CONTENTS
Title Page
Bill of Writes
As True As I’m Standing Here
Brainwaves!
Celeb
Ctrl-Alt-BACKTALK
Drama Dates
Feedback
First Conjugation – Amare
Gas
Ten of the Best
Guidance
Bad Buy
Beckett Refreshed
Pharmachristenin
All-Modest
As He Likes It
Would You Credit It?
Happy-Go-Lucky!
Presenters Presented
As I Have Said Before
Selfless
Olympus: Big Shake-Up
How Now?
Pick of the Prides and Prejudices
No, After You!
Oh, You Shouldn’t Have!
Solicitors
Well Done Ya!
This Means War
The Rest of the Most
Tick Power
To Cut a Short Story Long
Update
Your Feelings
The End
About the Author
Also by the Author
Copyright
A selection from our exciting new-season range of How-to-Write courses!
Introductory: How to know whether you really do have a burning desire to communicate something to the world, and, if so, what it is. Includes hands-on practical suggestions for writing:
* a mildly erotic novel set in West Bromwich in 1879;
* a blackly comic cookbook that includes, among many other hilariously disturbing recipes, one for mouldy turnips marinated in diesel oil;
* the constitution of a small dictatorship;
* a 700-page family saga written with a spray-gun on the side of a motorway bridge.
The course is conducted by Jemima Treeborough, who has a degree in goldfish husbandry, and, as you can see from the accompanying photograph, long blonde hair that falls attractively over one eye.
Preliminary: How to actually get started! For the student who has already told all their friends and relations that they’re writing a book! Includes:
* how to know whether to start writing your book today, or whether it might be better to put it off until tomorrow;
* how to make a false start, thinking anything’s better than sitting there gazing out of the window, and anyway you can always rewrite it later;
* how to make up to thirty more false starts.
The course is taught by Howard Souping, an acknowledged expert, who has written the first pages of seventy-three novels. The picture of Howard on the right, which was the only one he could find, shows him looking slightly inebriated at a beer festival in Queensland.
Intermediate: How to survive having got started. For the student who has already completed page one of a book, and is considering going on to page two. Includes:
* how to put off even thinking about it through the time-honoured literary device of cleaning out the ‘p’s and ‘b’s on your typewriter, now that typewriters have been replaced by word processors;
* how to recognise that it’s impossible to write page two because, even after all that agonising, you really need to go back and rewrite page one yet again;
* how to break it to all the friends and relations you told you were writing a book that you’re not.
Your guide here is Lemona Strood, who completed seven of our How-to-Write courses and actually wrote the first paragraph of page two of her critical history of Todhunter Road, Streatham, before she gave up. Her brave smile in the accompanying photograph is testimony to her unquenchable spirit in the face of disaster.
Advanced: Understanding the financial aspects of authorship – specialist tuition in every aspect of the subject. Includes:
* how to write a cheque. Practical tuition in writing cheques in favour of NoHow Literary Ltd, with special emphasis on the correct spelling of the payee’s name. Your tutor here is C. D. Thumb, Head of Home Sales, NoHow Literary Ltd;
* how to ensure there is enough money in your account to cover the cheque. Sebastian Sponge, a distinguished fraudster who ran through his life savings doing How-to-Write courses, and who has subsequently served a prison sentence for obtaining money by false pretences, discusses various advanced techniques;
* how to cope if your cheque is nominated for a major literary award. Celia Wozzard, who has done the flower-arrangement for many such occasions, takes you through the big night, including practical guidance on how to convey the text of your acceptance speech to the lectern so that people can’t see that you’ve written it in advance before you knew whether you were going to win or not;
* how to recycle the speech as a religious tract if by any chance it shouldn’t be needed. Your tutor here is Willa Domble, who has herself written fifty-three acceptance speeches over the years and never needed any of them;
* how to write a How-to-Write course. C. J. Sprew, who looks a bit dull in the photograph but who can in fact be quite amusing if you get him on to the subject of chromosome abnormalities in fruit flies, suggests trying to recoup your losses by writing a How-to-Write course, which he believes may be the literary form of the future now that no one reads anything any more but everyone wants to write the things that no one wants to read.
– … Scene one, take seventeen.
– And … action!
What is truth? A question humankind has been asking since man first learnt to speak. I’m Timothy Tompkins, Reader in Situational Logic at the University of Stoke-on-Trent, and I have come here to Athens, the birthplace of philosophy—
– Sorry, we’re getting a bit of aircraft noise again.
– OK – cut!
*
– Scene one, take eighteen.
– And … action!
What is truth? A question humankind has been asking ever since man first learnt to speak. I’m Timothy Tompkins—
– Another plane. I don’t know who picked a location right under the flight path into Athens airport …
– Cut, cut, cut!
*
– Scene one, take nineteen.
– OK, Tim – before the next plane. And – action!
What is truth? A question humankind has been asking since man first spurned to leak … I’m so sorry. Probably not a good idea drinking all that raki last night …
– Cut!
*
– Scene one, take twenty.
– OK, Tim – deep breath. No pressure. Chloe’s rung air traffic control – we’ve got three minutes before the next plane. So just relax and enjoy it! We’re in Greece, the sun’s shining! You’re doing great! And whenever you’re ready … Very gently now … Action!
What is truth? A question humankind has been asking since man first learnt to speak. I’m Timothy Tompkins, Reader in Situational Logic at the University of Stroke-on-Tent …
– Keep running. We’ll cut around it. ‘I’m Timothy Tompkins …’ Action!
I’m Timothy Tompkins, Reader in Shituational Logic …
– Keep running, keep running. Tim, listen, we’ll come back and try the beginning again later when we’ve all settled down.
It’s that bloody hotel they’ve put us in! I was kept awake all night by some kind of plumping in the thumbing …
– Never mind. Just go straight on with ‘Is it really true, for a start …?’
Is it really true, for a start, that I’m standing here on my own in front of the Parthenon, as I appear to be? In this film you’re for once going to be told the truth, the whole truth, at any rate about this one simple question. For the first time ever in the history of presented documentaries we are going to show you not an edited selection of the film we’re making, but th
e whole thing – the totally unedited rushes.
So you already know what’s usually the first bit of the truth to hit the cutting-room floor – that there’s also someone here who holds up the clapperboard in front of my face at the beginning of each take. She’s the camera assistant, and, just to fill in a bit more of the truth, she’s called Jennie.
But you know that somewhere around there’s also an invisible figure who keeps worrying about aircraft noise. That’s Lewis, the sound man. And you’ve heard another voice doing all that stuff about ‘Cut!’ and ‘Action!’ That’s Bill, the director. There’s also a cameraman, of course, who’s called George, plus Chloe, the production assistant, Grace, the make-up girl, and Josie, George’s girlfriend, who’s just come along for the ride.
Never before have you been allowed to see the take where I get my turds in a wangle. Or the one where I dry completely, as I have now, and have to get Chloe to bring the script … Thanks, Chloe …
‘Because I’m not just making this stuff up as I go along …’ Yes, because I’m not just making this stuff up as I go along. I wrote it, and I did seventeen drafts of it, and I was also up all night trying to learn it with my head going round from all that raki, and it wasn’t me who ordered the second bottle …
Though I don’t know why I’m not allowed to have an autocue like other presenters. Or just say the first thing that comes into my head, like some of them do these days. ‘Wow! This is incredible! I don’t believe this! How cool is this! Like, totally awesome …!’
Sorry, only I’ve been standing here in the midday sun for twenty takes and I think I’m beginning to get sunstroke, and possibly also skin cancer …
So where was I? Oh, yes, truth. So what in fact is truth? A question humankind has been asking since take one, all those many takes ago.
To answer it I have come here to Athens to meet a local expert the researchers have found, and he’s going to be looking anxiously out of his front door waiting for the cue, and then the director’s going to say ‘Action’, so the local expert’s going to close the front door and then open it again and to his surprise see me standing there, and I’m going to say ‘Hi, Spiros!’, only his name’s Stavros, so he closes the door and then he opens it again, and he’s just as surprised to see me standing there again as he was before. So surprised that he never notices I’m being followed by Jennie, Lewis, Bill, George, Chloe, Grace and Josie, together with someone whose name I didn’t catch who’s writing a publicity piece about the film, plus a crowd of local citizens who’ve stopped to see what’s going on, and a team of security men who are trying to keep them quiet, and just over the horizon an unspecified number of researchers, producers, accountants, PR people, managers, reviewers and viewers … not to mention some idiot who’s just walked into shot and is now waving at the camera …
– Cut!
*
– Scene one, take twenty-one.
– OK, Tim, you’ve really loosened up and hit your stride. Wonderful! So let’s just quickly go back to the top and get it in the can before the light goes. And … action!
What is truth? A question humankind has been asking since man first learnt to speak. I’m Tomothy Timpkins … No, I’m not, I’m somebody else, only I’ve said it so many times now that I’ve forgotten who it is. And as to what truth is … I’m long past caring …
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God, good of You to join us! God, You have had a very long and distinguished career, but I think I’m right in saying that this is the first time You’ve ever agreed to be interviewed.
– I’ve always felt it was better to work in mysterious ways, but My PR people thought it was time to make Myself a little more accessible.
Your work in creating the universe has been widely praised. Some critics, though, as You know, have expressed a few reservations.
– You have to remember the situation I inherited. Total chaos. Without form and void.
What would You say has been Your greatest achievement?
– Existing in the first place.
Do You create regularly, or only when You’re inspired?
– I try to put in a reasonably regular working eternity.
You enjoy Your work?
– Hugely, but I’m also very conscious of the awesome responsibilities I bear.
Do You feel You’re still creating as strongly as before?
– In recent millennia I’ve been concentrating more on simply existing. One does as one gets older, you know. And I think I’m existing as well now as I ever did. Better, in fact. You learn a lot in this game as you go along.
So no plans to retire?
– I intend to remain and do the job I created myself to do.
*
You once said …
– I was misquoted.
How do You deal with bad reviews?
– Strike the authors dead.
What would You say to those who accuse You of sexism?
– Watch out!
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