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Tuesday, 18 March 2008
And Then There Were 5
In the process (just started actually) of re-editing Volume 1 for the 'new' (i.e. American) edition. Oh, how I wish I'd been less of a maverick and just stuck with the literary conventions. But, oh no, I had to make it 'accessible' (well, that one sure as hell backfired). I had to write it like people actually talked and moved and thought. I had to keep the flow, the speed, the momentum.
Arse-wipe. I needed my head looked. Now I have a loft full of an edition I hate and no way to get rid of them other than by selling them one by miserly one.
Part of me wants this second edition, because I get to do good things, like reinstate the original opening, fix things I could have said better, spot little shifts in paragraphing that time has clarified – stuff like that.
But part of me hates it. I want to get on and get the rest of the books out, be done with it. Well, get on and write 5 and be done with it.
Oddly, tired as I am with all things DANNY, right now I really want to write 5. Suddenly it's become kind of pressing – and I've got a hell of a long time before I get to indulge that creative urge.
I'm doing a really dangerous thing here, have been for years – I'm fucking with the creative urge.
Stephen King and I see eye to eye on a lot of things, having (from a craft point of view) a lot in common, but the one thing I am with him on 110% is Never Fuck With the Creative Urge.
If you want to write, you gotta write. It's like needing a shit – you have to do it when you have to do it, or you are in for one very unhappy gut. Ignore it too often and you might just fuck up your gut altogether.
So I'm postponing and postponing the cathartic dump of DANNY 5 to get the other books out there, all the time aware that I might be fucking it up entirely. Bad idea.
I do a kind of trade-off thing with my psyche. I'm always saying to it, "Just hang on in there. Not long to go now, and I promise you can write 5 till your heart's content. Gives you some time to think it through. Here, why don't you write down some ideas? Yeah, take a note of that. That's good. We could use that." It's like bargaining with a sulky two-year-old – and just as likely to end in tears.
Of course, none of this is being helped by the fact that taking the MS back from Quark into my computer has lost all the italics formatting (of course – why does it do that?) and I have the option to work from my hand-revised final draft that was corrected straight into the Mac (and which is buried in the loft) or work from the Mac-converted-back-to-PC version I had been going to use, but then I have to reinstate all the italics from the paper book by hand. If you can follow that. Just writing it is time-consuming.
Out of the two options, working from my hand-corrected draft seems the 'easier' option as, at least, that's in red ink, and so not so easy to miss things and make mistakes. But either option is an added drain on time and concentration – and I've barely got the energy to get through a day's work as it is.
On top of this I've got a partially corrected edition of our 'intro to the quadrilogy' paperback 'Cult Fiction' which has been sitting out of stock on Amazon since last year because I can't get the content right.
I know some of you have ordered this from Amazon UK. I promise I am working on it and you will get it – some day. I wrote two new pieces for it which are both geared to 'Will I like DANNY?' The first is almost a social (or maybe a psychological) profile of A Typical DANNY Reader, the second a list of Movies that 'if you like this you'll like DANNY'.
They are an attempt to give strangers a handle on DANNY so that they can feel more confident buying it, but I don't know if I'm really opening it up to more people or niche-marketing it to death.
Hellish. I seem to have turned overnight (if only – it's been a long, slow decline) into an uncertain, bottomless well of I-have-no-idea-what-I'm-doing-and-now-have-the-self-esteem-of-a-gnat. Quentin Tarantino would be ashamed of me. I don't blame him – I'm ashamed of me myself.
And I've caught a bug. Some lousy thing that makes me profoundly dizzy, falling over in shops and hanging onto the trolley like an old woman, staggering when I walk along the street, pitching on my noodle when I bend over or look up at the sky. It's accompanied by more brain fog than a-six-pack-of-Mars-bars-in-one-sitting where I spend five minutes trying to remember the word for dog.
I don't know what little fucker gave me it but I'd like to hunt him down like said dog and feed him his own testicles. Twice.
Must be my addled and dissipated life of promiscuity, bisexuality and endless (prescription) drugs catching up with me. Should never have done that porno in Rio. (No, never really did that. Did one for California though – shot in London, somewhat dully.) Hepatitis C would be easier to deal with than this.
Any other news apart from my cataclysmic moaning? Mr Scratchmann almost has an agent for his Orkney book. She's working with him piecemeal where he does a bit, sends it in and she critiques it back. Sort of writing by (very small) committee. I admire him immensely for his endurance and determination. Me, I'd probably have started a fight or thrown a hissy fit or at least a major huff by now and queered my chances. He's also tanking along doing freelance work again.
We needed the money (and then some) and he decided to send out a mailer to all his old editorial contacts and landed work within a fortnight – for the Guardian, no less. He did a piece for them (On Malcolm McLaren) then landed the commission for a monthly series. It's got club in the title but that brain fog has guaranteed I've forgotten what it's actually called. (Just asked him. Hasn't got club in the title at all. It's in the club section and is called All Ears.)
Anyway, if you read the Guardian he's in it right now. He's also got a children's book publisher interested. Somewhat bizarre, given his normal work, but, hey, what the hell.
We also got the offer to be the arts/culture presenters on a local radio station but we turned it down. I know, but it was too much work, having to go round seeing everything and interviewing people then putting the show together. But I was rather seduced by the idea of the two of us like Richard and Judy. You gotta love that.
So, that's about it. All there is to know about me and mine.
You do realise that if I do ever get as far as 5, and haven't forgotten how to write, that DANNY will actually be able to qualify as a sextet (4 single volumes and a two-parter [3]). How good is that?
The DANNY Sextet. Just can't get away from sex at all.
How droll.
Not.
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