A smushing of short stories is now a complete collection. Break out the glitter and Jaffa Cakes.
Yeah, an unpublished collection, but it's mine, it's gross and it's dark. And funny in a way that a really noxious fart makes you laugh and retch at the same time. I've spent a long time hunched over this laptop or scribbling in B&M notebooks and then carving it up with red ink until it's taken a nice twisted shape, like a cherry blossom tree subjected to bindweed.
Side note:
I've long-since discovered that chain coffee shops are not the place for writing and plotting. For a start, who has a spare £4 for a bitter creamy frappemoccaccinolatte when fun writing takes hours and a bitter creamy frappemoccaccinolatte takes about fifteen minutes to drink?
And, also, these shops are choked with office workers, hipster students and yummy mummies so it's not the best place to slam your fist down on the table and shout:
'Of course! Eric and Lauren didn't know they were brother and sister until after their first child was born!'
I mean, you could. But who has the time to explain?
And if you did, most people don't like discussing incest plot twists over blueberry muffins.
Glad I'm not most people.
So, a preview of story gunge to come:
- A small South Bank pawn shop that focuses their business on human organs
- A woman getting over a particularly sickening break-up bumps into one of her students at the GUM Clinic
- A palliative care nurse is spending the last hour of her shift concentrating more on her patient's earrings than her patient
- A man frozen in a coma from catching snowflakes on his tongue
- A psychiatric registrar doing a rotation with a maverick consultant in behavioural therapy
- A couple who find that their newborn gives them a new taste for life
- An artistic mother intent on fashioning a famous life for her perfect daughter
- A teenage boy at his girlfriend's wake who is more distracted by his erection than by mourning relatives
And more!
Now, time to edit, edit, edit. And drag a worthy synopsis together. And find an agent or publisher. And maybe have a blueberry muffin, because now I'm sort of hungry.
Barista! Fetch cake! And a maroon gel pen!
In my ongoing little quest, whereby I have lost many a dinky shoe in quicksand, to write something that can hold my attention longer than 20,000 words (without resorting to fluffing from there on) I am abandoning all the ridiculous notions I've picked up over the years of what 'good writing' looks like, what 'worthwhile writing' looks like and what 'sellable writing' looks like. I'm going rogue.
Of course, it would be more than delightful to be a published novelist, to have my stories looked upon with an air of validity. But, by thinking so highly of those things I have managed to squidge out the fun of the actual thing: writing. Since studying Creative Writing, all I have done is worry about the final 'thing' when the 'thing' is not even written.
Stupid. Incorrect. Whoops. Where did I ever pick up such bollocks? Answers on postcards to my tutors and careers guidance at school.
Now I'm throwing out all earlier efforts of what I thought fiction to be, where I thought I MUST be literary, where I thought I had to have a dazzling message burning into the retinas of Dear Reader. Instead I am going to have fun. Even if this new project is never published, is never even sent out to publishers, I am going to write it and enjoy it. I will take all the things I love, the strange things I have seen, the noise of places I've been and some seriously messed-up ideas of entertainment and grab it around the throat. What could possibly be more satisfying?
Back to the basics of writing for love, for the ride, for the thrill. Not with those dirty words 'editing', 'plotting', 'motifs' or 'marketability' sending copious amounts of nose blood onto the keyboard. The only dirty things here will be a special counter for the amount of times the word 'fuck' appears in the text.
Locate all previous 'manuscripts' [emits dark chuckle]. Ctrl + A. Del. Ctrl + N.
A new thing, now. Something that takes me back to my first loves: horror and comedy. The things that had my poor parents dragged into school because of Wednesday Adams attitude and chainsaw-heavy stories. Something that indulges my childish humour, my love of the shock and allows obsessional interests research to be fully indulged.
Basically, if Stephen King angrily rammed his car into Jasper Fforde's head and then they both went out and got drunk on Absinthe, ate too much cheese and headed out to save the world with quips and knives from hoards of deluded Londoners. That sort of thing.
Will it sell? Doubtful. Will I enjoy it? Oh, God, yes. This is something I am going to LOVE writing.
Organ pawning, Rippology, bounty hunters, tattoos, lollipop ladies, kebabs and strangely cold steel cupboards, this is going to be something that will make me laugh.
And then consult a psychiatrist as to if I should be laughing.
