On Hiatus For the Foreseeable Future

Well. You know how it is. You go into a shop to buy a cream bun, you end up with thirty-odd pages of rewrites due in three weeks’ time. It’s one of those things, ask the ASA. For now: bye, and wish me luck.

Talking Punctuation

Hubert Selby Jr’s work is known for its strange punctuation, deployed aesthetically to depict life among slumland characters, to give a sense of disconnection: from society, sobriety, sanity. In particular, long before text messaging turned the nation into wanton apostrophobes, Selby was writing without them: first because his typewriter was faulty, later because the technique was so effective at creating his nightmarish worlds, he made it a part of his style.

So what other punctuation mishaps might we palm off as technical decisions? Bad grammar or punctuation is usually ascribed to poor writing by characters, such as the hilarious school feedback in B.S. Johnson’s Albert Angelo, where the teacher asks his pupils to write, anonymously, what they really think of him. Or the appalling letters from the Mexican escorts to the hack writer in Sorrentino’s Mulligan Stew.

Is there any value in “poor” punctuation techniques? Say I run together words without spaces,like that several times,to give the impression of a speedily written text, something being written at haste because of unseen threats? More or less effective than working with register and rhythm? Or how about lots of lovely stabbing em dashes—that—link—together—to—create—a—sense—of—either—fast—breathing—or—some—weird—daisychain—effect? Wouldn’t that look purdy?

More punctuation fun is needed in novels. People still have the temerity to correct the error in Joyce’s Finnegans Wake by adding the apostrophe when he sank almost two decades of effort into breaking down all known rules of language to give us a brighter future. We owe it to him to really shake things up . . . you, knowits TRUE.

Here Comes the Codswallop

When I was fifteen I joined the Life is Too Absurd to Give a Fuck gang. Because we didn’t like most things, including each other, we spent all our time having group sulk sessions, or if we couldn’t be bothered to meet (and mostly we couldn’t), solo sulk sessions. We didn’t subscribe to any known teenage aesthetic, dressing at all times in contrary clothes: one in leathers, me in cardies, another in black t-shirts. Our very contrariness became in itself an aesthetic: to always contradict one another regardless of logic to underline the inherent absurdity in all human speech and endeavour.

This worked for a while until it slipped (very swiftly) into teenage depression. Many years listening to Radiohead soon followed, and I joined the Life May be Absurd But I Need to Give a Fuck Soon or Things Won’t Ever Change gang. That was a fun period, gazing out of trains having thoughts like ‘does my life matter?’ and ‘what contribution do I have to make to anything?’ and other life-affirming gems. Thank God that passed.

Later I signed up to the Still Don’t Care But I Can Fake it Like a Good Whore team. Everyone was pretending. Everyone hid the existential dread inside themselves and filled it with food. The not-knowingness of all things, knowing only not-knowing, and not even knowing that. I took solace in writing absurd stories shot through with humour. I had to map out neutral territories in my head: what to care about, what to be seen to care about, what to pretend to care about to endear myself to others. I still found it hard to care about absolutely anything but I acknowledged I had the capacity to do so.

So then I joined the I Care About Writing That’s Something So Let’s Focus on That and See What Happens group. Best group I’ve ever been in! Honestly, caring about something is such a pleasure. Such focus, such discipline, such drive! Who needs friends when you have imaginary friends wrapped in words who do what you want at the tip-tap of a keyboard? Being someone who cared about writing gave me a belated sense of belonging. But sadly, it came too late, two years into my undergraduate degree when I’d already made a pudding of everything.

But at least it came. These days I care too much about things. Frankly, I’m nostalgic for the days when I could ignore things as a pointless protest. Now I get sucked into every beached whale, bus crash, zinc poisoning and massive stroke. It’s exhausting being a human being with a heart who cares too much about the unpleasant codswallop that befalls everyone every couple of days. For now, I’ll try to swallow my own codswallop and deal with that. Open up, here comes the codswallop.

C*nsors**p

We are fortunate enough to have lenient censorship laws in this country (and the US). We can pretty much write anything at all and with this freedom we produce novels like Haunted or Hogg or Wetlands that thrive on gore, fecal fun and sex. The career of Mikhail Bulgakov was hindered by the horror of Stalin’s censors. When he wrote to him begging to emigrate, Old Joe installed him in the Moscow Theatre, where he faced further cuts and purges to his plays. (The experience is satirised in the excellent Black Snow).

But when writers are held back, this gives them a fiery resistance, a need for their art to emerge uncompromised. What do writers have to fight against when they have the whole world to write about? When I write with serious motives in mind (and this is a rarity—I am a silly salami) I write about those blocks I come up against in the world that stop me from doing such-and-such, those parts of human behaviour that lead to the estrangement of a person (me) from his environment. If I wasn’t suffering these setbacks, how would I cope with the absence of things to kick against?

If someone told you all swearing and sex was verboten, your entire output would consist of noisy shagging in Malcolm Tucker’s office until the ban was lifted. We fought for centuries to enjoy the freedom of complete self-expression we almost have today, and the books that continue to boff taboos are tiresome. Some of the best novels today are coming from Eastern European countries, where the simple fight for truth and freedom makes for humbling work. (That’s not to say these writers wouldn’t rather have it easier, but still. Their books are delicious).

So let’s get back to the Stalinist purges. Let’s introduce some random bans to keep writers fighting their corner and creating a new literature of oppression. Here we go:

— No negative remarks directed at the current Prime Minister’s leadership skills or choice of hair gel.

— No reference to lorries, caravans, small vans or Renault Meganes.

— No male characters.

— No animals to appear unless in drag disguised as an apple.

— No religious words in dialogue and no secular words in prose.

— Four words per paragraph.

— All stories to be about diaper theft.

— Only those named Violet can write.

— No writing on computers or typewriters or paper or anywhere.

Story Structure

The rules of this new revamped QoD dictate I must produce three posts per week. Now, that may suit your tireless, endless, unstoppable breed of blogger (naming no names—cough Hart Johnson cough) but this idle thumb-twiddler finds such a regime oppressive.

Regardless, hi. Today I want to talk about a story I recently wrote and interesting structures. I like structure. I like structured days, structured months, structured sex and structured structures. In stories, structures are delicious. They help generate those other less important things—things like character (boo) or plot (booboo) or setting (boobooboo).

You’re asking: how can structure help character? If you opt for a simple three-act set-up, you’ll need your character to do certain things: to change, grow or go beyond himself. (Yes, I hate these things too, but I paid £4000 to learn they are sometimes important. So booboo). Your character will adapt in tandem with the structure, pulled along by the structure into his actions and consequences. And plot, well—plot thrives on structure! Otherwise, plot would be running around all over the shop, not knowing where to end or begin! I admit, structure doesn’t affect setting a GREAT deal. But if your structure permits long digressions, the scenery might come into it somewhere. Unlike Chekhov, who used scenery to determine almost everything else. Dear silly Anton!

But back to me. The story I wrote, ‘On/Off,’ is a structural experiment. We begin with our generative device—form—the form in this case being a reader flipping through TV channels, in the story ‘channels’ of narrative. Each narrative strand presents a murder (it’s a genre piece, so it seems) of different sorts, presenting the elements of a basic murdered husband and wife case in variations across five distinct narratives (distinct in style/tone). The idea was to create five contradictory outcomes, weaving various hypotheses around the murdered and the murderer, and create a story that functioned on its own terms.

This is why structure matters (well, form as well—in fact form is better than structure, but let’s not upset the structure of this post). It’s essential for the writer who feels himself at sea in conventions, and yes, it’s important to master conventions before they’re muddled with, but it doesn’t mean he can’t play around with them if it helps get the story out. So there. That’s all for tonight. I’m off to write a jeremiad on the toilet seat.

M.J. Nicholls in Habitat

What does it mean to be an M.J. Nicholls in the wild? In the wild, the M.J. Nicholls is a social carnivore, he only wants flesh he can exploit to his advantage, none of the casual small-talk white-meats that make up human interaction. He is a lone hunter, hibernating most of the year, emerging in Autumn for a rampage of guts and gore, licking it all up until he has to leave his hideout again next year.

In hibernation, the M.J. Nicholls is pensive, he watches the world pass by, noting the peculiar habits of the other creatures, studying their behaviour for his annual feast. Sometimes, when beings enter his lair, he displays for them so he might discharge his fluids. He makes assumptions about other beings that he believes and brings with him to the outside wilds, and when proven wrong he bites their faces off.

M.J. Nicholls is a placid creature, but if you ask him what he is writing at the moment he will leap on you with savage intent, mauling the most sensitive areas in unconventional ways. If you ask him how he is, about his future plans, why he’s wearing the same trousers as last week, he will swoop down upon you with such ferocity, you will need an army of proctologists to the repair the trauma inflicted on your rectum.

The M.J. Nicholls in hibernation is simple to please. All he needs are texts, milkshakes and computer access. If anyone disturbs him when he is at peace, they will suffer. Take note.

This Blog’s Slow Decline

I can feel the rot setting in. What this blog needs is focus. New management. Some strategic thematic wank. When QoD launched in 2009 I wanted to combine detailed discussion on writing technique with amusing digressions and the occasional slice of fiction experiment. Now what do we have? Scraps! Book roundups. Does anyone need to know what I think of the five million books I read? Nay! Surreal fictions farted out the brain. Where’s the discipline? The effort? Oh, sir! This will not do, not at all.

So what we’re going to do is regulate the posts. There comes a point when the spontaneous word-slinging must stop and a new form of logic, order and coherence must dawn. I know this is hard for you to take on board. I know in our youth we climbed vast peaks together, vast peaks of strange words and ideas, entering lands of partial amusement and interest. But those days are gone. We burned brightly, we loved nightly. Now we’re shrivelled old-age husks, taking vittles through a straw, wondering whether we knew each other in a past life.

I exaggerate. The proceedings won’t vary too much. On Monday I’ll write a personal post about a particularity of the M.J. Nicholls experience. On Wednesday, a blog themed around writing in whatever tenuous way. Fridays will concern an arbitrary topic I will attempt to write about, chosen by Lizzie Sage in the Newscopter, or Bill in the sewercraft.

Quiddity will rise again!