... but I stopped. Now I'm a dad, and may blog again...

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

380: Advice to Writers

...and now I am trawling AdviceToWriters.com for no good reason. Some of the quotes are incredibly stupid; most disagree with the others; some are pretentious arse; and the ones I like are just the ones that make me squirm in self-satisfaction, I'm doing that already... and now I'm starting songs and starting the next one too soon on spotify. After Autechre and Cylob I settle on Brian Eno Music For Airports. It has no beats, vocals, or distractions. It's just a background humming along by itself. Like a conversation in an unknown language it provides atmosphere without making unwanted encroaches on my attention.

I almost went for my second post-midnight cup of tea, but we are down to the last two bags, and they must be reserved for the morning. Instead I sup barleycup; that earthy caffeine-free hot brew that has been with me my whole life. Usually only found in healthfood, vegetarian and vegan shops, I am pleased to know it is owned by a company largely involved in producing pork and bacon (Smithfield Foods: Take a tour of our hog farms). Eat that, veggies! A recent disturbing trend is the arrival of barleycup granules. It's supposed to be a powder; stop pandering to the masses and their I don't know what to do with this instant hot drink because it doesn't resemble coffee which I am familiar with mentality. If they can't work out what to do with a jar of brownish powder, labelled with a picture of a hot drink in a mug, and named barleycup, then fuck 'em. Let them drink coffee; let them stay awake a little bit longer than intended.

Until I was about seven, I thought books were just there, like trees. When I learned that people actually wrote them, I wanted to, too, because all children aspire to inhuman feats like flying. Most people grow up to realize they can’t fly. Writers are people who don’t grow up to realize they can’t be God.

This may just about be true. I have yet to be convinced I cannot be, or indeed am not already, god. There is a void there that a lot of people seem to want filling. Many people even seem to think that their desire for a filling in the god-shaped hole means that god must be in there, being all creatory and spiritual. Man created the gods in his image, therefore I should fit fairly comfortably inside that little god-hole you are aching to fill.

Since the Satanist understands that all Gods are fiction, instead of bending a knee in worship to—or seeking friendship or unity with—such mythical entities, he places himself at the center of his own subjective universe as his own highest value. We Satanists are thus our own “Gods,” and as beneficent “deities” we can offer love to those who deserve it and deliver our wrath (within reasonable limits) upon those who seek to cause us—or that which we cherish—harm.

Sleep on your writing; take a walk over it; scrutinize it of a morning; review it of an afternoon; digest it after a meal; let it sleep in your drawer a twelvemonth; never venture a whisper about it to your friend, if he be an author especially.

Sleeping on work; hiding it away. These are unavoidable; I've been sleeping on the same book blastocyst for five years now. I only got a vague idea of how to develop a plot last summer (2010) and it has literally only started to make vague sense in my head in the last month. Various ideas I had put aside as been seperate projects for some distant imaginary future point, I suddenly reaslised would work combined as various characters and plots of the same book. But how can I never venture a whisper about it to my friend, or indeed family? People are want to ask how are you, what have you been doing, what are you writing, what's it about, etcetera, etc, et-fuckin-cetera.... The answers to those questions are fine, stuff,stuff, I don't know. There's a guy and a thing happens, and a dead guy, and someone, and there is a sort of thing and a thing and I haven't written it yet. If I wanted you to know what I had already written I would offer it up, and if I knew what was to happen I would be writing it now.

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

I have no idea where the story is going, but I'll get lead there eventually. The same applies to everything in life. The immediate example that springs to mind is this here blog post: I started off simply stating what I was doing, went around the houses, and got to this bit, commonly refered to as The End.

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