Quick Post...

Am in an internet café in Cambridge (of the hallowed academic fame). Not much time so will explain all next time I blog. Just to say that life is good and writing is going swimmingly!

I so want to write more but Carly is motioning me from the door. We have to go to a party! Ah, the life of a concerted socialite such as I...

Til tomorrow.

A Very Important Day...

Well, where do I start. Today has been an incredible day. I finally did some writing, which has made me feel a whole lot better - and thank you to those of you who have been providing me support through my three or four days of writing drought (even you, Bryan, who encouraged me with visions of my own mortality!). But that was earlier today, and I really need to tell you about last night.

Reading over my last blog I left you last night with the door bell ringing; it was, indeed, the Laird. He had to ring the doorbell because he'd left his keys in the hall of his house - he could picture them, picture precisely the place - and so had no means of access to his own house. I say his own house because, and I wasn't told this by any of the rest of the set, the Laird owns the house and is the landlord to whom all the others pay rent. I don't know why the others didn't tell me this before; they acted as if the Laird was just another young renter like them, trying to survive on a shoe-string and find enough cash to pay the rent.

The Laird has never, it seems, had to live on a shoestring in his life. Although his clothes and hair are messy - he has a shock of blonde hair that sticks out at all sorts of unlikely angles and which he is constantly, and unconsciously, pressing down onto his head - he has clearly got lots of money. Even if I didn't know about the mansion-like property in Wales and this beautiful little town house in the country I would be quite certain that he was prince-like in his riches. He has the air of someone who has money, he sits expansively and walks busily like he knows where he's going. If any of you know the British Conservative politician, Boris Johnson, the Laird reminds me slightly of him, 'though he doesn't have his constantly confused attitude. Rather he is very direct, very crisp; he speaks as though he's reading from a script (maybe something written by P.G. Wodehouse). He's also very funny.

The set in the house - me, Carly, Darren, James and the new man, the Laird - all sat up drinking wine. It seems to be a regular event in the house, these intense talking sessions that go on for hours over wine and - in this instance - ready salted crisps. The Laird picked them up between two fingers, holding them aloft like a dandy might flourish a pen, before slipping them into his mouth - not breaking the stride of his conversation as he did. He certainly is a character.

Obviously the Laird was a little surprised to see me - a stanger in his house - and I had to explain how I had been effectively homeless in London (because of my ridiculous attempt to write this novel) and that Carly had taken me in like the little saint that she was. 'Little Saint' was the Laird's name for her, 'My little saint...' he said it like a character from Evelyn Waugh. However, I assumed that the conversation was tacking towards my eviction from the house - and this is understandable. I have, after all, been on their sofa for over a week now and I am a stranger who none of them really know. However, this is not how it turned out...

The Laird pointed to me, mid-conversation, and summoned me to his rooms, he wanted to show me something - the others ohhhed at this. I had the feeling that there was a private joke that I was not privvy to but I followed anyway. The Laird's room was actually two - on the ground floor at the back of a house, he has a separate sitting room to the main one and an interconnected bedroom. In his sitting room is a stand-up piano and the whole place is strewn over with marked-over stave-sheets (you know the kind with four musical lines, that composers write music on).

The Laird sits me down and explains to me that he owns the house - this is how I found out - and that he is very particular about who lives in it; he's not an ordinary landlord who doesn't care as long as the rent is paid. I think this is going towards me getting a telling off, how I dare I come into his house! etc. but it doesn't. He says he collects artists, he's not very artistic himself, but he's always liked to be around people who could draw and write. He was always like that at university. So, he says, he wants to see my writing.

I say, "Excuse me?" and make I don't really understand noises. He says that he assumes that I would like to stay here long term - "You have nowhere else do you?" - and that he wants to see whether I'm the kind of person he wants around.

I'm getting a bit flustered at this point, because - as I've complained here enough - I haven't written anything yet. I tell him so, I tell him I've got plenty of ideas, but I haven't yet put pen to paper. He looks skeptical, like my tutor did in college when I gave some excuse about not handing in my essay on time. He asks me to tell me what my ideas are. I'm started to get that flushed uncertain feeling; I really didn't like the idea of telling him my ideas - what if they sounded stupid. Eventually, however, he got them out of me.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is: he was interested enough in what I was doing to let me stay! So I am now a resident (non-sofa) of the little house where I've been living. I asked the Laird how much the rent was and he said, "How much do you want to pay?" I said as little as possible (I've got no work as of yet and am living off my savings). He offered £40 a week. Now, I don't know if any of you reading this are from London, but £40 a week is a pittance - its like paying nothing at all. So I took it immediately. The Laird smiled his foppish smile and clapped his hands like he was applauding me. He has a very young face, I'd imagine he's about 25-27ish, but he looks much younger, almost like an adolescent.

So, now I'm living on the top floor - across the landing from Carly's room/studio. There's not much furniture in here; a bed without a mattress a desk that looks like its falling apart, but I can get used to that. So, life is good!

I'm getting to the end of my time, so I'd better go. And I haven't even got on to today, yet - when I started writing my novel! How exciting! I'll have to tell you about today tomorrow, and then hopefully catch up the time lag in my blog somewhere down the line.

Til tomorrow!

PS - I'm so excited about the future!

A few moments...

Hello, am quickly using Carly's laptop, so can't post for long. Exciting day here, for we are waiting for the return of the Laird - the mystery fifth house member, who is getting here any time now.

Another day without writing, but I feel less morose about it right now (and thank you everyone who sent messages of support - they were much appreciated!). I went back to my plan and addd some ideas, and I'm feeling much more positive. Will definitely start writing tomorrow.

Ah, the ring of the doorbell! I think the Laird may have arrived.

Til tomorrow.

And the drought continues in the wasteland ...

Still, nothing has come.

I am now three enormously wasted days into the writing of my novel, a task which has involved absolutely no writing at all. Today I spent six hours in front of the blank leafs of my beutifully leather bound moleskine notebook and absolutly nothing. No flow of ink, no flow of words. I have, now, pretty much all the planning, all the thinking that I think I need. I have the structure - or at least as much of it as I think I can bear to put down, without completely tying my hands. Its scribbled on various envelopes and cadged pieces of paper (from Carley).

I didn't write any of the plan in my notebook; I wanted to keep its virginial pristine whiteness for the actual words. Its maidenhood has remained very much intact, its pristine whiteness unspoiled. I forced myself to stay in front of it, not to go off and drink coffee, from nine to twelve thirty and from one thirty to four. And I couldn't write a single word (or rather not a single word was left after I wrote shit and then furiously crossed out).

I'd call it writer's block, except of course that I have no right to call myself a writer - not yet, not in any sense. In fact, the last three days of writer's block, are nothing more than the continuation of the twenty-two years of my life prior to them; one long line of not writing.

I gave up in the mid-afternoon and took up the book I've been reading, V.S. Naipaul, The Enigma of Arrival. Its very much about writing, itself, though from the other end, from the side of someone who has arrived who knows it all - Naipaul now has since won the Nobel Prize for literature. I don't know whether it's my current state but I found it wholly disappointing and not a little smug.

The whole thrust of Naipaul's argument is that he has found his voice, he has found what it is to be a writer - and that is to be true to oneself, to understand your surroundings and all the different cultures that have made up the writer's self (Naipaul is Trinidadian, Asiatic, has made a home in England, and he puts great store in this).

I just don't find it very interesting, I suppose, this obsessive need to anatomize the self; to try and enuciate the modes of being, to hold up personality as some kind of deity to be kowtowed to. Its not how I'll write. I'm interested in what people think, not who they are; nor am I interested in people's weaknesses but their strengths. The rest of Naipaul's novels (a good 300 pages) is an inventory, it seems to me, of the weaknesses of the people who live around - what makes them small, what makes them petty. Like Blake he wants to see the universe in a grain of sand, is intent on finding something significant in the minutae of life. But not all grains of sand are the same, some do not contain the universe, some are just grains of sand. Writing takes decision, it requires choice.

This is me speaking, someone who is yet to put pen to paper, lecturing the winner of a Nobel prize. I suppose I should write something before I start to cut down those who do, who can. I will.

Am at the internet café again, so I should probably make a move on. Things at the house are well. Exciting news, I am finally to meet the elusive, infamous Scout, the laird who is currently in his mansion in wales and is the fifth housemate.

Right, tomorrow I am going to write.

Til then.

Damn, damn, damn

It's been the second day in a row during which I have got absolutely nothing done on my novel, and I'm in a particularly bad mood - feelings of desolation and self hatred abound. I'm half-way through a book I picked up at a little 2nd hand place - V.S. Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival.

Maybe today I had my first twinge of doubt about what I'm doing. It's not a question of whether I have the sensibility or the talent, or anything so high-minded. Its just a question of whether I have the self-discipline to write something as big and scary as a novel. I'm spending my days walking around London, taking in the sights, drinking coffee in coffee shops - not writing. I go home (look, I just called the house where I dossing 'home') and talk to Carley and James - and I do not write.

Tomorrow I will definitely write. Also, I think once I'm done with a book I'll post a review of it. Reading has always been such a component part of writing for me, a means of inspiration and of hope, and I think it will be relevent to share with you what I reading, as well as what I'm (not) writing.

Tomorrow, hopefully, will be a less black day.

Til then.

Made Good Food, Sat up Talking Late Into the Night, La Bella Vita!

Good evening one and all. Or, as my activity log tells me, one. Hmm. I hope someone starts to read this blog soon: it gives one a sense that one isn't truly reaching out.

Right, to matters in hand. Am quite tired and low-energy today and have only managed an hour of doodling in my beautiful leather moleskine notebook, and made no substantive effect on the progress of my novel. I have on the other hand sat in cafés all day drinking coffee, which is a quite delightful activity in itself.

The reason I am so tired and, therefore, so uninspired, is that I spent a lovely evening last night, the large percentage of it being without sleep and with that uncomfortable feeling of being awake when the hangover sets in. (Better, I suppose, than waking up with it.)

As a mark of my thanks to the set who are letting me stay on the sofa in their house I cooked dinner which consisted of my simply exquisite spaghetti bolgonaise (my secret is I add capers - you think its crazy? try it yourself...) and some garlic italian flat bread which I pounded into its flatness with my the strength of my own fair hands (although whether the extra effort was worth it, considering the floury mess I made, is somewhat of a moot point). Work in a restaurant, apart from the fact that it nearly destroyed my soul entirely, had its postive aspects.

After dinner we sat in the living room with a couple of bottles of wine between us; a couple, in this instance, averaging out at approximately 1.75 bottles each. Everyone, particularly James, was on excellent form. Darren, who up to now I have considered a rather moody, sombre figure - something of the brooding artist de rigueur sans, thankfully, the beret - opened up a good deal, and actually condescended to smile once or twice! I am getting to the point with these three people that we can talk quickly and irreverently, picking up on each others wavelengths, taking up each other's thoughts and running with them a long all kinds of heltering skeltering routes of conversation. This, in my opinion, is one of the highest signs of friendship - not the ability to talk about your deepest secrets with someone (lord, those who are so emotionally inept that they need to outpour their 'feelings' can usually do so to anyone who has ears and an inability to escape), when you can 'jam' when talking, busk conversation safe in the knowledge that those around you are understanding not just what you are saying but appreciate the way you are saying it. It is a proof and demonstration of connection. And I feel that I've connected with these people very quickly. I've been very lucky.

After James and Darren had gone to their (respective) beds, Carly and I sat up until late into the night/morning (I went to bed at five for a couple of hours), talking about all kinds of things, mainly art. She's a funny mixture, Carly. She seemed, when I first met her to be quiet, a little distantly cold, demure even, in her own way. Yet, when she starts to talk about things she cares about she gets extremely passionate - and she's very passionate, as well as extremly knowledgeable about visual art in its multitude of guises. Many of the names she mentioned I said I hadn't heard of, and she very ecitedly traced out their place in the pantheon of art history for me. I nodded, pretended I understood what she was talking about, and sipped more wine.

Since I've been living in the house I haven't seen any of her pictures; she has said that she's very protective of them. But last night she led me by the hand up to the top of her house (she sleeps in an attic room which doubles as a makeshift studio) and showed me some of her works-in-progress. It may have been the wine, or my lack of knowledge about art in general, but I thought they were really very good. The nearest thing I can think of (in my limited artists vocabulary) is that they're a bit Lucien Freud; very fleshy, whist being a bit more reserved than the Freud works I've seen. I'm no art critic, but, as I say, I really liked them. Usually I'm a bit suspicous about any attempt to link the artist to his work - try and read back from art something about the character of he or she who created it - but I think the pictures seemed to suggest hidden depths; depths of more open, fluid emotion that the buttoned-up outer her image might immediately lead you to believe.

As the night drew on we sat next to each other on the sofa and Carly leaned her head on my shoulder whilst I stroked the inward curve of her hair. There was preemptorily sexual in the gesture, I'm quite sure of that, but neither was it the false intimacy nothing of two drunkards pawing to pretend away their solitude. I think Carly, like all the people in this house, and unlike so many people I've met in the past, is worth knowing; I think she has something special about her.

Another post has gone by and I still have written next to nothing about my novel; ah well, I haven't written any novel yet either.

Til Tomorrow, then.

Ahhhh... Very quick post.

Sorry I didn't blog yesterday - that was pure laziness, I couldn't motivate myself to get to an internet café - and sorry todays is going to be short - I've just wasted most of my hour on surfing around various literary-type websites.

Just a quick update on what has been happening to me.

I finally broke all ties with my old life by giving my agent a ring and telling them that they could put my room up for rent. I guess there's no going back now. I'm going to have to start looking for a place in London, as I shouldn't stay in the house for too long... no-one likes a guest who outstays his welcome.

I've done a quite a bit of planning on my novel: more of which in my next post.

Also, I'm really getting on with the guys who are putting me up at the house, which, given their generosity, is probably a good thing. They really seem to be my kind of people (and, I've never really had anyone who I've considered my kind of people before).

Everything is exciting at the moment and I'm hopelessly optimistic. This usually means that I'm bound for a slough of depression; it hasn't yet come on.

Will do a good long post tomorrow, so as to make up for my laxity (is that a word), laxness (is that a word), laxativity (definitely not a word and has disturbing connotations).

Til tomorrow.

The Beginning of the Novel...

Today, finally, I started working on the novel.

I woke up, the light streaming through the tatty floral curtains (Carley assures me that they came with the house and are not of her choosing) and over my makeshift bed. My saving angel herself was at the door, bringing me a cup of steaming coffee. I still have the good fortune of being considered a new and interesting guest, rather than the out-staying-his-welcome interloper, and so I get such little treats.

The house has four people living in it: Carly, of course; Darren, who was at the party a couple of days ago and is an artist like Carly; a guy called James who works in advertising; and a shadowy figure (shadowy because I haven't yet met him) whose nickname is Scout. At least I hope its a nickname. I haven't met him because at the moment he's at home with his parents; taking an extended holiday after the festive period. Apparently his home is a country estate somewhere in Wales - hundreds of acres, so the others tell me; he's a veritable laird.

Anyway, I walked Carly to work at the publishers and then carried on into central London to find somewhere I could sit and think. I bought myself a cup of coffee in a little café near Covent Garden - it was called the Dicken's café, or something similarily inspiring - and spent a good two hours nursing a single cup of coffee (much to the proprieters distaste, I think) and making planning notes in my notebook.

One of my first acts when I got to London - was it really only three or four days ago? it seems like an age - was to buy a proper notebook. It's a black leather moleskine and was the notebook used by both Hemingway and Picasso (I'm picking up literary antedecents everywhere I go). The pages have a smooth finish and the ink pen my father gave me for my sixteenth birthday glides over it smoothly, like a heron skipping on the surface of a pond. It is one of the few objects to which I've grown an attachment that's almost of a sentimental kind. Less because it was my father who gave it to me - I don't really go in for that kind of familial nostalgia - and more because it is one of the few posessions I've managed to keep with me for any length of time. Its a nice pen, but even the nicest things I've owned I have managed to lose, or have been stolen, or left behind. I keep it by me now, a little like a talisman.

Anyway, I've managed to make the first few notes, and the generalities of my novel are taking some kind of form, albeit a slight nebulous one. I don't want it to be realist, I don't think I have the concentration or the will to produce one of those densley plotted historical novels (sorry, Dickens!); I'm not really interested in real people and real problems. I want it to be a novel of ideas, too. Not that I think I have many that are truly unique or earth-shattering, but merely because I find a narrative of ideas more interesting than a narrative of events. In fact, that is how the structure of my novel is going to work: its not going to be based on the events of any given time or follow the life of any given person. Rather its ideas that will lead the action of the novel, rather than the other way round.

I think there's a Thomas Mann novel (maybe its The Holy Sinner) which is narrated by the spirit of story-telling itself. I hope to do something similar; the ethereal movements of thought will be my narrator.

And what's the title of the novel? Surely one of the first question anyone gets asked when they let slip that they're writing one (right after what's it about?) . The answer: I don't know yet. Maybe someone reading this could suggest a title; I'm awful at things like that.

Alright, I had better go. I'm becoming somewhat of a regular at this little internet café off leicester square - I've even started to get a smile from the girl behind the counter. She starts to slice the cheesecake as soon as I arrive. I should stop bowing to the temptation to buy it however; I really must watch my finances.

Enough! I will post again tomorrow.

A Place to Sleep

Alright, I should probably update you on precisely what has been happening in the last couple of days...

If you can remember as far back as my post a couple of days ago, I've been in London homeless and directionless after walking out on my deadend job over the new year. I'm now, I'm sure you'll all be pleased to know, no longer living out of a youth hostel and have found myself a place to stay - at least temporarily.

It all happened two days ago, when I looked up an old friend of my mothers from University. We'll call him Max, which is a suitably fitting name for this sixty-two year old doyen of the publishing industy. He works for a pretty high-up publisher and I looked him up on the internet in the hope of... I don't know, really. I was harldy going to sell him my book, which isn't yet written, or concieved or even anything more than the sum of my intentions. It was more just to be doing something, to try and make a contact. In any event I was surprised that he let me in to see me.

When I went into his office he was wearing a crumpled grey suit, when I went in and was chewing on the end of his pen, leaning back in a big black swivel chair. There was something about him that reminded me of one of those big Hollywood movie producers, chomping on a blue biro instead of a cigar. He welcomed me in, sat me down, talked a little about the past - used to bounce me on his knee, some such crap - said complimentary things about my mother (perhaps too complimentary, perhaps me and my mother were a little closer than friends). Then he gets to the question: "What can he do for me?" I manage to umm, and ahh enough for him to think that I've just called in socially, a young whippersnapper whose paying a social errand because his mother has compelled him. I stay a little longer then leave, taking his hints that he's a busy man with little time and I'm wasting it.

Outside his office I get talking to a girl in the open-plan outside; a secretary, or a pa - something of that sort. She's pretty and smiled at me on the way in, so I stop to talk. I think she's flirting, so I stick around for a while, and also start talking to her friend: a brunette with a bob, with a round friendly face. Perhaps too friendly to be arouse my amorous attentions. After around ten minutes they've asked me to a party they're going to. As I've got nothing else to do except sit in my hostel and read a book whilst the snores from the fat bloke below float up to me. I take the blonde girls number and meet up with them.

The party is in a house in Kennington. I meet up with the two girls from the publisher's office and the crowd they're with. Despite my expectations, even my plans, I don't spend any time talking to the blonde girl (whose name I don't even know) but spend most of it with the brunette with the bob, Carly, and a friend of hers called Darren. She's got a temping job at the publisher's office (which sounds boring as sin), but is really an artist. She does big and conceptual stuff. I explained to her my sleeping situation and she said I could crash at hers for a couple of weeks until I found something better. I was amazed, she didn't even know me from adam, but she's asking me into her house and onto her sofa. I must come across as pretty trustworthy.

The house is pretty nice, a three story building with a lounge and maybe five or six bedrooms. I slept there last night and she's said I can stay as long as I like.

Have pretty much come to the end of my time allocation, so I had better go. I'll write more about my new living arrangements tomorrow along with the actual purpose of this blog - about the progress on my novel.

'Til tomororw.

A Quick Post

Just a quick post, there's someone waiting outside who is offering me a place to sleep tonight, so shouldn't keep the lady waiting. I said I'm checking my e-mail, but I don't think I cut the kind of figure who would get enormous piles of e-mail correspondence.

Will catch up with what's been happening tomorrow.

'Til then.

The Wandering Novelist's Blog - 1st Post

Hello, my name's --- no, I probably won't tell you my name. I've heard all kinds of tales of people getting in all kinds of trouble because of what they've written in them. So, rather than compromise my blog's adherence to the truth, I think its probably for the best that I'll shroud myself with the black cloak of annonymity. Equally, I'll keep the name's of the people I wouldn't like revealed in a big public forum like the internet to myself - maybe I'll think of witty pseudonym's: Mr. Big, the Blonde, Dog's Bollocks, perhaps. The people I don't like, I suppose, I'll name by name.

Alright, so now you don't know my name.

Next on my list of things to include in this, my first blog (the list is scribbled on the back of an envelope that I found in my jacket pocket): why I'm writing. I suppose the real reason, like most reasons, is rather complex. First and foremost, I want to keep a record. Not just a record for myself (I'd hardly need to post such a thing on the internet for the world to see), but a record for anyone and everyone who is interested in these sort of things. These sort of things being, in no particular order, the creative process of writing a novel, starting your life afresh, and doing something you've always dreamed of doing. And if, in the murky future, I do happen to publish my yet unwriten novel, the novel I'm going to write, the point of recording my new life, then it might be useful for anyone who reads it to read this too. That, I suppose, is a big if. But one has to have hope.

Ok, so I'm writing this blog to keep a record of my attempt to write a novel. Simple as that.

Next thing on the list. A little about myself. I'm 22 years old, from a small village in an indeterminate place in the North of England and, until four or five days ago, had very little purpose in life. I was - as the lifetstyle gurus would probably pharse it - drifting; I didn't know what to do with myself and so was doing pretty much nothing and with very little style. I lived by myself and had a dead-end job in a kitchen, slicing vegetables - my sole occupation as I lacked the authority within the culinary hegemony to cook them.

That was my situation until New Years Eve - I was working in the kitchen for double pay, having nothing else to occupy my time on that evening, the evening on which friends and family come together to collectively attempt to forget 'old acquaintance' and other jolly occupations. I was cutting vegetables, as is my wont - courgettes I think, though perhaps the precise foodstuff is a touch irrelevent - when my thoughts wandered onto the listlessness of my life and general existence and I determined, in the age old tradition, to make a new year's resolution. I left the kitchen immediately, not even pausing to take off my apron or take note of the questioning look of my boss, and walked home along frosty streets. The last time I left my house, disconnecting the phone as I went, I had six messages on my answer maching from my boss, questioning my sudden disappearance. I hadn't answered any of them.

I left my house three days ago, having put my few affairs in order and bought a ticket to London, the big smoke. When I arrived it was far too late to get a place to stay and so I walked around the city; carefully avoiding drunks, drug fiends and other assorted n'er-do-wells. I'm now a resident of delightful little hostel in Kensington and, if anyone out there would like to offer my a place to stay, am looking for some more permanent kind of accomodation.

Now, you may think this a little extreme - going off, cutting all ties with home, making a completely fresh start. But I think its necessary. It would be so easy, where I to stay at home, to make good intentions and do nothing about them, to say I'll do something important and then just keep on keeping on. So, very much like Dick Whittington, I've set off to London to seek my fame and fortune.

I'm currently writing this in an internet café - a jolly place on Charing Cross Rd. that does, I've just discovered, an excellent cheese cake - and so had better vacate my computer and let someone else on. I will do my best to post every day, probably right here, probably with a piece of cheesecake by my side.

Until then.