Category: Other

I still live at home. You might think that’s bongus at twenty-five but I have a number of very good reasons. Unfortunately I also have a number of gripes about being the mother of my household, being the only one to take action about anything ever and just being mugged over in general. Case in point: I got home on Friday (with my beautiful girlfriend) and was ready to make us a delicious meal before cracking on with my letters to agents. As I made my way into the kitchen I noticed that the doorway was covered in ants, they were everywhere, crawling across the tiles of the kitchen, up the walls, it was fucking disgusting.
‘Dad’ I called out, ‘we’ve got ants’.
‘Oh yeah, I know, just hoover them up’. I then noticed our vacuum cleaner sat in the hall ready for the next invasion.
‘Dad, that’s not the answer’ I said.
‘Well what do you expect me to do about it’.
That’s the point when my head literally exploded and I’ve thought about it a lot. I expect him to take some responsibility, it’s a constant clash between us, I love my old man more than anything but I wish he had a little more drive and initiative sometimes. It’s bad enough that neither of my brothers have a lot of savvy (or can’t be bothered) but I expected a bit more from my dad.

This is where I realise that I’m moaning on like an old wife, but that’s what it feels like, and that’s what I’ve become. Somebody had to step up and unfortunately I was preconditioned for the role. Since I was very little I’ve been the sensible one, the tidy one, the reliable one, and it has split in two directions. It has developed a kind of OCD personality where I can’t stand mess being left, and it also means that when I let go I really let go. It doesn’t happen very often because my conscious self is also wary about making a mess of myself but when it does it manages it on a big scale. The first incident that comes to mind was a leaving party in Southend where I walked through an automatic door, fell down some stairs, went missing for about twenty minutes and then fell backwards off a wall. I’m a catastrophe. My point is if you get pushed far enough one way you end up swinging with more force back the other.

I’ve just sent ten copies of my novel out to literary agents. I’m really pleased with myself for getting it done and I’m not completely destroyed by the idea that I could get ten rejection letters, the important thing is that it is out there now.

I believe in the story and think that at some point and in some form it will be published, I just need to hold out. My next task is to complete the set of short stories I’ve started and stopped a couple of times in recent months. The plan for those is to launch them as a free download through eBooks or Kindle, just to get something out there and to have people reading my work. The short stories collection is currently called Where Did All The Money Go?, I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it to you before but it’s a number of adventures, anecdotes and incidents which I couldn’t squeeze into the novel itself, it will include some of the same characters and explore those mentioned in the novel. I’m quite excited about doing it because I feel a lot more comfortable with short stories than I do with a novel, it’s a lot less pressure to string the story out, you can get straight to the nuts and bolts of it.
In the meantime if anyone wants to read my novel Situation One then please let me know.

Tom Hardy is the kind of mental older brother you always wanted at school, the kind who would kick the shit out of anyone that gave you a hard time for wearing a Nirvana hoodie. He’s equal parts animal and machine and I bet he’d give an amazing cuddle.

The winning thing about Hardy is that he is quite forthright about his misspent youth. He will happily open up about his joyriding, subsequent arrest, drug problems, rehabilitation and eventual sobriety. He’s not another cookie-cut leading man, he’s a bit different and comes across as being on the edge constantly. His portrayal of characters like Bronson and Bane reveal a man who is completely comfortable with appearing right on the brink of crazy, a mass of muscle but with brains to see him through.

I think the appealing thing about Hardy is that he gets completely sucked into what he is doing, you’ll see him interviewed one week and he’ll be twitchy and closed and the next he can be open and hilarious. There’s an obvious talent to it and it could be described as ‘method’ which in recent years has just been used to describe Christian Bale’s ability to gain and lose weight for a role, or to shout at people he wants off the set.

Hardy gets so encapsulated that it comes across, at no point during Dark Knight Rises did I think I was watching a man, it was a comic book creation and I hope he has many more, and many different roles to come.

Yesterday I received my first ever piece of fanmail as a writer, that’s what I’m considering it to be anyway. Somebody I do not know personally took the time to say how much they had enjoyed my writing and it was very sweet of her and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Trying to find a literary agent or publisher is a gruelling task, there’s very little sense of achievement and it takes far too long to do, I like to get things done but for some reason compiling manuscripts, finding an agency, finding the correct person within that agency, writing a cover letter, trying to work out what should be in a synopsis, whether it’s worth paying a reading fee…. it’s all just thankless.

I appreciate it whenever anyone shows any interest in my writing, I really do, and friends and family and particularly my girlfriend give me a lot of support but I feel, and this is one of my many faults, that I don’t deserve that support or congratulations or whatever else, or that they are obliged to provide that support through their proximity to me and my life. It makes it hard to accept good feedback and creative criticism knocks more than it should but that’s my own thing and I’m dealing with it.

I think what I’m trying to say is that it’s a very lonely existence being ‘creative’ so anyone that reaches in is very much appreciated in turn. One of my friends recently told me that if she enjoys a book she will write to the author and tell them so. It’s something I had never considered (possibly because I read Salinger, Orwell, Hemingway, Kerouac) but I think it’s an amazing idea.
What I propose is that if you enjoy someone’s output whether that be a story, a poem, a song, photography, painting, an essay, whatever, please let them know, we all crave recognition.

My thoughts this morning have been consumed with my project, an attempt to bring together all my efforts. For some reason I’ve lost focus in the last couple of weeks but we will see what comes of it. I’ve got one of my songs on a loop in my head which I always take as being a positive thing.

I had an excellent weekend but don’t feel rested enough to be headed for work again. I wonder how the buzz of the Olympics has really effected London, I’ve already caught wind of people growing tired of the constant slow traffic of tourists across our capital but I take that as a given considering the size of the event.

Went for a run this morning. Calculated that I should be eating about three thousand calories a day to balance out the amount I burn running. So far I’ve eaten nothing.

Sorry, that was a bit all over the place today. I’ve got a new book to read which I’m happy about, I’ll let you know my progress.

Gummy mouth and scratchy eyes,can’t work out if it’s a two day hangover or hayfever or both. I got to spend last night with some of my favourite people in all the world and it’s caused me to wake up full of the joys of Spring.

The wonder of these friends is that we haven’t been together for a year (almost to the day) and yet as soon as that first round is placed on the table it is as if no time has passed at all, as if we are in Bar One, as if we have finished lectures for the day. The dynamic is just as good if not better with the wonder of hindsight. We tell each other stories that we had kept secret or that the others had blocked for various reasons, we laugh at some of the other characters and at ourselves and we make promises to get together more often.

In an ideal world there would be a small village that we could all live in, like we did five years ago but unfortunately lives move on and people have to move on but when we are together we regress in the best possible way.

X.

It’s sort of like when you accidentally start fancying your friends dad isn’t it? Some of you may think I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel with this weeks man crush but Neeson is a force to be reckoned with so hold your judgement for another two hundred words.

Here’s Neeson’s CV:
– Saved over a thousand Polish Jews from Nazi concentration camps.
– Trained Obi Wan (Ben) Kenobi and Batman.
– Was a magical lion with Christ/Doctor Who like regeneration powers.
– Killed the population of a small European country whilst on the hunt for his kidnapped daughter.
I know people will say ‘Oh they are just films’ but quite frankly I won’t stand for that kind of nonsense. I believe that Liam Neeson did those things, which were somehow captured on film, and they built the rest of the story ( or in Phantom Menace’s case the lack of story (Ooh ZING!)) around that. Neeson gives off the air that he could do anything. I imagine he could erect a flatpack wardrobe without using the instructions, or break a man’s neck with a pipe cleaner. He’s just cool as fuck and that’s why I’ve got a crush on him.

There’s nothing like the anti-climax of getting on a commenter train to London. Nothing like it. I’m surrounded by shells of men, bloated corpses, this can’t be what it’s all about.

I went for a run this morning. I ran out to the lake beyond the woods at the bottom of my road. I feel extremely privileged to be able to disappear into a little bit of wilderness every now and then, makes you appreciate things a little.

Whilst running I decided I’m going to scrap the recordings I’ve been working on an start anew. I can do better so I will do better. As I’ve previously said, running is my time. I get away and I see things differently to how they seem when I’ve shackled myself to my work.

It’s nice out today isn’t it, make sure you enjoy that instead of complaining about it.

I’m sat in the garden. That’s quite a revelation given the recent outbursts of weather.
This morning I got up and ran five miles.
Then I cleaned the bathroom.
Now I’m trying to get some work done.
It’s hard to concentrate when you can’t see your screen, you can just see your wonderfully pale shoulders glaring back at you in reflection.
I’m struggling to stay focused on anything, I’m pulling myself about way too much. Just need to stay the course, work out what I’m doing and stick to it, otherwise it’ll be another six months treading water and the start of another year where I promise myself that I’m going to get things going.
Yesterday I actually managed to sit down and shortlist ten literary agents that I’m going to send my novel off to. This was a depressing step. It’s quite impressive the number of agents who refuse to accept unsolicited or first time writers. You’d think that defeats the whole object of their position but what do I know. The important thing to note is that in the next week I should be sending my novel off to all of them, and then sitting by the front door like a dog waiting for those rejection letters so I can frame them all.
I’ve sort of sidelined my music for the time being because I’m just not happy with anything I do, which obviously points to the fact that I’m not actually able to create what I want, that it will always fall short and that I need to reevaluate.
In the meantime I’m going to catch some sun because I’m low on whatever vitamin you get from sunlight, and I’m going to drink some whiskey, and think of a time when I won’t have to moan about my first world problems.

After a couple of weeks of drifting I’ve finally started to sort things out, everything is on the move at once and I’m looking forward to the foreseeable future. I can’t go into details because I’m a superstitious little thing and I don’t want to mess it up by jabbering on about it. Rest assured that if things go my way you will all hear about it.