NYR

Recently a friend told me my social media presence (TM) (no, she didn't use those words) was becoming weirder by the tweet. I told her I couldn't possibly take social media seriously and that I was sick of all the self-important bullshit that goes on there. The weirder, I said, the better.

I stand by this. If I have a new year's resolution for 2012, that's it.
 
The weirder, the better.

Apologies in advance to those who want sense.

So this is what it's come to

Apparently The Monthly doesn't need to explain what a job entails in order to hire for it:



Imagine the emails Ms Costello must be receiving. Imagine!

In Little Ireland

I've been describing the place where I'm living now, Little Ireland, as being like an episode Breaking Bad set at the Bates Motel. This is far from wrong but I realised tonight that it's more than that.

I'd gone out to pick some fennel by the train tracks because, well, that's where it grows. I thought of Nina Simone, of Trouble in Mind, as the wind caught the trees and the grey skies slipped interminably overhead.

Hatted, in a shirt and pinstripe trousers, the caretaker of my place looks like a Cohen Brothers character. He was climbing the stairs to his cottage at the crossroads, and I had a sudden vision of him ushering someone, hands tied, into the dust of a deserted road before shooting them in the back of the head with a double-barreled shotgun.

He turned and saw me; waved.

The vision shifted: he was in his living room, the hat on the arm of his chair, the barrels in his mouth and his eyes turned to heaven.

The streets were empty; thunder troubled the fresh-mown plains. Mist crept across the hilltop and although there weren't Twin Peaks, the trees at the summit vanished like spectres of teeth in a broken bottom jaw.

The fennel grows in thick green foams by the railway, where the only sound was the thrum of wind in the powerlines. I picked in listening silence, but I couldn't tell the tune.

The hotel looked closed, but it always looks closed: it was open, I knew, because the town dog sat waiting by the door. For some reason, every time I near it, I think I hear saloon-style piano tinkling through its leadlight windows. Of course, there's no piano there. There never was.

Rain was coming. It made the soil sing the scents of death, made the road smell of stone. A forgotten barn sagged before rowed pines; its empty door and windows shot a vacant stare across the new-sown barley. And when the rain finally came, the sky was the colour of tender flesh, and the birds made, fast, for the safety of the leaves.

Not the block

So I don't really go in for writers' block, as you may have noticed. The secret, as far as I can see, is to have something to say. If you have something to say, you can generally find a way to say it. Simple.

But there are, very very occasionally, times when I find that, although I have plenty to say, the words just don't go together.

The last time this happened was in October, 2010, when I had a fairly intense contract that exercised my "creative muscle", as they call it, to the point of strain. It was fine, I got it all done, no one was let down and no deadlines were missed, but the work started taking a whole lot longer, and when I wasn't writing, my brain sort of exploded into atoms. I couldn't really think much any more. I did a lot of staring.

Like an actual physical muscle strain (to continue that trite metaphor), it just took time to pass. Patience and less pressure were required. I could still write; I just couldn't write endlessly at breakneck pace on any topic day in, day out for a while.

So too now. I keep thinking to myself, "I just need to get through one more week," but all the telltale signs are there: the trouble constructing coherent sentences, the mindless blankness when not before a screen. Last night I sat for an hour staring out the window with a more profound vacancy than I feel it decent to relate...

Jesus, I'm doing it right now. Man, I really have to stop "warming up" here and get some shit done.

5 Articles on writing I never want to read again

The amount of rehashing that's done by writers writing about writing is really beyond the pale. And indescribably ironic. But not in a loveable kind of way—in a well-Christ-why-don't-you-just-set-my-hair-on-fire-and-be-done-with-it kind of way. Here are five cases in point:

1. How to write for the web.
If you consider yourself a writer, and you can't think how you'd write for the web yet, well, Joe, you've pretty much missed that boat on that one.

2. How to break writer's block.
Really? Isn't the answer obvious: stop reading, start writing? It doesn't take Einstein (or a submissions editor) to work that out.

3. Words you shouldn't use online.
One more whiney, sour-grapes, "weasel words" listicle and I'll stick this pencil in my eye. Or throw up. Possibly both, at the same time.

4. How to write better(er).
Surely the answer's obvious here, too: stop reading, start ... oh, you know where this is heading. (For the love of God, people, what part of this equation are we not getting?)

5. Writing is hard, let's talk about that for a while.
This is a growing field of content, and one that panders exclusively and, I postulate, insultingly, to those who can't write. Do you really want to read 2,500 "inspiring" words of another "author's" "journey"? Or do you want to read Fowler's Modern English Usage and find out, say, what a gerund is(n't)? I dunno kid, the choice is yours.

Mainstream Capote

As you may have noticed, I. Love. Capote. So last night, in need of respite from Franzen's terrible Corrections, in which the sense of impending doom is just about brain-exploding, I decided to give Breakfast at Tiffany's a try.

I've seen it, long ago, but I can't remember much about it. I don't know what it is about the writers of that time making heroes nothing but narrators, like walking megaphones (look at Fitzgerald's Nick Carraway in Gatsby), but I'm not at all for it. I want a narrator with something more than a keen eye. Like a motive or some impetus.

Anyway, that's point one. Point two is that the characters are so unlikeable. Anyone who thinks Holly Golightly is, as she would say, darling, is simply unable to see past Audrey Hepburn in the film adaptation. This character is a nightmare. There is nothing soft or lovely or even very interesting about her as far as I can see. But then maybe I'm put off by the way the men seem to idolise her for no reason other than her glamour. She objectifies herself as much as those around her do, and it's wearing thin already.

Anyway, these are my first impressions. Really, when you compare it with the glorious decline of Other Voices, Other Rooms or the sweet, simple sorrow-joy of The Grass Harp, Breakfast at Tiffany's is all a bit mainstream and boring and, dare I say it, dated, don't you think?

Yeah, maybe it's just me.

UPDATE: Yeah, no sale on B at T's. Early on, Holly tells the narrator that his stories will never sell because they're all description and nothing happens. I couldn't help but wonder if this was something someone had told Capote, and which he'd acted on in the case of Tiffany's, in order to get a book made into a movie. Sceptical, yes. But if you ask me, Capote (from In Cold Blood) makes an infintely more compelling movie that Tiffany's did. Sorry, Audrey.