Tuesday 19 November 2013

Blogging the Done

My latest pizza longish writing The House of Writers has been completed after up to five months of larks and slog. Originally conceived as a book-length comedic novel with unapologetic OTT humour and satirical touches, the idea fell flat as I hit the seventh chapter. In a stroke of desperate drunk-thinking I rearranged the existing material into the form of a corporate recruitment prospectus and trimmed half the fat. It feels exhilarating to take the shears to over 25,000 words of a novel but at the same time, like a machete being driven into my bowels. Contrasting emotions. Perhaps this is a final warning. If I ever attempt to write commercial fiction again the souls of the Great Unread will rise to smother me in the sack where I slumber. Back to exploring forms and structures. Back to forms as generators of content. Back to miscellaneous collages fragments interlinked digressive constraint-based whatnots. Back to doomed attempts at originality in an age where straight character-driven narrative is king and so-called exploratory literature (of which I am a slight practitioner) is binned. Onwards.