Paul Schiernecker

Blog

Skint.

Today is statistically a terrible day for me, every nineteenth of every month for the last three years is just a dumping ground for negative feelings in my body. Today is the day before payday.

I’m not a materialistic person (as I’m quite sure I’ve mentioned before) but money sure as hell makes me blue, mostly because I never seem to have any of it. I don’t know how I’ll ever survive if I do buy my own place (as intended) in the next couple of years. I think what really gets me about it is the fact that I don’t get to enjoy the fruits of my labour, I’ve pretty much stopped ‘going out’ of a weekend and I don’t waste money on clothes or DVDS really, it just leaves my account in repayments and direct debits from my previous life, and it’s hard to see a silver lining. I guess I should be thankful that on the whole my job doesn’t cause me that many problems, in fact I’m lucky to have a job and a wage, I completely understand that, but it’s natural to never be happy with your lot on life. What I really need to do is finish my redraft and send off my novel, it’s very much viewed as being my golden ticket, and I have total faith in it, so it’s just a waiting game for something to happen, but at least I’m trying, at least I’m trying.

April 19, 2012
The Push.

I’ve been with my girlfriend for a year and a half now and I’m beginning to get the push. That’s the term I’m going to use to describe it. It covers occasions where friends and family say things along the lines of ‘so errr….you’ve been together for quite a while now…errrrr when are you errrr gonna pop you know, the errr, the question’. It first came up at my cousins bar mitzvah when me and Kate had been dating for less than six months and my mothers cousin (oh, bless him) asked if we were engaged. What a question. Oh brother. It meant that we had to have a chat about it, to work out what we both thought of his ridiculous outburst and what it meant. Luckily for me Kate is very much on the same page as me for most things but I imagine there are a number of young men who do get engaged because people keep asking them when they are going to do it, after a while if you’re of a particular mindset/temperament/thin skin then those things start to burrow and grow.

I don’t have any issues with getting engaged or the sanctity of marriage, one day I would love to get wrapped up in all that but for the time being I still feel very young and I’m not going to let other people influence when I change my life. I have friends who are happily engaged or even married who orchestrated the thing entirely under their own steam and not as a result of the push and it seems to be working for them. The important thing to remember is that like most things there is a choice, and for the time being I am perfectly happy with what I’ve got going on.

April 18, 2012
Tupac from the dead.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve watched the footage of Dre and Snoop at Coachella this weekend with a hologram version of their old playmate Tupac (who was shot dead in 1996) and it is absolutely incredible that something like that is possible but my fear is what it is leading to. There’s something a little unholy about it. I completely understand what a buzz it must have been to be there, to see an artist that you obviously never thought you would be able to see, ‘singing’ ‘onstage’. My problem is that it stinks of the kind of defamation that Kurt Cobain being computer-generated and forced to sing Bon Jovi and the like as part of the Guitar Hero franchise did. It’s essentially a step above making a marionette of a corpse right?

I understand that the show had the complete support of the Shakur family but there’s just something uncomfortable about it. Then again we search high and low for footage of Cobain, Morrison, Vicious, Hendrix and anyone else who was taken before their time so is this anything different. I wonder how long it will be before another singer is drafted back to the staff through the power of technology. My money is on Elvis.

April 17, 2012
Frustrated.

I can’t help the feeling that I waste an awful lot of time, and I don’t mean that in the terrible habit of procrastination sense. What I mean is that there are around twelve hours every week day when I am out of the house and unable to work. This is because I am at my job, which I must tell you is far different to my work. My work is writing, something I’ve wanted to do since I was about five years old, and have done with guiltless abandon since. My job is a different matter altogether.

When I was at university I wondered where I would end up, how I’d earn my way in the world, how I’d start paying back those damn student loan cats and here we are, I work in an office in London. It’s a far cry from the boy who wanted to be C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien. I know it has to be done, I know we all do it, but that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t think it’s fair and that it just seems to detract from what I want to do and what I now appreciate I am capable of doing. I know writing will probably never be stable enough for me to rely on it as a steady form of income but I know I’ll keep doing it as long as I’ve got ink and fingers (and even if either of those should go I’ll find a way).

The fun of writing is therefore restrained to weekends, a time when I can’t really face doing anything a lot of the time because I’m trying to get over my job. Oh woe is me, stop it this instant, you’ve got a job, you’ve just finished your first novel, you’re young and in love and there’s plenty more of all that (wherever it came from).

I’m sorry, sometimes it is just hard to remember the track you are on, and you have to just scream into the abyss.

April 16, 2012
We need more Sundays.

It’s such an underrated day, anything can happen on a Sunday. Today I’m going to visit my Mum to watch some home videos of when I was five that I haven’t seen forever and then me and the girlf are going to hers to see her cousin (and her baby) and then I’m going to see my friends from Improv perform, what a mixed bag of a day, no other day could get that combination going on.

The important thing to remember is you can do anything today. Go.

April 15, 2012
Why they were right all along.

I went for a bike ride at lunchtime today. I think it’s the first time I’ve ridden a bike since approximately August 2005, they were right, it isn’t something you forget. That wasn’t even the point I was trying to make, that was just (possibly) a fact. The thing that I’ve realised they were right about all along is the benefit of fresh air and exercise.

I have found (since I started my fairly laissez-faire routine) that I breathe deeper and clearer, that my posture is better, that my eyes seem bluer for fucks sake, and it’s all down to the fact that I managed to quit smoking, cut back on my drinking and get out and do something. It’s such a basic thing to do but the benefits are really impressive. I feel brighter. I’m more focused, it’s like everything that Ritalin promises but it’s a natural high. Isn’t that a kicker!

What I’d say is put down the remote control/controller/pipe and go out in the sun for a bit, it’s better than spending five minutes contracting cancer in a UV booth in a pair of paper knickers.

Written in my garden.

April 14, 2012
Redrafts are hard.

Straight up. Simple as that. I could just not write anymore. The statement alone does it all. I won’t stop there though, because you’re already hanging on my every word.

I’ve established the reason I don’t ever redraft anything is that you’re basically accepting that you didn’t get it right initially. I’m one of those incredibly annoying trivial people who like to be right about everything (and to be right in the first instance). I hope there’s a bit of that in you as well or you will have already been turned irreversibly from me.

Last night I started redrafting my novel, a task I have simultaneously put off myself and been told to put on hold by others. Everyone says you should give it some space before you start in on it again but I can’t sit still. In the three weeks since I finished my novel I have drafted no less than five short stories for a compilation due by the end of the year, in the words of Led Zeppelin: ‘I gotta roll, can’t stand still, got a flaming heart, can’t get my fill’ – yeah, that works quite nicely.

It turns out that an appropriate amount of time has passed because in the four pages (of one hundred and sixty eight) I managed to read through last night there were bits that jarred or just should have and could have been written better, and that’s just what the process is for, I know it’s going to cause me many a sleepless night but the whole thing is a true labour of love, and therefore something I want to get exactly right.

For those asking when they can read it start an orderly queue outside your local bookstore, I’ll be right with you.

April 13, 2012
Salinger.

There are two initials that seem to follow me, they have done since my teens, since I was introduced to Catcher In The Rye at the sweet age of sixteen, this initials are J.D.

I am currently re-re-re-reading For Esmé; With Love & Squalor and I had forgotten how true an artist Salinger really is. It’s easy to just skim over the details when reading a novel but the way Salinger does it is like nothing else, I’m biased I suppose, I’ve been an advocate for practically a decade. I think what I like about reading his stuff is that it showed me that not all books are about bold adventures, or larger than life characters, there is something beautiful in the description of the tasks of the every day and the humdrum conversations we all have, if you harness that you can pull it apart and that’s what he seems to do so well, any of his work is a pleasure to get lost in, and it relit my love of reading at an age when I guess a lot of other people are getting turned off.

His reach extends beyond literature and his influence can be felt in any of Wes Anderson’s films; the flawed character, the questionable psyche, the endless smoking, it’s all there and it’s a wonderful compliment to a man who turned so far from the limelight that it’s hard to martyr him now.

April 12, 2012
I miss you.

I keep getting to thinking about the people I’ve lost in the last couple of years, it’s a process which I’ve been nobly informed is called ‘reality checking’ where you think of something you want to tell the person and then remember that unfortunately it isn’t a possibility, that they aren’t there to be told, and that really hurts. I think that’s when I miss them most of all.

After finishing the first draft of my novel there were five people I immediately wanted to tell and three of those aren’t with me anymore. It upsets me that they never got to see me finally get my act together and ‘finish it already’ as my dear Grandma put it, I know they’re all watching over and that’s all well and good but it doesn’t change the fact that not a day goes by where I don’t have to reality check.

I guess what I’m trying to say is never leave a room on bad terms, always tell people you love them and hold them forever.

April 11, 2012
Shantaram

I jumped into this book knowing very little about it which I believe is always an agreeable experience, if you haven’t read it I would recommend going and doing so before you read any further which somewhat depletes this being any kind of review, which means I’m writing for myself, which I believe should be the first bulletpoint on a list of why anyone writes.

Shantaram is the story of ‘Linbaba’ to give him the title he assumes for most of the book, an Australian convict who escapes his sentence and makes it to Bombay where he becomes tied to life there – (See, still keeping it broad, don’t want to give too much away)

At this stage I don’t know how accurate the information contained in the story is, I’m really hoping its not another Million Little Pieces because it broke my heart to learn that wasn’t entirely true or it wasn’t the writers experience or however else the lie was worded. What I will tell you is what I took away from reading it, hence ruining any chance of this being considered a review.

There is something so incredibly brutal and unforgiving about the protagonist, he’s done time, he sees no issue with busting skulls or asserting himself but at the same time he has the kind of soul that isn’t usually worn quite so on the sleeve, he’s as hard on himself as he is on his competition, he has a strong moral code (of his own devising) and stands by it when everyone else has clearly gone made. What I’m trying to say is that this guy has the ability to kill and the ability to love and the joy of the book is that you never know which you’re going to get. I imagine that when Hollywood get their hands on it Tom Hardy will be short listed for the lead.

April 10, 2012