A work in progress...27

Block Island

Got a travel story published on the Guardian website on Wednesday. It's on Block Island, I wrote it last year when I visted the Newport Jazz festival, also for The Guardian. Click on "Block Island" above to check out the link.

I need a new Moleskine. Going to leave work early and go in to central London. The magazine has gone to press so I'm going to get a bit more time in the next couple of weeks to write. I'm going to try and buy Richie Hawtin's Decks EFX and 909 album and maybe use it as a template for the structure of my book.

I'm definitely going to change the voice to the first person and am seriously considering editing it 'live' online, through a blog. I like the idea of fluidity and the greater freedom it will give me. I'm also intrigued as to what feedback I'll get if any.

Stayed over in London at Al's last night. Got completely wasted, listening to live tapes of the band we once played in, called Rough Mix. See the link below "Rough Mix" for more on that part of my life.

Rough Mix

A work in progress...26

Written almost 70,000 words of the first draft.

I've made two major decisions. I'm going to change the voice and write in the first person, instead of third. It suits my style. I played around with an opening paragraph and it worked, I felt much more at ease and it sounded more spontaneous. I re-wrote a section about the London bombings; whereas before it sounded like a plodding news report, now it is much more abstract and poetic. It was intensely liberating, the words just flowed and if felt very comfortable.

I have been feeling that my writing was going down a cul-de-sac. Almost 70,000 words and still no idea of how the book is going to end. I've been trying to write to a formula which is not my style.

I'm going to abandon the book format and explore writing it as a blog, in short sharp bursts maybe with links to other characters. I'm going to keep the plot, storyline and characters, but I hope that by writing for a different format I'll be free of convention. I feel very excited. The results will be immediate, I don't know how it's going to go, I'm exploring all possibilities.

The Last Waltz

Watched this film last night on TV. I first watched it as a 17-year-old; living at home on the dole, wondering what I was going to do with my life. Neil Young's Helpless perfectly expressed my state of mind. Bob Dylan came on and sang Forever Young and I Will Be Released. I remember thinking at the time how cool he looked and his music reached out to me, gave me hope - just as it does now 25 years later. As I watched it again, I saw the film in a different light, I could appreciate Scorsese's filming - I doubt if I'd even heard of him first time around; maybe, as I saw Taxi Driver quite early on and was aware of Mean Streets. Joni Mitchell looked like a Goddess, Neil was Neil, Van the man was a dude as was Dr John. These dudes probably looked ancient to my teenage perceptions, now they looked all so young. Although I did go on to achieve lots of things in my life - I played jazz in Austria, became a journalist, travelled, played in bands - I still had the same feelings of frustration last night as I remember experiencing all those years ago. It seems the only thing that has changed since then is that now I have two children and I know who Lawrence Ferlinghetti is - he came on stage and read a poem. I'm still searching, but for what I don't know, I've achieved everything I wanted to, apart from be a writer, which is why I'm writing this blog and why finally, finally, I am writing a book. This must be my destiny, because why else would I do it? I should be enjoying life; I have got the house and car, wife and kids; it's a Sunday, I should be out doing the gardening, D I Y-ing, looks like dying? Instead I write. I Love my wife and kids, that's not an issue...they are my inspiration.

In 25 years time I will be 67. I wonder if I'll revist The Last Waltz again and look back at where I was at.

Cobralingus

I'm halfway through Mark Z Danielewski's House of Leaves; i read it mainly on the bus during a 20 minute journey across London to work. This is after spending an hour on the train writing my own book. As you can imagine my head is well and truly scrambled by the time I get to work, and then I have to edit and produce a magazine. I do the same on the way home but in reverse. By the time I get home, I'm a complete vegetable. I just have time to read the kid's a bedtime story - Percy the Park Keeper or Gruffalo comes as a relief.

I can't believe the House of Leaves is five years old, I've only just discovered it; in future all books should be written like this. Its graphic use of text and its whole style is like nothing i've ever read before, it's opened my eyes to the possibilities of what words can do, not only by their meaning but sheer presence on a page. As a newspaper editor I'm aware of the graphical elements of text, but I've never seen it used in this way in a book before. It's like reading Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting and trying to decipher the Scottish dialect, both are original and demand more from the reader.

In my previous posts I have talked about drums and jazz and composition, and I was searching for a method to write in a different way, make it avant-garde and not use the same old template that has been used by novelists for the past 300 years. I could understand what Danielewski was doing with the format and structure of his novel; he's incorporatd highly visual techniques that film makers use. I want to do something similar; approach writing from a different angle, see it in a new medium and for me music is the answer. As I write this I'm listening to Gorecki's 3rd Symphony, a wonderful avant garde piece of music that is lyrical and moving. The three movements tell a different story but they all blend into eachother. As I was researching the House of Leaves I came across an article on the web by Jeff Noon on how writers should adopt techniques used by DJs and film makers; ie cut and splice, use jump cuts and freeze frames, slow-mo, mixing, scratching and sampling.

William Burroughs did this to an extent with Naked Lunch, so it's nothing new, but what Noon is saying is that this is the future, this is how we process information "fluid mediums" for a "fluid society".

He has developed a sofware engine that will scramble text, a bit like how DJs sample and mash up music. It's a fascinating idea and it's designed to fire the writer's imagination. Check it out at http://www.codexbooks.co.uk/book.html

A work in progress ...25

I feel like playing drums. Playing along to some jazz and letting go. I have an old drumkit up in York which I'm going to go collect. My son, Noah, is five and he has already got a good style and loves to play. We play sometimes on my borther's kit when we're back home. My nephew Dan also plays, so it's a bit of a family thing.

With my writing I'm trying to get a rhythm going and am thinking of writing as a jazz composition. I want to recreate that freedom of improvisation, go off on a solo, change the accent, change the tempo, nuance but always come back to the beat.

I'm writing a very disciplined section, it's almost in real time and my style is to default to journalism. I need to record certain events like the London bombings, which I experienced, I want to convey the feeling of July 7 to the reader, but in an abstract way - hence the jazz.

Maybe when I get home I'll put on some John Coltrane ot Art Blakey.

We've been listening to Antony and the Johnsons over the weekend, my wife says it's ideal music to paint to, but too intense to write to; but I like it all the same.

Still writing everyday, which is good, but papargraphs are coming painfully slow.

A work in progress...24

During my ashtanga yoga practise yesterday I experienced a truly uplifting experience. I have been trying to do a proper backbend for at least two years - it's that crablike position where you go up on all fours in an arc with your head thrown backwards. I thought it would take me a million years to achieve this posture, but yesterday I rose up like a God; it was as if someone had their arms around my torso and lifted me, but it was my own energy. My head was off the ground and my arms and legs were at full stretch before I realised what had happened; it was such an exhilarating experience.

It's given me confidence in my writing; at the moment i'm plodding trying to work out some kind of narrative/plot for the two main characters and it just seems so pedestrian. I need a flash of brilliance; a creative release of energy to make the words rise up from the page to make all the toil worthwile.

An agent has been in touch, requesting I send in three chapters. This is quite promising - at least I've made some kind of personal contact. The downside is that she workds for the same company as the first agent i sent it to. The MS will probably go into the same readers' pool as last time, so I don't feel too positive about sending it in. On the other hand, what have i got to lose?

A work in progress...23

The writing is still going well, I bring the laptop to work everyday and beaver away on the train. I've decided to set the story in the present and use the bombings in London as one of the main catalysts which leads to the mental breakdown of my main character, Nat. I was in the capital for the first attacks, so have first hand knowledge of the situation. I'm trying to write about in an abstract way, see it through the character's eyes, rather than write it as a journalist. This is proving difficult, because I want to write it as a news feature rather than in a creative, literary way. I'm trying to be realistic and give the reader a sense of the horror, but what's at stake for me and the character is the psychological impact it has. I'm going into unchartered waters, but the early results are promising. It just takes time. I scrutinise every word of every sentence to try and not make it read like a news report.

I'm up to about 60,00 words, a lot still needs editing, but I feel the foundations are going up and are strong. I work on the book every single day, I feel as though I'm neglecting family, and to an extent friends, but I have to keep going. I have been close to giving up on it on several occasions; but I have to write, whether it's good or crap; I write because it's the beauty of writing that I like most of all.

I am reading the House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski. An awesome book, and a debut novel, it makes my attempt look like a magazine feature. But it's inspiring all the same. It's highly complex structure shows what can be achieved with the printed word and I am trying to weave similar subplots in my novel, but in a different style.