Please forgive me...

Look what happens when I can't think of anything to blog about...

Rules for writers...

Some great rules for writers in Guardian Review yesterday. Going to plough through them all and compile the ten rules that allow me to sit on my arse not writing. It'll be brilliant. Neil Gaiman throws up the best rule: 1 Write. Meanwhile, Ian Rankin expands on that with 2 Write lots. And I will allow Colm Toibin to have the final rule with his 2 Get on with it. Now, where are those Doritos?

Ten Rules For Writing Fiction at The Guardian

No regrets...

"Never," they (who? - source req'd ed) tend to tell you when you're involved in the writing of stories, "let the facts get in the way of a good story". What, then, is a fact? It's at times like this when I reach for the top shelf which is not, I hasten to add, the resting place for a vast collection of pornography but, in our home at least, the place where we store our reference library. First in line is The Concise Oxford Dictionary, which, even now, even after years of people paying me money to write misspelt claptrap, I wouldn't dare do without. A fact, the OED tells me, is "a thing that is know to have occurred, to exist, or to be true". For the sake of irony, I also turned to Wikipedia for its take on fact. "The term fact," she tells me, "can refer to, depending on context, a detail concerning circumstances past or present, a claim corresponding to objective reality, a provably true concept, or a synonym for reality." The word fact has been used in conjunction with an appearance by a certain Robbie Williams at last night's Brits awards, where he received a lifetime achievement award before performing a career-spanning medley of hits, which "was the highlight of the night for many inside Earls Court" (but not, I would suggest, outside Earls Court, where free will, freedom of expression and free thinking was upheld). The word fact has been used by Ian Youngs, a music reporter for BBC News in his report looking at the "real Brits Awards winners and losers". Mr Youngs's talked of the opportunity that RW was afforded to "remind us that his best anthems were huge, euphoric, communal and enduring pop landmarks." And the fact? "The fact that we needed reminding was also a bit sad because it means it must have been so long since he has had one of those mega hits." Is that really a fact? The fact that we needed reminding? Have we not just cast those "pop landmarks" aside because we now realise that they are insignificant? And isn't the claim that RW's best anthems were "huge, euphoric, communal and enduring", with the possible exception of Angels, a little bit grand? Youngs also praises Peter Kay's "withering one-liners". Peter Kay could certainly be described as withering, depending on the definition you opt for.

Churnalism vs journalism...

When I was employed in the heady world of news reporting I was certainly more Jayson Blair than John Pilger (while actually wanting to be Keith Waterhouse). If I were still tied to my desk, as we all were, I would have embraced twitter as a tool that had the potential to get me down the pub before 4.30pm. No surprise for me, then, to read Mercedes Bunz's Digital Content Blog post yesterday regarding the increasing relevance of social media in the day-to-day under-the-kosh efforts of journalists. We also get a nonsense pie chart graphic that an eight-year-old mucking about in Paint/Chris Morris would be extremely proud of:

What I really enjoy about this blog entry is its post-modern insignificance and pointlessness - it is itself an example of the kind of churnalism that results when hacks place too much importance on twitter as a news source. Bunzy's words are sourced from a survey conducted by Cision and The George Washington University but, generally, it's just noisy babble about nuthin'. More please!

Monkey business...

"We want to create a new model rights creation business developing Noel [Edmonds]'s ideas. That is where the real value is." - Charles Garland, Crystal Entertainment on plans for several new shows that could be hosted by the former House Party whizz. They include Beat the Monkey, a quizshow in which questions are asked but are chosen at random for contestants by a monkey picking up stones. More at the Guardian.

Burger that...

What is the point of a McDonald's drive through? I can hear some of you screaming the answer: "The point is to provide customers with the very convenient option of driving through; ordering your food and paying for it at one window, picking it up at the next before driving off, on your merry way, thinking nice thoughts about Ronald and his employees for enhancing your life and saving you the time you would otherwise have spent getting out of your car." Yet I have had nothing but bad experiences at drive throughs. We are constantly being asked to go and wait in a parking bay while our food is prepared. Then, parked in our bay, we wait and watch as a long succession of cars use the drive through in the way it was intended, collecting their food while ours never materialises. Yesterday the watching and waiting grew unbearable and I stormed in to the Cottingham Road, Hull franchise, clapping my hands in the way I had seen 'five star' McD's managers doing to rally their staff in the past. "Ok, ok, I'm ready for my drive through order now. I think that waiting ten minutes for an Egg McMuffin is long enough, don't you?"

Three members of staff behind the counter looked at me aghast, as if expecting fast food to live up to its name was somehow too much to ask. One member of staff, a dopey looking girl sans stars, clutched three McD's bags of food. I was told the order was on its way. "Is it in one of those bags? I will take it now." "It is one of those, but we don't know which one. We will bring it to you." "Well, can you look, find it and hand it over? Because that will be faster." Deary me. I mean, how long can it take to make an Egg McMuffin? They are, essentially, a Sausage and Egg McMuffin, of which there were mounds in the rack, with less ingredients! I took possession of my bag and informed these people employed in a fast food, customer service industry that they were in the wrong game. So, our trip to the drive through, much like all recent trips to the drive through, was not convenient and did not save us any time - I queued not once but twice and still had to enter the 'restaurant' in order to get my hands on the food. Seriously, what is the point?

Play like John Terry...

How very topical; this week's Match of the Day Magazine contains free skills cards, one of which arms us with the knowledge required to Play Like Terry! Not sure if that particular card was made possible once JT's superinjunction was lifted but it does contain two very useful sentences allowing us to emulate the ex-Engerland captain's signature thrusts and lunges. I assume that Toni and Veronica are already familiar with Terry's ability to "spring with both feet and spread your arms to leap really high." "Be strong and use your forehead," the card concludes. Meanwhile, for those that like footballers with christian names for surnames, Gareth Barry's card advises: "Don't dribble too much or you might lose possession!" Wise words indeed.

Final decisions...

“I love watching as the story builds – a sentence that confirms it’s going to be story, an idea for the title, a burst of dialogue that makes the characters seem familiar, or unfamiliar, or interesting – brings them to life.

“The more painstaking editing – third and fourth drafts – I find very hard; the final decisions."

Roddy Doyle in The Manchester Review

Stagnation militaris...

"I want to write a long, long and exceedingly obscure novel objectifying the queer conflicts I find within myself and observe in the characters of others. Like Proust I want to escape from the eternal push and rattle of time into the coolness and poise of a work of art. But all this requires peace and calm and time, time, time which I haven’t got oh blazes, hell I haven’t got it."

Iris Murdoch

"Do I write? At the moment I’m writing nothing nor do I feel the urge to write. I’m suffering stagnation militaris. The truth is I haven’t much to write about. I’m very little of an introvert. Only when writing to you or to my brother do I make an effort at introspection. And unless you are an introvert you have not the vision to look into other people’s minds."

Capt. Frank Thompson to Iris Murdoch

From Iris Murdoch - A Writer at War: Letters & Diaries 1939-45

Read a review at Times Online

Customer survey...

Two cinema tickets in my mouth. Frantically rummaging around in each pocket to find the third. A job made somewhat more difficult by the nachos, jalapeno peppers, cheese sauce and salsa balancing in the hand that isn't rummaging. The film has already started. We are edging closer to the stub-ripper when I'm approached by a man dressed from head to toe in black. "I wonder if you'd take part in our customer survey?" It's a good job I didn't - I would only have had bad things to say about this multiplex. "Let me think," I said, "No, I can't be bothered. Goodbye." He didn't approach me when we exited a couple of hours later.

Book off...

During the decade that I worked in the construction industry I don't ever remember taking a book to read on site or in the lobby. I don't remember it because it would never have happened. Even my tabloid of choice at the time - the Daily Mirror - was considered ladylike by some that preferred the more breast-laden The Sun and Daily Star and, later, the Daily Sport. A book may well have been the final straw, an act of macho-world defiance that would have resulted in me being buggered senseless by those accusing me of homosexuality for daring to be bookish. So I opted not to take a book to work to read. Only when I worked in an office environment did I feel it was ok to carry a book into work openly, although I didn't read at the desk. Why would I? I very rarely worked at the desk. I f*cking hate desks. If it was up to me I'd take desks and get them pulped and turned back into paper that could be used for the production of books.

Toby Lichtig wrote funnily at the weekend about reading in the hours of work: "There's always the option of the office itself. A friend of mine used to read under his desk. And I confess I had a job so boring I was reduced to photocopying pages of a novel and pretending to proofreed them. I blush at the environmental implications (I was later sacked). But in an actual, well-earned break from work, who's got the mental strength to curl up next to the fax machine and photocopier and be transported to a different world?"

Chronic inactivity in an epic frame...

Hull is about to go Larkin crazy, with a several month-long celebration of, erm, the man's death. As was pointed out in The Guardian Review last month, "there will be no attempt to rebrand him as a genial figure who arrived at work each day with a spring in his step". Which is a good thing, obviously. I've just re-read an essay that Martin Amis wrote for the New Yorker in 1993 and was published in Amis's 2001 collection The War Against Cliche. The opening goes...

"In 1985, the year of his death, Philip Larkin was unquestionably England's unofficial laureate, our best-loved poet since the war: better loved qua poet, than John Betjeman, who was loved also for his charm, his famous giggle, his patrician bohemianism, and his televisual charisma, all of which Larkin notably lacked. Now, in 1993, Larkin is something like a pariah, or an untouchable. He who was beautiful is suddenly found to be ugly."

The few people I've spoken to recently re Larkin have said terrible things about him; they are very much in that 1993 state of mind. In 2010, Larkin looks set to return to his previous state, and be much-loved again. I like that. Sometimes, when I'm walking in a fug through Pearson Park near his old house, or near his other place on Newland Park, or am strolling along Cottingham Road, or enter the grounds of the University of Hull, I sometimes find myself wishing that he'd ride his bike into me.

Talking about Andrew Motion's biography Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life, Amis describes the book - full, as it is, of a "poverty of event" - as "chronic inactivity in an epic frame". Love that phrase. Good title for an emo album, perhaps?

Me on video...

I bought a Kodak Zi8 the other day. Why? You may well ask. It's good to have a gadget or two, isn't it? I aim to put it to good use. But while I'm trying to work out what that might be, here's a little piece of nonsense I've put together. In the form of the first Killing Time Vodcast. Expect the next within the decade.

No longer "good" at writing...

"When a child writes a story she experiences her personal world as something socially valuable: her egotism, if you will, is configured as a force for good; by writing she makes herself important, she asserts her equality with – and becomes conterminous with – everything around her.

"But as she grows older this situation changes. She is no longer "good" at writing. This is partly because she sees that its representational burden has become more complex. But it is also because the nature of her own importance is no longer quite so clear."

Rachel Cusk - Can creative writing ever be taught?