me and Mickie James’ was published by Jonathan Cape in July 2008. Drew is also an award winning short story writer, his short fiction being widely published and featured on Radio 4.

The Twelve Fifty Words of Christmas

For those of you with your arses firmly in your hands, you will know that over on Facebook I have been running a 50 Christmas Word short story competition. And as they say, those people who run competitions, here are the results…

First off, it was difficult to choose my favourites. Not because they were all shit before you ask, but because they were rather good. I would even go as far to say I feel a bit Christmassy. (I am actually working over Christmas – Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day and have been looking forward to Christmas about as much as a turkey. Why is it that when I go through those red lights, cars never hit me?)

Anyhoo….

There is one winner, and eleven runners-up: The Twelve Fifty Word Stories of Christmas.

The Winner. Drum roll. Taa Raa. And so on.

Nathan Good

On the first day of Christmas his true love said to him, “Sober up or I’m leaving.”
Twelve days later he stands ankle deep in pine needles and unopened presents. Eyes closed, he prays and leans into the branches. Carols play and he stays half drunk against a bare tree.

The Eleven other ones. More drums rolls etc. In no particular order except the order that they’re in.

Darlene Longo

Christmas list

Crate of oranges for the cold that I cant shake
Tin full of cookies for those left unbaked
Toys for the children who never tire
Coal for my stocking pinned by the fire
One bag of wit with a note that’s attached
IF ITS UN-USED SEND THIS RIGHT BACK

Barry Price

”When you’re in a plantation of Christmas trees, with light snow, it’s really Christmassy”
”You’re right, like being in a lovely old Christmas card”
”Will you two shut up, we’re supposed to be stealing bloody Christmas trees, at least try and act like criminals, you were in banking weren’t you?

Frances Gapper

I visited an old love, we’d quarrelled seven Christmases past and despite letters, emails, texts, we’d never again met in the flesh. Now the snow blanketed her grave, and singing floated from the church, not carols but something and my lost love accused me, you always did have cloth ears.

Vanessa Woolf-Hoyle

The year; 0AD. Iron age England was rattling with different tribes, everyone up to their shins in mud. Meanwhile, overseas, something indescribable was happening. Something much bigger and more beautiful than the universe was being put into a package smaller than a 12-pack of hula hoops: a new-born baby.

Saul Pope

He woke early. Stumbled along the freezing corridor to spit a glob the colour and consistency of toffee into the sink. He’d go to the doctor when he got a day off stacking crates. But Christmas Day was here, the best day of the year. Christmas Day meant double pay…

Jon Longworth

One baking Christmas, fiscal crisis delivered
on all downunder, a pecuniary chunder

50 trillion secured by two goats and a hut
nobody felt that, in their gut?

from whence came this apocalette of pus?
in power, in chorus ‘it wasn’t us!’

to the jury I answer, twas the Anti-Santa!

Nick Flower

The festive lights of Anglia Square flatter our bah-humbug countenances wrought with isolation, her daubed coarse features now inviting, my weak jaw now handsome, commanding. The money I have won’t buy a turkey dinner, but will manage a noisy blowjob kneeling on the gravel of the poorly maintained car park.

Rebecca Lowen Kirk

He laughs and grips my hand as he stumbles on the ice.
His hair glistens with snowflakes in the midnight moonlight.
I hold him tight in my arms.
We skate to the giant Christmas tree and sit at its feet.
We welcome Christmas morning with a kiss under the mistletoe.

Aliya Whiteley

Elsie doesn’t do men through chimneys.

Her parents said – he eats the mince pie, he drinks the brandy, he leaves the stocking, then he goes.

And she thought – why is this intrusion allowed? He violates my sanctuary and in return I get two oranges and a doll. No deal, Santa.

Patricia A. Smith

With two failed marriages and three dead husbands, the holidays were bittersweet to all, particularly while gathered around O Tannenbaum and singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas” . “Five golden rings” brought tears to her eyes as she remembered the Jewish guy as an exquisite jeweller and the final spouse.

Rebecca Bachtel

This year Christmas would pass uneventfully in a new country. It wasn’t really an issue as she had taken to spending the holidays alone the past few years. Too much pressure to get together, feel connected, get along. Being alone felt less lonely.

So that’s it!

Except for two I wrote myself.

My boyfriend bought me a Dyson DC07 upright vacuum cleaner for Christmas. While it may feature Root Cyclone technology, have a reversible wand and be quick and hygienic to empty, I had imagined myself on Christmas morning ripping shiny paper off the perfect box of a Nintendo Wii with Nunchuks.


Santa was having a nightmare. Due to the recent war half the children weren’t where they were supposed to be in Iraq. On top of this American anti-aircraft missiles were beginning to take their toll on the sleigh. Despite major reservations he concluded Al-Qaeda may have a point.


Happy Christmas everyone!!!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Join the 50 Word Story Group

Books of the Year 2008

Hello peeps. It’s time to put my hands on my head and announce my books of the year.

(Note from editor. If your hands are on your head, how are you going to type?)

One of the good things about keeping this blog, is that I’ve recorded week by week what I was reading. And a quick flick through tells me that this year I’ve read 36 books.

If this year could be said to have 36 weeks then that’s almost one book a week! Not bad on top of everything else I have to do.

(Note from editor. What exactly is it that you do? Remind me…)

Firstly, a short introduction.

(Editor. God help us! And while we’re on the subject, you make a note of the books you read? What are you, some kind of freakosaurus?)

Freakosaurus?!

Unlike other self-styled lists of the same name I won’t limit myself to books published this year; only ones that I’ve read. And I’m going to choose my top ten.

(Ed. Don’t tell me, it’s going to be in no particular order.)

That’s right. In fact, it’s going to be in chronological order.

(Jeez!)

1. Don Quixote. What a way to start the year. This was my dad’s favourite book and I bought it because I felt I should read it. I shouldn’t have worried. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are fantastic characters. So funny I read bits out at work, my pen a sword, my computer screen a shield.

2. Donjong Heights by Ben Borek. This is a novel in verse. And if that puts you off then don’t let it. Donjong Heights is the Eugene Onegin of its day, but set in a tower block in South London. Our hero, unnamed, is dying. This novel follows his last throw of the dice, a Christmas Party. A perfect novel for Christmas!

3. The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. This is the history of Reaganite / Thatcherite neo-conservatism. It’s particularly pertinent right now as capitalism totters and the neo-cons fall further out of favour. What was good for other countries, it seems, is not good for America.

4. Day by A L Kennedy. I loved this book, Kennedy is a genius. Day is the eponymous hero, returning to be an extra in a prison of war film, shortly after the Second World War in which he fought as a gunner. Both a love story, and a book about the horror of war.

5. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris. Being chosen by Richard and Judy seemed to be a double-edged sword for this book. Looking at all the negative reviews on Amazon a lot of people, it seemed, just didn’t get it. I did. Narrated by ‘we’ and set in an office but so much more than that.


“I listened to Karen Woo give an explanation of photosynthesis once. God only knows why they were discussing photosynthesis. They hung on her every word, like she was a PBS special. *Her explanation didn’t even involve sunlight.*”

6. Pandora in the Congo by Albert Sanchez Pinol. I bought this as it has an awesome cover. It is also an awesome book, an adventure in the 19th Century mould, a journey into the Congo and a lost world and strange creatures found. It also turns into a treatise on the power of story telling.

7. City of Thieves by David Benioff. A buddy novel if ever there was one. A teenage boy, Lev, and a soldier, Kolya, are given a stay of execution during the siege of Leningrad. The condition is they must find a dozen eggs for the commander’s daughter’s wedding cake. What follows is an absurd adventure.

8. Fiasco by Thomas E. Ricks. As the name suggests this book is about the Iraq war and the best I’ve read. It takes you from the first Gulf war and then through the whole kit and caboodle concentrating on styles of leadership – how to fight or not fight a guerilla war.

9. Blindness by Jose Saramago. The first time I picked this up in Borders I was put off by the lack of punctuation, pages of unbroken text. Actually, it’s not difficult to read. It’s like a Hollywood blockbuster with brains (and shit). Read it and see although don’t read it while eating.

10. What We Talk About When We Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. The best and only sport book I’ve read this year. Murakami started running at the same time he became a full-time novelist – sitting at the desk he was getting fat you see. And he applies to running the same methods he applies to his writing. In it’s quiet and dedicated way this book is inspirational.

So that’s it, my ten favourite papery multi-leafed things of the year. And there were also plenty of other nearly-rans. Seeing them here makes me realise how much better my life is for books, and how much worse it would be without them.


What would I do in my lunch-hour at work? When I wake up in the morning? Go to bed at night? And I think of all the pleasures I would have missed.

(Ed. Pass me the sick bag.)

Books, you are great!

Currently listening to: Day and Age, The Killers


Currently reading: This Book Will Save Your Life, A M Homes (brilliant so far. The horse has just fallen in the hole and been saved by the movie star in his helicopter.)

Drew Gummerson is the auther of Me and Mickie James

Saramago and 50 Christmas Words Competition

There’s a great interview with Jose Saramago over on the Guardian site this week. If you don’t know, he’s a Nobel Prize winning Portuguese writer. The film of his book, Blindness, is out around about now.


Saramago starts with a big idea and works it through to its logical end. For example, Blindness starts with the someone going blind and then one by one everyone else in the population goes blind.


At the opening of Seeing an election is held; almost no one votes. Another election is held. Even fewer people vote. Democracy crumbles.


This is good advice for writers – write about Something.


What I didn’t know about Saramago was that he didn’t become a writer properly until in his 60s. Before that he worked as a car mechanic.


This is heartening to know. I can spend the next 22 years working on my next book and still be a spring chicken next to Saramago. However, I’d rather not be a car mechanic being no good with small parts.


It’s lucky I didn’t choose to be a pop star. As Louis Walsh said to Eoghan Quigg on X Factor last night.


“You’ve got everything it takes to make it in the music business. You’re young, you’re on a tv show, you’re Irish.”


I’m neither young, Irish, or on a TV show.


There are plenty of other writers who have made it while elderly. Post Office, Bukowski’s first book appeared when he was in his 50s, and Penelope Fitzgerald didn’t become published, like Saramago, until her 60s.


And look at Doris Lessing, dancing the Fandango at her Nobel ceremony, leaping out of taxis. She’s 89.


(There a good Lessing site up at the moment – you can read The Golden Notebook online and there are ongoing discussions by a number of chosen readers jostling for position on the sidelines.)


Lessing, like Saramago, was also a communist. Saramago says he still is. I agree, as we watch capitalism crumble.


The problem we are in is due to cheap lending and over-borrowing. The answer to the problem seems to be to reduce interest rates to encourage more borrowing so people can spend. This will stimulate the economy.


When the economy is stimulated interest rates will go back up and people will be asked to pay back the money they borrowed and never had and we will fall back into recession.

1. Idea for book. America, through its economic dominance, forces laissez-faire economic policies on emerging economies (see Argentina, post-Soviet Poland, post-apartheid South Africa et al). This brings about widespread unemployment, poverty, starvation and hardship.


Interventionist economic policies are not allowed.


When own economy starts to stumble, intervention is suddenly the thing to do. Let’s give lots of money to banks.


It will be a picture book. Louis Walsh will produce a CD to go with it. Westlife will perform a number of songs they haven’t written themselves and sing them without passion but a disenfranchised population will lap them up mistaking it for art.

2. Idea for book. America elects black president and whole world slaps it on back. Its history of slavery and apartheid is forgotten. Africa which has already quite a few black presidents is largely ignored.

Saramago’s website apparently gets a million hits. He not only talks about writing but also gives out advice like recipes and marriage advice.

Therefore in a new column I write:

Marriage advice: A wife is good for warming your shoes by the fire. (This from Charles Darwin.)

I am currently running on my 50 Word Facebook group a 50 Christmas Word story competition. Write any 50 word story with a Christmas theme, post it on the group page and then the best ones will feature on this blog on the 20th December. They will also be a podcast to go with it if I can get my Christmas arse into gear.

And for those of you struggling to think of Christmas presents my book Me and Mickie James is still out and available to buy. Details on my website.

Currently reading: Broken Doll by Neil Campbell


Currently listening: Hurricane by Grace Jones

Bukowski: Poetry and Motion

Zola Budd and Big Books

I am Zola Budd or an aspiring bum. Remember her, when they did get her in spikes you didn’t know if you were watching track and field or a remixed edition of Death Race 2000.


My shoes have about given up the ghost. Wafer thin would be an insult to wafers. Do wafers still exist by the way or have they been bludgeoned out of the market by those sharks at Hagaan and Daaz?


“You can’t eat peppermint bark ice-cream out of a freakin wafer!”


I noticed this most eloquently when my bike back tyre veritably exploded across the highway this morning on my way to work. A quiet fizz actually but I’m trying to induce a sense of buzz.


A two hour walk to the bike shop and back highlighted the limitations of my footwear; a bargain 2 and a half years ago in a department store in KL. They were even in my size!
Hence the Budd allusion. She was a long distance bird. Not so our current climate. Note the god-like status of that Bolt down the back straight.


Long is out. See the article in today’s Guardian. Those long books, shortlisted for this year’s Booker (oh, feel the irony!) are just not popular with the punters.

“The two longest titles by Toltz and Hensher, which both run over 700 pages, have sold the fewest copies, while the shorter books, by Adiga and Grant, have sold best.”

But like Budd I don’t mind long.


(For regular readers of this blog you will actually know I am more Billy Budd that Zola Budd. Billy Budd being Melville’s gay sailor – Melville of Moby Dick fame. I am a fan of that too. ‘Call me up sometime Ishmael’.)


Of the short-listed books I most am looking forward to the Toltz and Hensher once I’ve got a spare month in the country. As an aside Hensher writes in Devon, in a house with no mobile, tv, computer.


(But why, I thought, doesn’t he just book a allocation-on-arrival last-minute-deal with Thomas Cook which offer the same facilities? Perhaps it is the chavs in the next room arguing over the time difference between Spain and Essex – is it one hour ahead or one behind? Or is it an hour and a fucking half? They want to be in the bar downstairs in time for Eastenders.


Actually now I am pandering to popular mores. I wouldn’t know a chav if I slept with one.)


Oh for the trappings of wealth and a room of my own.


It has to be said that big books are daunting. I mean who would you go in a ring with, Slim Shady of Cassius Clay? Cassius Clay, though, is quite the guy.


I am currently reading Our Mutual Friend (700 hundred pages plus) and am hooked fifty pages in. A body is washed up in the Thames, an inheritance is lost and some funny lines in between. I particularly like this description -

“…am immense obtuse drab oblong face, like a face in a tablespoon, and a dyed Long Walk up the top of her head, as a convenient public approach to the bunch of false hair behind.”

And last year I was captivated by Don Quixote, all three hundred million pages of it. I enjoyed them each and every one.


Not that I am going to start writing long books myself. Short books apparently are easier to sell and I’m ready to pluck any advantage going.


I need that new pair of shoes.

Currently reading – Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens


Currently listening to – Some People Have Real Problems, Sia

Sia – Soon We’ll Be Found (this is awesome!)

Sitges, Sitges, Sitges….

So said the barwoman of the hotel terrace bar. We we looking down on the church, at a green laser light playing on the ground. It was nothing really, like something a kid would have.


The palm trees along the avenue were lit with a subdued light. The sea was subdued too, and overhead planes made their descent towards Barcelona airport. It was about 1 a.m.


“This song is my life,” said the barwoman, a tear welling in her Spanish eyes as she slid a JD and a glass of wine towards us.


There is something about fifth storey terrace bars. You always want to jump off of them, especially this one as the walls are waist high, glass. You can sit in your chair and there in front of you is the sea.


But it was the same from the hotel balcony and the top of the Sagrada Familia. Top tip for Barcelona, don’t go into here. It’s about £20 for the two of you, if you are two, and whereas you used to be able to walk up the steps to one of the towers now you have to go in a lift and pay £2 for it.


This is progress. They can’t finish the building but they can put in a lift. One of many problems I have with Catholicism.


Also from the hotel balcony I saw a cat, black. It was scrawny and liked sitting by the hotel pool in the morning until one of the staff came and threatened it with a broom. It was no match for the broom, this cat, and it was off up a wall.


There was another cat. A man came out of the door adjacent to the fish restaurant where we were eating. He put down some scraps in tinfoil and a cat appeared. After it finished eating it leapt up the door and just hung there by its two front paws.


Actually there were loads of cats. And Labradors being walked along the kilometres of sea front. And bars on the beach. One had every chair different, long sofas, rattan boxes with spikes on the back, lanterns hanging, candles burning, a waitress like a cross between Julia Roberts and Mae West. She sat with her back to the clientele, usually only us, chain smoking Russian cigarettes and drinking cheap brandy. When it came to pay they had forgotten what you’d had. We went there every night.


Sitges is an old town with little twisty streets. There’s a chicken restaurant its walls adorned with famous footballers you’ve never heard of. There is a bigger concentration of underpant shops than anywhere in the world. Mannequins leer from display windows, in Calvin Klein briefs or see-through underwear, briefs, thongs and so on.


The see-through underwear I imagine you would buy to get a discount rate for entry onto the nudist beach just before the harbour.


There are no shops that sell inflatable things, beds, hammers, penises, with which to waft yourself out to sea on. There is no rock, kiss-me-quick hats, tacky postcards.
House prices are very expensive.


I want to rent an apartment and spend my summers here. I want to go down to the port and imagine myself owning one of the yachts. I would sail it in my see-through pants and be happy. I would write sun-soaked books and grow old. Actually, I will probably do that anyway.


That is the nature of the beast.

****

One of my stories, Troy and Me, has just been featured on the Untitled Books website. Untitled Books was recently chosen as a website of the week by the Guardian. Also this month is an interview with Will Self and Ali Smith talking about ‘How I Write’.

Currently reading – Seeing, by Jose Saramago
Currently listening to – Happiness is the Road, Marillion

How I Write

I try and write every day although this is not always possible. On the days when I can’t write I spend a good part of the day thinking, ‘not writing today, but can do tomorrow’, or, ‘Tuesday!’


On the days when I can’t write I tend to be more moody, antsy, anxious, impatient, depressive, pessimistic, gloomy. On those not writing days I feel that that’s it, my life might as well be over. When I’m writing the sun shines.


I write best in the mornings. Some days I could probably start writing at two o’clock in the afternoon but this is unlikely.


As, in my head, I need to be up early in the morning, in my head, I also need to go to bed at a reasonable time; midnight or earlier. This means if you try and keep me up late I will become more moody, antsy, anxious…. See above.


Writing is fun!


I write in my living-room. There is an alcove under the staircase. I face a wall and on my right is a shelving unit holding all my CDs and DVDs. My books are upstairs. I don’t know if this is significant.


I can’t write listening to music. A lot of writing is not writing. I will make lots of cups of tea, sit at the computer starting at the screen, pace up and down the floor, throw myself in anguish on the sofa.


Then there will be a sudden spurt when I write hundreds of words. This is the good part. All that hanging around and throwing myself against sofas is the annoying part and something I’d like to cut out.


I don’t write all day although I feel that I should. I tell myself that a thousand words is a reasonable amount and once I’ve hit that I can stop. This will probably take about three hours although some days I will write longer than this.


‘Telling myself’ and ‘reasonable’ are the key words there. Because what I really feel is a sense of guilt if I’m not writing. I feel that I should be pushing myself harder because writing is an escape and I haven’t escaped yet.


Writing is hard!


There is always something else to do. Sitting at a computer which is connected to the internet offers endless temptation. At a click away there is news, book reviews, newspapers, Amazon, iPlayer, my own website (‘I’ll just have a quick look.’ ‘It’s static you fool! It doesn’t do anything!’), porn, Facebook, MySpace, the weather in Angola, the annual yield of wheat in the Southern American States and so on but not always in that order.


I write on an Apple Mac computer using the iWork word processor. I like that I can move individual letters to any position on the screen although I have never done this. Perhaps I am reassured that post-modern techniques are only a mouse click away.


There are always new markets to explore!


The Mac is also great for doing my website, recording podcasts, looking at unsavoury things on the internet in super sharp quality. See above.


I have often read that writers don’t like to read other writers when they are writing. They feel that it will unduly influence their own style. It’s not a rule I follow. 1) Because I am writing most of the time and would therefore never read. 2) If I happen to start writing like Haruki Murakami, Rupert Thomson, Jose Saramago I really don’t mind.


Bring it on!


I would like to say that my writing is carefully planned and I know exactly where I’m going but this is not the case. I heard another writer at a talk who said she had the plot mapped out on a spreadsheet, so many pages for each scene.


That wouldn’t work for me. I start with the characters and a general idea of where I want the story to go. As I’m writing things happen, new characters appear. In the thing I’m working on at the moment a new character, Dave, sprang up in the very first chapter. If I had it all planned out what would happen to Dave! These are things to consider.


Each writer must work out what’s best for them. And for Dave!


If you asked me why I write then I would have to say I don’t know. I do know that it makes me happier and that is its own reward. The below is nice too though:

Drew Gummerson’s latest novel, Me and Mickie James, was published by Jonathan Cape in July 2008.
Reviewed here: Guardian, Time Out, Morning Star, Gaydarnation, Pulp, ABCTales, BookMarks, Chroma, and others that aren’t online.


Read interviews with Drew here: Dazed and Confused, Gaydarnation, Chroma.


Check out his website for forthcoming events and publications.

Currently reading: The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman


Currently listening to: The Wind Up Bird Chronicle (audiobook), Haruki Murakami

Sam Jordison reads from his new book

Geezer comes into shop…

For those of worried that I was ballooning my way across the eastern counties I have actually made it to the gym today. Well almost. It is so long since I’ve been I was quite sat down in Frankie and Benny’s, ordered a dinosaurTM t-bone streak and two pints of Dos Equis, the first just for thirst, before I quite realised I wasn’t in the gym.


No matter. I did make it. And the first thing I saw, ‘Buy four pints of Stella and get a pizza free.’


No word of a lie. David Lloyd Gym. Meridian Pleasure Park. It’s a dream.


Today being a pay-day and also my first day off work I minced my way into town. First port of call was BBC Radio Leicester. They are interviewing me next Friday, 8th August, 3pm (listen here) and I thought I’d drop off a copy of my book. I love the BBC (see early posts) so I’m looking forward to it.


In my head it will be just like that Clint Eastwood film where he plays a radio DJ and the woman becomes obsessed with him. Play Misty For Me. I am already arranging to have my hair blown dry into a similar style. Although I will not be the DJ and I’m not quite sure who is going to be obsessed with who.

That’s the beauty of live radio! Anything can happen.


Two days after that I am at Leicester’s Summer Sundae festival. You can catch me 2:50pm being interviewed with Welsh poet and novelist Joe Dunthorne on the ‘deckchairs’.
Thing I am most looking forward to. This is the ‘deckchairs’. Will they be like deckchairs? Or are ‘deckchairs’ very different.


Joe is doing some poetry earlier so I’m also looking forward to that. And also Fish is doing some poetry too. And I’m also looking forward to that.


Last week I had my ears syringed. I will be able to hear this poetry.


This week there was a really nice review of Me and Mickie James over on Gaydarnation, and I’ve seen a couple of other nice ones too. I’ve put up a list on my website. And I was also interviewed for Chroma, and found that you can read my interview for Dazed and Confused here.


Oh, and the cover for The Global Village in which I have a story is up and running.
I wonder what I’ll do when all this is over the phone stops ringing. Actually my phone almost never rings.


So, I wonder what I’ll do when the metaphorical phone stops ringing. Maybe I’ll get back to reading. I bought 8 books today. In the style of Nick Hornby I’ll tell you what they are:

1. Lovers and Losers – Paul Burston


2. The Oxford Murders – Guillermo Martinez


3. The Beach – Alex Garland (I’ve read this before when I was in Australia but a friend of mine was talking about it to me last week and then today I found myself in a second hand bookshop and there it was.


There was some comedy dialogue in the bookshop. Geezer comes in. Plonks down plastic bag on counter. ‘Do you buy old books?’
‘Depends what they are.’
Geezer looking round like a geezer. ‘It’s by a don.’
‘Ah John Donne, the poet.’
‘No a don.’
‘Adon?’
This goes on for a while.
Geezer ‘It’s from 1890. Some poetry. Got a Latin name but it’s not in Latin. Written by an MP. He went mad. Wrote the poetry first, of course.’
‘Of course.’)


4. The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch. (I read quite a lot of her when I was in America. She was on a course. Her writing. Not her. She’s quite mad.)


5. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running – Haruki Murakami (a new book by my favourite writer. The title is a play on a Raymond Carver title. Yeah!)


6. Show Me the Sky – Nicholas Hogg (he is a fellow, along with me, ‘Win A Book’ choice on Pulp.net. So marketing does work!)


7. City of Thieves – David Benioff (I read his short story collection ‘When The Nines Roll Over. Fab)


8. The Good Angel of Death – Andrey Kurkov. (By the man who wrote about the penguins.)

And I’m also writing a new short story for the Time Travel Opportunists who I met at my launch. Actually I’m more thinking about it than writing it. But it’s there in my head. Wacky Races.

Ciao.

It’s out…!!!!

Which is a pity, partly as this week’s blog was going to be about vests.


I saw a feature in a magazine recently, Top 50 Vests of the World! and I thought I quite fancy one. Can, I thought, a 37 year old safely wear a vest these days?


It’s not as if I’m just anyone. In last week’s Boyz magazine I was the 49th Great Gay Thing. There I was perched gayly above Robbie Williams at no. 50 and the Ukraine Eurovision Song Contest entry at no. 48.


The very next day I was in Debenhams, the Top Man concession, looking for a papoose for my forthcoming stint in Prague when there before more was a whole rack of fashion vests. I managed to desist.


I kind of regret it now. It’s one of those things that I’ll have to live with. Luckily, I have Me and Mickie James finally coming out to cheer me up. It is now available to buy on Amazon and apparently in the shops.


I am a little disappointed that it wasn’t whisked down the Thames in the butt cheeks of a naked sailor a la the new Bond book, but I am pretty excited nevertheless.


Now I have the worry of wondering whether anyone will buy it. But as they say in the Post Traumatic Stress Handbook I am ‘thinking positive, staying positive’. This book is issued to all soldiers and is quite a read.


‘In the event of post-traumatic stress, please avoid all loud explosions’.


‘Feeling stressed! Why not take in a movie?’


And,


‘Always remember to drink plenty of water.’


(In a brief aside, from the blog stats page on my WordPress account I know a lot of people come to this blog after searching for Mickie James the wrestler. I am sure that she is lovely but my Mickie James isn’t her. My Mickie James is a hunchback. I should further add that I don’t know what Mickie James (the wrestler’s) oiled breasts look like, nor do I have pictures of her naked, whether she has a boyfriend, or what her address is.)


(In a second aside it’s true I did write a story Arse Licking for Beginners but again I am not an expert. If you are looking for an ‘arse licking award’ or ‘man licking woman’s arse’ you are going to be disappointed.)


Finally.


I spoke to a very nice lady at the BBC yesterday.


“I liked your play,” she said, “but we’ve already commissioned a series of sci-fi dramas and I’ve been told not to take any more. Not even one.”


Me: “I didn’t think my play was science fiction.”


Very Nice BBC Lady: “It’s got a time machine in it.”

Currently reading – You Don’t Love Me Yet, Jonathan Letham


Currently listening to – The Hobbit, audiobook

A video someone pointed out on ABCTales – Book launch 2.0

Me and Mickie James Launch

I don’t know what’s happened to this week. It’s like a salt and vinegar crisp someone holds under your nose. You turn your head away, you turn back, and it’s gone. Just gone.


However, I have now confirmed the date for the Me and Mickie James launch party. It’s going to be on July 22nd starting at 6:00pm in Waterstones, Market St, Leicester. There will be a reading, a chance to buy the book and free refreshments and music. Afterwards will be drinks and things at The Basement Bar.


I’m not quite sure what the things will be (a naked dancing boy? Several naked dancing boys? Lots of them?) but it will certainly be a good chance to buy me a drink. Haha.
Everyone is welcome. Especially as I have visions of myself standing alone in an empty room full of wine and books. Now you put it like that…


If you want to come just email me here or just turn up. Or if you have Facebook the event is here.


In my head I have been thinking about what I want to say. This is usually witty and erudite but I will probably turn out to be more like Bukowski. He was so shy that he used to get drunk before he was on and then become abusive. People loved it. Anything like the success of his novel Post Office would be amazing. He wrote it in a couple of weeks and then it went on to sell millions.


Of course any kind of success would be amazing. It’s quite a scary thing, wondering if this thing that has been produced with my name on it is just going to disappear.


I’ve had two emails this week which have started, ‘I know you must be very busy.’ If being ‘very busy’ means sitting watching the snooker every day and drinking beer then I am. Definitely. I am really very very busy.


I had a nice day in Sheffield last Tuesday thanks at the World Championship and I am there again tomorrow. Keep your eyes peeled. I will be the one in the audience naked except for a copy of Me and Mickie James strategically placed ( balanced on my nose).


Well, you’ve got to haven’t you? And I can’t bear the thought of being on Big Brother.

Currently reading – Northern Lights, Philip Pullman (I loved reading Once Upon a Time in the North last week and now have started on the Dark Materials trilogy. It’s great.

Currently listening – Hallam Foe, Original Soundtrack

Young Adam music video