One of the few good things about being on the scrap-heap at 38 is that your day can end up quite varied. Take today for example.
I got up about 10am, which is fairly late for me, had my coffee and had my usual half hour of fannying about the net looking for football news etc.
I spend a few minutes looking for jobs on the job websites - nothing doing.
Hung out the washing.
Had a wee half hour on the Playstation.
Made myself braw for signing on. Headed out to the Breu, signed on, came home.
Now here's where it really starts to pick up pace.
After a lunch of microwaved mac and cheese while watching Kids in the Hall, I got cracking with a range of pressing tasks.
First I did the lawn. It was really needing it. Did a wee bit of weeding as well.
Came in, finished off a spooky Western comic I'd been writing. That took a couple of hours.
I then had a wee bit more of a go on the Playstation.
Then I dusted while listening to Frank Zappa, swept the kitchen floor, swept the bathroom floor, hoovered the hall and the spare room, washed the bathroom floor, hoovered the living room before going upstairs to hoover the bedroom and wash the upstairs toilet floor.
Visitors the morra you see.
Then I watched a wee bit of "The Henry Rollins Show" before the missus and the wee one came back in from their lives in the real world.
I, of course, got off my mark and got the tea straight on for them.
I'm no long sat down let me tell you.
I suppose if you'd told me five years ago that I'd one day be dividing my time between sweeping, mowing and writing supernatural cowboy stories I'd have said you were daft, but I've had worse days. Most of them in an office.
4 comments:
Too right on that last bit. My life isn't all that different these days as I'm living with my parents for the moment until I move back to Montreal in mid-August. I don't really have enough time to look for work (though I have some work with my dad coming up reflooring a theatre) so it's a lot of laying about and reading and writing. My detective novel is finally starting to come along and I should have a reasonable (if very rough) first draft done by the end of the summer. Things are pretty good.
Yeah, that spooky Western comic script is probably the best thing I've ever written and that hoovering yesterday was up there with my best as well. Its all good.
Will be keen to read your book when its ready G.
Is that drawing above from the comic?
The problem with writing a detective novel now is that The Wire exists. That show really raised the level, which is a good thing in a lot of ways, but it presents a load of challenges.
No It's by a comic book artist and painter called Sean Clauretie from his exhibition called I Hate Cowboy Art. I should have pointed that out. He's really good.
Here's his myspace:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=40209609
I wouldn't get too bogged down in The Wire - there's a million ways of writing a detective novel and its not a competition (in a creative sense at least)
Bear in mind that successful novelists like Richard Price were writing it as well, so yeah, the bar is set pretty high.
Really all storytelling is is developing a framework for expressing yourself - detective novels provide a formula and on top of that you add whatever it is you've got.
I'm sure you have more than enough to say to make it interesting and completely different from anything anyone else would come up with, and that's the key really.
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