Nothing to post about over the past month or so. Got a Chinese visa, have booked a flight, and have spent the past five weeks working on this:
It's now 115,000 words long and 429 pages high. There's a strange satisfaction in the numbers, regardless of whether its any good or a pile of crap. More type-memory than flight-memory. Arf.
Over the remaining four weeks before my trip I'll be trying to rewrite the 115,000 words as best I can so i can forget about this completely once I'm in China and start work on the next one, which I'm eager to get into like a fat kid with his Christmas chocolate. I'm quite surprised at how dark this one is, and then again I'm not. It makes me laugh, and if I can ever sell it, maybe it'll do the same for you; or not. I really can't tell anymore. I just take what comfort I can from its heft.
In other news, when I've not been rewriting what I've already rewritten (which is the best part of writing for me, kind of like overdubbing guitars when you're in the studio), I've been listening to Keren Ann, Terry Hall, Albert's guitar playing, rediscovering Kate Bush (The Sensual World reminds me of a coach holiday to the Moselle Valey near Koblenz in 1990 with my then girlfriend. The river was glassily placid and there were small fires streaming ghostly smoke across the surrounding vineyards; it was amazing. I wanted a job piloting a barge up and down the river so I could see it every day. I still wouldn't mind that, to be honest), Feist, and Ryuichi Sakamoto. I've even managed-afer 5 weeks of being home-to get my time back for running the course around the park. And finally, on Friday, I went to my dentist and he insisted on giving me gas for a filling which meant that by 8:30AM I was floating around his office like a big, pink blimp and giggling as he gouged a hole in my tooth with a steel spike; it's an unusual place to feel happy is a dentist's chair. Life is good here in New York City. What's not to love?
Which is why I'm considering leaving for a year and going to live in comparative poverty. It doesn't do to get complacent, does it?
1 comment:
Actually - as your then girlfriend - it was 1989. Funnily enough I've just re-discovered that CD - reminds me of that very lonnnnnnng coach journey and Cov Bus Station.
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