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< The Stinging Fly Café ~ Something that happened yz which vaguely relates to writing |
| TheDustheapsOfConvention |
 Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 10:01 pm |
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Joined: 04 Jul 2007
Posts: 115
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Hey Diva, Steven, martin, Norman, I'mjustsaying, Ozy and all those who read but do not write...
Tell me a yarn from yr writing past with tragic/comic or inspirational matter. |
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| TheDustheapsOfConvention |
| Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 10:21 pm |
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Joined: 04 Jul 2007
Posts: 115
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It was 1997 and i had just finished writing my first novel. It was called 'True Faith' and was explicitly about the search for the meaning of life. Four protagonists wandered Dublin doing strange things.
Needless to say, i now realise it was terrible but when i finished it i thought it a work of considerable merit. I didn't really know what to do next. This was in the time before the internet, lad.
My girlfriend had a friend who had a contact who knew Antonia Logue. She was in the news at the time for having secured a huge book advance on the basis of a two page prologue. (the book was called Shadowboxer and i saw it recently in Chapter's upstairs) Anyway the word was that her agent was Jonathan Williams. I found his address and sent my manuscript to him.
A week later a phone rang in a house on the Lr Rathmines Rd. The resident of flat 6 ran up four flights of stairs and knocked on the door of my bedsit. A guy called Jonathan Williams wants ya, he said.
i ran.
As i ran i genuinely believed that he had read and been bowled over. Instead he asked me if i wanted a reading quickly or slowly. I wanted it quick. That he said woud be 100 pounds. Now, 100 pounds was a fair shake of money in 1997 but what the heck.
The call came a few days later to come and see him. He lived at that time in Sandycove and i took the dart. This were the days when not every manjack of a young fella had a car. Then i followed his directions and walked a fair bit more to his address somewhere in the mews.
I walked into that room, genuinely believing that i was about to be praised and feted. It was a stunning shock to the system to be told a few truths. It lacked structure, believable characters and several other essential things. "This, i assume is your first attempt?" he said.
I could hardly answer.
he said more stuff which i instantly forgot because i never really herad them. I was in too much shock to listen. And in the end he made some concilatory noise. Maybe, he said you might be able to write non-fiction?
Ouch!
In the end, he only asked me for 80 pounds. He seemed a very decent sort amd no doubt he felt sorry for me. I shook his hand and walked away with a glazed look on my face. As i walked back to the Dart station it started to rain. I walked on but it rained harder. I kept walking though it turned torrential. |
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| Diva Girl |
| Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 1:26 pm |
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Joined: 18 Jun 2007
Posts: 80
Location: Ireland
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Oh God, the callow youth you once were Dusty. This is so sad and funny. JW is indeed a very decent sort; a lovely man.
And what ever happened to the talented Antonia Logue? I loved Shadow-box. I feel sorriest for the authors who arrive with a bang only to disappear (usually not their fault at all). Better to slog and suck up rejection for years and then finally, finally get your day in the sun. As you are now, Dusty. |
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| TheDustheapsOfConvention |
| Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 9:47 pm |
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Joined: 04 Jul 2007
Posts: 115
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Ta diva,
but c'mon, i don't wanna be the only class clown, Tell us a yarn from before you got to be where you are now. |
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| TheDustheapsOfConvention |
| Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 8:52 pm |
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Joined: 04 Jul 2007
Posts: 115
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Well anyway...
In the immediate aftermath of Jonathan William's damning verdict (which i denied utterly) i decided to go round the world, across the US, then New Zealand and Australia. (Incredibly to me now), i actually carried the manuscript of 'True Faith' in my backpack. I suppose i thougt i'd meet someone who'd want to read it. In the event, i made lots of fast and furious friendships but the script was hauled perhaps 40,000 thousand miles without anyone wanting a bite.
When i returned it was placed in a bottom drawer and then very very slowly i myself came to understand that it was crap. |
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| jojoney |
| Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 7:28 am |
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Joined: 22 Jan 2008
Posts: 15
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You could always turn that into a short story...
Man writes novel. Man carries novel around the world. No one reads it, but chapters and characters from novel escape into minds of fast & furious friends while they are sleeping, and then......?
I'd read it  |
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| TheDustheapsOfConvention |
| Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 9:55 am |
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Joined: 04 Jul 2007
Posts: 115
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Ta Jo,
And then....
The Summer of 1999 rolled around, by which time i had completed another novel. (I can't tell you the title of this one because it's the only good bit and i may want to use it again.) This time, i thought, I've really cracked it. It was a 1st person narrative in which the 29 year old protagonist has split up with his long term girlfriend and is sick of his boring job. The Search is for Love and Fulfillment. In the meantime, he has lots of sex with lots of different girls. His sidekick is a gerbil. There are several dream sequences...
The first person to whom i gave the novel was my then girlfriend of seven years. She read it and was absolutely furious. She could recognise a thinly disguised version of me in the narrative, she could recognise a thinly disguised version of herself... In summary, she saw it clearly for what it was, one long prayer of how i'd like to (in real life) split up from HER and have loads of casual sex, and then perhaps settle down with her again, and in the meantime find a wonderfully interesting job.
Within a month my girlfriend and i were no longer living together.
My boss, with whom i got on well, decided he wanted to create a new Chief role within the company. Without any interview, i was given the sinecure.
The novel was forgotten for a while amidst the turmoil. Several friends read it and their responses were lukewarm "I'm not sure. I think i'd have to read it again to give a proper response"
By the time i really looked it again myself, I didn't need Jonathan Williams to tell me it was not good enough. |
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| Ozy |
| Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 2:21 pm |
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Joined: 04 Jul 2007
Posts: 282
Location: Abroad in the haggard
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Let me guess the title....
Gerbil and I
The French Lieutenant's gerbil
Portrait of the artist as a young gerbil
Far from the madding gerbil
Romeo and gerbil
Gerbil's ashes
War and gerbil
Gerbil Eyre
The grapes of gerbil
The lion the witch and the gerbil
Ok ,I'm bored now ,someone else have a go. |
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4th in The Paddy K /St Jude award 2008
Beware of the flowers coz I'm sure they're gonna get you,yeh. |
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| Ozy |
| Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 2:34 pm |
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Joined: 04 Jul 2007
Posts: 282
Location: Abroad in the haggard
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Sorry ,sorry, just one more go..
Confessions of a teenage mutant ninja gerbil ??? |
_________________
4th in The Paddy K /St Jude award 2008
Beware of the flowers coz I'm sure they're gonna get you,yeh. |
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| francesca |
| Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 3:59 pm |
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Joined: 16 Jan 2008
Posts: 66
Location: Dolphin's Barn
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Where gerbils dare?
The Hunt for Red Gerbil
Dude, where's my gerbil?
Gerbil Interrupted |
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| owla |
| Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 4:10 pm |
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Joined: 29 Sep 2007
Posts: 38
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Hi dustheap
have you read the History of Love? Its about a book, and in this vein I think you could write a well written terrific and amusing novel about these failed ones and how you visitied this critic, how you travelled around the world to prove him wrong, how you split up with your girlfirend due to sexual frustrations which came out in the novel which only she read etc... I'd buy it!
(or steal your great idea)... theres a structure already there... but... how does it end..... |
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| TheDustheapsOfConvention |
| Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 4:27 pm |
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Joined: 04 Jul 2007
Posts: 115
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Love and Marriage and babies in a Carriage
Naturally!
(and a book deal)
As regards the Gerbil, thank you Oz and Fran for your guesses, but the correct answer is of course Da Gerbil Code |
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| Ozy |
| Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 4:35 pm |
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Joined: 04 Jul 2007
Posts: 282
Location: Abroad in the haggard
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owla wrote: Hi dustheap
but... how does it end.....
In the vets. |
_________________
4th in The Paddy K /St Jude award 2008
Beware of the flowers coz I'm sure they're gonna get you,yeh. |
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| francesca |
| Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 5:54 pm |
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Joined: 16 Jan 2008
Posts: 66
Location: Dolphin's Barn
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| Can't wait for the sequel, in which our intrepid hero takes his fight to the big boys a la P.Pullman... 'Angels and Gerbils' is apparently the working title. |
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| TheDustheapsOfConvention |
| Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 7:09 am |
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Joined: 04 Jul 2007
Posts: 115
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I had, however, miscalculated badly. There was not, in fact, an ocean of casual meaningless sex awaiting me when i split from my longterm girlfriend. I hung around Major Toms, I haunted Copper Face Jacks, but amazingly wound up walking home unmolested.
On the other hand my new job was good, challenging but exciting, involving lots of cups of tea with staff as I inveigiled them to do my bidding. Also, i eventually found some consolation for missing out on meaningless sex, I started having lots of meaningful sex with a wonderful woman I met in Knightsbridge.
Yet still, there was the itch not being scratched. I'd written many terrible short stories and two bad novels. I read somewhere that Shakespeare, were he alive would now be writing for television. Right, i thought, me too. It was time to settle down and write a screenplay. |
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| owla |
| Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2008 12:35 pm |
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Joined: 29 Sep 2007
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| oh for gawds sake! don't stop there! go on! |
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| TheDustheapsOfConvention |
| Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2008 7:42 pm |
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Joined: 04 Jul 2007
Posts: 115
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Y'see the thing that drove, the thing that dogged, all my attempts at writing was an unshakeable conviction that i could and would do it entirely unaided. Without advice from man nor book. Dimly, i was vaguely aware of the idea that writers learned their craft, perhaps honed their methodology. That however, i felt quite confident, did not apply to me. Being something of a natural. Being gifted with the ability to generally get things perfect in the first draft.
If i tell you that i'm the first born son of an Irish mother perhaps you will undertstand more clearly.
So anyhow, off i set on the task of writing a TV screenplay. When i hadn't even read such a thing. The concept i still believe was good. So good that i can't tell you too much even now in case you steal my baby. The execution as ever was not so good.
It was a historical comedy set in Ireland in 9 episodes. I was too lazy though to learn the language of screen-writing so i just wrote very very short chapters and called them scenes. By 2001 i had done the completed the first episode by which time i began to admit to myself that really it was part of a novel. Undaunted i now reconceived the project as a trilogy of novels, each subdivided into 3 parts.
And meanwhile real life was happening to me. I got married, was party to the birth of numerous babies and we moved house. I completed the first novel of the trilogy by early 2003 but progress had necessarily been painfully slowly, eked out as it was in the margins of a fairly busy lifestyle.
I realised it was crap and began a radical reworking of the whole which would definitely improve it immensely. That rewrite never was completed. Five years after i started, that project whimpered to a close round about xmas 2004. |
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