Scotland Before the Bomb
Page 19
“The truth will always leak out. In the sloppy syntax of your sentences, in the notably absent rigour of your themes, in the continual reversions to familiar tropes, in the two-tone tenor of your dialogue.”
“But in any kind of artform, the underwhelming human being can pull magical work from his or her rear end, and serve up delicious platters of fucking brilliance completely at odds with their dullness.”
“True. But in this room, in any room, with me, or with any other people, you can’t spend two hours tinkering your sentences to appear smarter than you are. In the merciless light, as you say, you will always be a mediocrity.”
“I want to marry your mouth.”
[ ]
If you ever come and live inside my brain, be sure and pack a cyanide capsule.
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Facebook statues, tweets, click-bait articles, text messages: you are sucking the pleasure out of language.
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When people ask me what I write, I reply “spiteful feuilletons brought up from the throat like strings of bloody phlegm.”
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TODAY I WILL DELETE EVERYTHING I WROTE YESTERDAY.
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I definitely have cancer.
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I don’t know if I’ve told you this, but I have omitted a lot of material.
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I met a beautiful woman for a coffee. We chatted with ease on the vagaries of modern politics. I asked to see her again. She expressed an interest in my writing. We met for the second time, and our mutual attraction became clear. After dinner, we took an evening stroll in the park, and we kissed. On the third date, we swiftly repaired to my flat to express our passions. I asked her after making love if she wanted me to read an excerpt from my novel. “Nah,” she said. Inside, I died.
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Don’t worry, the omitted material will be available on my blog.
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I’m losing faith in this project.
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I wrote something here, wiped it clear, scratched my bestubbled cheek, scratched my chin, thought about how my face is falling off, and that I will soon be dead, and wrote this in pain.
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I’m only playing. The omitted material will never be published.
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When you sequentially write and delete stuff, you ride a very unsatisfying see-saw.
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These days, every blurb I read is followed by a theatrical eyeroll.
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I deleted arrogance.
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I deleted moaning.
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Everyone is my rival. From Shakespeare to the five-year-old who wrote a well-received story about their cat’s latest furball.
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Why not call this poetry?
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I only write this out of love.
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“You revel in obscurity, in being a pinched outsider,” you said.
“I know,” I responded.
“Your neediness is your only subject,” you said.
“I know,” I responded.
“You are amused at being a self-created victim,” you said.
“I know,” I responded.
“Your sham worthlessness is a facade,” you said.
“I am in vomitous love with you,” I responded.
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What is this?
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It isn’t poetry.
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There is no virtue in concision.
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I deleted three pointless haiku.
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I would step across the road to avoid another writer.
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I CANNOT WRITE IN THESE CONDITIONS
I DEMAND A FRESH BRAIN AND BODY
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I am choking on the cat hairs in my throat.
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I only write this out of hate.
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I am dying.
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If you feel like you’re getting nowhere in the literary world, and that you should seriously reconsider tirelessly fighting for your place in the literary world, you are now a part of the literary world.
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I remember your enthusiasm about the songs of Yoko Ono seemed a little forced.
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EVERY IDEA IS ABANDONED IN UNDER TWO SENTENCES
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Perhaps the ephemeral and miniaturised nature of online text has created an incurable torpor of distraction, setting in at a line of text longer than this one.
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Write a sentence. Shrug at its failure to be the best thing ever written with a pair of fingers. Write a second sentence. Realise that further writing of that calibre would be futile and close the document. Try again tomorrow.
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Fortunately, beauty, popularity, and riches do not mean you can spray a semi-respectable hose of prose.
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Wake up. Remember that my previously published works were treated with indifference, and that even friends and acquaintances didn’t bust a blood vessel to read or comment on them. Back to bed.
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I remember you always asking me if I had been paid for my published short stories before not offering to read them.
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Life is much more pleasant without the pressure to construct six-sentence paragraphs of three or four per page, across 300 or more pages.
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Minute by minute, second by second reminders of what you said, what you do, who you know, what you like, who you are.
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I am chained to the internet with tight and unyielding manacles.
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I would rather be having sex with you than writing this sentence.
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You would rather be having sex with anyone but me than reading this sentence.
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I remember thinking about whether I was in love with you, and concluding I probably was, but that I was too emotionally barren to properly feel any love for anyone.
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This is not a “twitter novel”. This is a novel chronicling a serious and potentially fatal nervous breakdown, caused by a mildly amusing florist.
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OPENING SENTENCE #189:
Andrew walked into a bar. (My God, I am bored.) The barman, Skip, asked him what his preference for alcoholic beverage might be in the idiom native to wherever this paragraph is set. (My God, I am tired and achy.) Andrew failed to reply. (My God, what a boring sentence.) At this point in the story, the author’s wrists began to ache from the act of typing. (And his fucking fingers.) His head was throbbing at the prospect of skipping ahead to try and contrive a coherent end to what he had started. He loathed the ham-fisted hackneyed opening to the story, kicking himself for such a pathetic and obvious set-up. (And for having started in the first place.) He decided the best thing to do was to stop. (Writing. For good.)
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I am teabagging your mind.
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You might think that writing about not writing is a waste of time. I reply: “Sir, you have no idea. If I cease writing altogether, I might end up never writing again. The fingers must be fulsomely flexed, even in inconsequential paragraphs of increasing vapidity.”
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I loathe most of the paragraphs in this nonbook. But I won’t delete them.
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Sometimes a sentence, even perfectly sculpted, looks hideous on the page before you. The way the letters jut from the line, the way the curly cursives poke their partners, the way the font frames things. There is no end to the ways an author can despise his own words.
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Do I hate writing? No, I hate not writing.
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“How can a writer end up as constipated as you?” you asked me.
“Penguin released a novel called The Ministry of Utmost Happiness today,” I replied.
“That proves . . . ?”
“I exist in t
he infected hindgut of the marketplace.”
“And . . . ?”
“I exist in the diseased anal cleft of the commercial world.”
“And . . . ?”
“These things can constipate a writer.”
“You’re probably completely dried up in terms of ideas. Or you’ve long reached the pinnacle of your talents and are in dreadful denial about entering the long twilight of your literary career.”
“I utterly adore you.”
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I have, on several occasions, attempted to rewrite a novel entitled The Reason Not to Jump, a 600-page epic about three generations of misanthropic men who opt out of suicide. This rewrite will never occur. This fleeting mention here is the only legacy of these years of sweltering and fruitless toil.
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I haven’t revised this sentence.
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You only criticise the literary mainstream if you are not part of it.
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Total loser, as a former President would say.
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Isolated fragments give the illusion of profundity.
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You are eating a cheese bagel. Somewhere, a smug writer is finishing his final paragraph with smug satisfaction. You are on a stuffed commuter train en route to an office. Somewhere, a rich writer is lounging in a cafeteria musing on the internal lives of his fascinating characters. You are in your office staring at a spreadsheet. Somewhere, a cool writer is preparing for the evening launch of his already well-reviewed third novel. You are tolerating inane chatter in the staff room. Somewhere, a thoughtful writer is penning an observant article about a worthwhile political cause. You are staring at a clock that appears to have frozen. Somewhere, a novelist, his fingers reflexively on his chin, is musing on the potent metaphor he has created. You are cooking a readymeal in the microwave. Somewhere, a writer is having cocktails with his equally talented friends. You are watching Little House on the Prairie. You have no one but yourself to blame.
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A prominent Scottish writer once praised a short story of mine. I cling to that seven-year-old praise far too tightly.
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Some people, born beautiful, simply have to pose in their pants to be adored. Some people, born weird, write beautiful 700-page masterpieces of refined and erudite prose, and no one cares. People are not to be trusted with the beautiful.
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Your remarks at the writers’ group were met with polite tolerance, and forgotten a nanosecond after your long prayed-for final clause.
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Aren’t you tired of the savagery of coherence? Don’t you sometimes want a book to scream at you, howl at you, scratch your prissy little eyes out? Don’t you need a book sometimes to claw at your mind until your thoughts are bursting and bleeding and finally illuminated?
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David Markson is better.
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I bought you flowers. You knew instantly their price, and the cheap insignificance of my gesture.
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This is a book about feeling shat on by the literary marketplace, and becoming so fucking fagged out by the business, the only form of release is to scribble inane manic gibberish, the sort you sometimes see behind the bedroom walls of lunatics after they’ve blown their brains out.
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Q: Why don’t you write something beautiful?
A: I am only capable of the monstrous.
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I’m not taunting you, I’m tickling you.
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You’d better check your phone.
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It isn’t that I loathe all writers [I do], or that I despise their success [I do], or that I am repulsed by the literary marketplace [I am], or that I hate what literature has become [I have], or that I am sickened by the dwindling numbers of readers [I am], or that I crave more success and attention [I do], it is more that everyone else in the universe except me is a fucking idiot [no it isn’t].
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You’d better check in case you have a text.
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I deleted what was written here.
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Your unread text is much more important than this.
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Waking up is the strongest argument for full-blown misanthropy.
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Are you going to leave that text unread for much longer?
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£10.99 is a reasonable price of admission to my nervous breakdown.
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FOR GOD’S SAKE, READ YOUR TEXT!!!
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Write a proper book, you whiny dung-muncher.
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I HATE THIS PROJECT
I HATE THIS PROJECT
I HATE THIS PROJECT
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I stepped on the bus. [This sentence has MARKET VALUE! We can all relate to buses. Everyone has seen or boarded or heard of a bus in their time, apart from some people under six months old. Continue with our approval.] The driver was a blue rhinoceros. [This has NO MARKET VALUE. No one can relate to a bus driver being a blue rhinoceros. There is no such thing as a blue rhinoceros, except perhaps in a children’s cartoon. Even if blue rhinoceroses existed, they lack the skills needed to power a bus through the streets. They would merely grunt and writhe in the driving booth and defecate on the seat. Delete this sentence at once.] A short, fat passenger boarded the bus. [This has MARKET VALUE. We have all encountered a short, fat man or woman in our lives, and the spark of recognition will spur the reader onwards. Continue with our approval]. The passenger retrieved a shotgun from his satchel and blew the rhino’s brains out. [This has NO MARKET VALUE. The sudden act of brutal violence against a brightly coloured and innocent rhinoceros will repulse readers at once. No one will tolerate this random slaughter. Delete this sentence at once.] Someone in the bus coughed. [This has MARKET VALUE. We all cough from time to time, to clear our airways of phlegm or catarrh, so people will react to this observation warmly and happily. Continue with our approval.] Someone else in the bus coughed up a small baby turtle, ribboned in sick. [This has NO MARKET VALUE. The common reader adores baby turtles, and seeing one emerge from a someone’s throat covered in vile bile is a complete turn-off. Delete this sentence at once.]
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In the event of my death, I authorise the distribution of this nonbook in every school classroom, and on every school and university syllabus, in the world. Because the little fuckers have to know.
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Self-pity ain’t pretty.
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I validate myself.
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“What’s your new book about?” my mother asked.
“It’s not a book, more of a splurge,” I replied.
“What your new splurge about?”
“It’s an act of immature literary vandalism. It’s as if, after having read thousands of the great masters, I learned absolutely nothing, and proceeded to urinate on their graves one by one.”
“Is it something I might read?”
“It’s the literary equivalent of syphilis in your right eye.”
“Have you heard of Dean Koontz?”
“Until next time, Mother.”
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I was thinking how the pressure to compose pristine, musical prose is lessened by the freedom I have to spend time composing pristine, musical prose.
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If you finish this book despising me, I have achieved something.
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I choose not to socialise with other writers.
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Other writers ask you what you are working on as a prelude to describing their own boring works at length.
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I don’t like to discuss what I’m working on.
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All writers despise each other. Let’s not pretend otherwise.
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You might be the sort of writer who loves to describe their works to their friends, seeking laughter and approval for your brilliant ideas
.
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This business of stitching words together in a coherent order to seek approval from others.
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Short, yes, but it feels much longer.
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Please review me.
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I remember my ambitions for this nonbook being vaster.
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Woke up. Remembered no one is interested in fiction. Back to bed.
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I don’t care what you are working on.
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Woke up. Remembered no one reads any more. Back to bed.
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Thank you for reading. Seriously, I adore you.
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Woke up. Remembered society doesn’t care about me. Back to bed.
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Basically, in this nonbook, I am like a clingy, drunken lover, screaming “I don’t need you” before storming off, then hastily calling at 2AM and weeping down the line that I love you, and always have, and that I never want to lose you, and I will do whatever it takes to make it work.
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Fuck you for reading. Seriously, fuck you.
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How can I overcome my immaturity, my burning desire to spoil a scene by introducing a camel at the most inappropriate moment?
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I can’t write a sex scene without using the word “lubricious”.
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Everyone has a novel in them, “they” say. I have a novel in me, only I am vomiting it up and splattering my carrotty chunks across the page.
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Bitter? Yes please, with lemon.
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For every sentence included in this nonbook, at least three have been deleted.
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“I am rebelling against the literary marketplace,” I said.
“By deliberately writing a completely unpublishable nonbook?” you asked.
“Yes.”
“But you will, of course, try to sell your unpublishable nonbook, and use your nonbook’s anti-commercial stance as a pull for the sort of anti-corporate reader that you crave, who will purchase your anti-corporate nonbook for the cheapest possible price on Amazon?”
“Probably.”
“Then your project is utterly useless, and you are a bumbling hypocrite.”
“Kiss me.”
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OPENING #86:
The sun came up, like the fucking sun always does at the beginning of fucking cliched opening fucking sentences. A character with a fucking meaningful name appeared and began to fucking speak and perform actions that kickstarted a fucking thrilling and powerful plot full of fucking stuff. This irritating fucking behaviour continued for another interminable four-hundred fucking pages.