There's something wrong with my mind.
So. I'm writing a book. No big deal. Except I've got a deadline to meet that's six months old now.
My agent is a lovely chap, he tells me so every time his softly-spoken voice tells me not to worry.
Today I made an appalling discovery. There are things that I'm writing which have been written before. No, not word for word, nor in the slabs of content. But the general thrust and (what I'd thought of as a searingly new) ambition was, in fact, old hat.
Not just any old hat. Martin Amis old hat no less.
I love the duality that is Martin Amis. The voice that irritates and soothes, sweet and sour, cannon and ball.
The book I'm writing is an autobiographical work, an inquiring memoir no less. As I tell my story, I ask a lot of questions, deviate, ramble and divert. The ensuing body of work/mess, should be both gut-level sentimental and hard as fricken nails at the same time. Like Amis then.
This quote has ruined my day, but has simultaneously given me a colour scheme for the interior of my book.
Martin Amis - "Experience"
published by Vintage 2001
The trouble with life (the novelist will feel) is its amorphousness, its ridiculous fluidity. Look at it: thinly plotted, largely themeless, sentimental and ineluctably trite. The dialogue is poor, or at least violently uneven. The twists are either predictable or sensationalist. And it's always the same beginning; and the same ending...
What is wrong with my mind is that I should never have seriously entertained the idea that I was doing something new. I must have a bit of my mind where everything I think is a set in a television studio, a studio in which they only produce pap for the simple people.
What is wrong with my mind part II
I have an appointment with a psychiatrist in ten days time. Never been to one before, and this appointment is purely to determine some evidence in a court case. I'm scared. But I did have a thought that I might turn into a story sometime.
I got the impression that the psychiatrist is based in Manchester, but works in London. Then, I imagined that psychiatrists rent rooms by the hour, like whores, and turn their tricks on somebody else's heavily-buttoned couch. I like that idea. Don't steal it. Or I'll voodoo you.
My agent is a lovely chap, he tells me so every time his softly-spoken voice tells me not to worry.
Today I made an appalling discovery. There are things that I'm writing which have been written before. No, not word for word, nor in the slabs of content. But the general thrust and (what I'd thought of as a searingly new) ambition was, in fact, old hat.
Not just any old hat. Martin Amis old hat no less.
I love the duality that is Martin Amis. The voice that irritates and soothes, sweet and sour, cannon and ball.
The book I'm writing is an autobiographical work, an inquiring memoir no less. As I tell my story, I ask a lot of questions, deviate, ramble and divert. The ensuing body of work/mess, should be both gut-level sentimental and hard as fricken nails at the same time. Like Amis then.
This quote has ruined my day, but has simultaneously given me a colour scheme for the interior of my book.
Martin Amis - "Experience"
published by Vintage 2001
The trouble with life (the novelist will feel) is its amorphousness, its ridiculous fluidity. Look at it: thinly plotted, largely themeless, sentimental and ineluctably trite. The dialogue is poor, or at least violently uneven. The twists are either predictable or sensationalist. And it's always the same beginning; and the same ending...
What is wrong with my mind is that I should never have seriously entertained the idea that I was doing something new. I must have a bit of my mind where everything I think is a set in a television studio, a studio in which they only produce pap for the simple people.
What is wrong with my mind part II
I have an appointment with a psychiatrist in ten days time. Never been to one before, and this appointment is purely to determine some evidence in a court case. I'm scared. But I did have a thought that I might turn into a story sometime.
I got the impression that the psychiatrist is based in Manchester, but works in London. Then, I imagined that psychiatrists rent rooms by the hour, like whores, and turn their tricks on somebody else's heavily-buttoned couch. I like that idea. Don't steal it. Or I'll voodoo you.
posted by familyhobgoblin at 4:13 PM
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