I'm going to Paris today

I'm flying to Paris today. I'll be getting home Friday night, and the blog will resume action on Saturday. Take care till then.

Love

Thomas xx

Gremlins

I was lonely so I decided to buy a pet. I used to have dogs when I was little. When they were alive I think I found them too loud and they used to bite my ankles when I left a room. They were corgis. I still have a photo of them in the room where the computer is. The picture is in a frame that’s been made to look like flowers are growing out of it. The corgis could be really irritating, but because I felt so lonely I think I talked myself into believing that I really missed them. They were twins and died within quick succession of each other. The last one to die mourned her sister and used to sniff around the places where they both used to piss, looking for clues.

I used to have cats too – they were twins also, born in my garage by their mother – a stray called Cleo who hated people and life. We named the kittens Whisky and Soda. They both lived a long time for cats – both close to twenty years. Whisky broke one of his legs when he was seventeen and the vet said that the only option was to amputate it. He got used to it once the fur had grown back over his new stump. If he got excited he used to fall over into the borders at the sides of our garden. As Soda grew old, he suffered from feline dementia. He used to try and walk through windows. He’d hit his head about five times, sit down and then try again.

My new pet was a mogwai. I’d never heard of a mogwai before and I was concerned that I might need a special license to keep one. The man who sold me my new pet seemed pretty dodgy. I think he was just anxious to make a sale so he told me that mogwais were easy to look after. He said that they didn’t like sunlight which was fine with me because my depression had grown so great in the recent months that I kept the curtains drawn pretty much all day anyways. He also told me not to get the mogwai wet and that under no circumstances was I to feed my new pet after midnight.

I took my new pet – my new mogwai – home and played with him for hours. He had a really cute voice and was able to mimic certain words, a bit like a parrot but much sweeter. He had trouble grasping full sentences though. I felt a lot less lonely, and I think that my new pet felt happy in his new environment.

I never quite understood how to feed the mogwai. I was told not to feed him after midnight. Technically it was always after midnight. After four days, my mogwai starved to death. In his final hours his bowels gave in and his fur was matted with his own faeces.

I felt lonely again.

Please watch me sleep

Few things scare me more
Than the idea of someone
Watching me sleep.

I’ve barely said that to myself before,
Let alone write it down and see the
Words that are trying to explain what I mean
Looking back up at me.

I think this is my way
Of telling you.

I woke up at your place,
And almost staggered to your
Room, can’t recall if tears
Had come or been kept away
By my shaking, flabby body.

My eyes opened properly
In the dark before I decided to
Quit walking: until I woke up
Properly I was still convinced,
Half asleep that I’d seen you
Pirouette across the blue floor
With someone else that I couldn't
Make out the shadows cast by

Both responding to my screams,
In the dream you were calling
An ambulance, checking a head wound –
That in the silent air of
Whatever o’clock revealed
Itself as a sweat on my face from
Crashing on the pile of coats
And makeshift pillows
You'd dumped quickly for me,
In the clothes I’d worn all day.

Even though I’d pictured kindness,
The sense of horror that I get from
My dreams
Paralyses anything else into
Stop start animation so whether
I dream in black and white or
Colour regardless

All I have beneath me
Is the fact that I don’t
Ever think I’ll be brave enough
To tell you about the thoughts
That keep returning every time
My eyes begin to weigh down.

The thoughts that keep ruining me.
The thoughts that keep crippling me.

You showed me the reflection,
And I know you have the best
Intentions but this is a selfish
Thing about fear and a selfish
Thing about not being able to
Let go
Of the few nightmarish things

That prove something to
Myself and prove nothing
To everyone who I’ll never
Be able
To tell.

vampirefreaks.com (for the voice of Kevin Killian)

“Ah shit,” he thought
As he cracked
Back shut the two
Halves that made up
His overheating laptop,

“I’m too depressed
To even to put my picture up
On vampirefreaks.com,
Or maybe my sadness is
More authentic, because
I’m not attractive enough

Even from above;
And Photoshop –
Fuck it – you can’t
Polish a turd.”

It was the third time
He’d masturbated that day.

He stopped, kicked the cat
Off the bed,
Continued.

His dick was sore and
Not as hard
As the first time.

Pictures from Myspace,
Pages of people from vampirefreak
Pages stored in his mind
All meshing on top of each other
Like fantasy acetates
Fighting for space on an OHP,
Like the ones he used to
Sing bored hymns off of
In school assembly.

Boys with better shaped
Heads for the sort of haircut
That he wore a half-price
Approximation of,

Paper cut scars on their
Arms not deep enough to
Hurt but enough to make
Complicated sex with them
Feel confused and jealous
When he eventually pumped
A weak load onto the rim
Of his hand’s grip.

And just as an aside:
“Even though I’m better
At literacy than the kid
With the long black
Fringe who’s self obsessed
Enough to stick his own
Logo ~*Jake Destruction*~
In the bottom of every photo
So it’s less likely that
Someone else might

Right click
And save

And use them to mine
For sex secrets from
Emo kids in Europe –

He still manages to
Leave these monosyllabic
Comments to girls
And other bi curious goth guys
That leave anything I’ve tried
In the dust of permanent
Digital graveyards.”

Something to do
With articulating angst,
He figured,

And then back to wanking.

“Maybe if I hadn’t
Had bread with three
Meals today
Plus processed ham,
Then the boredom
Wouldn’t feel so heavy.

As it stands I might have to
Have a bowl of Coco Pops,
Just to pass the time,

Stand in the kitchen listening
To talk radio stations, that
I’d never admit to on the internet.

About fifteen minutes and I
Could try to sleep.”

Refreshed a page
About five times every minute,

Just in case there was
Something new.

Crushes on girls,
Don’t seem dense
Enough to sustain

The sort of projections
That he’s sculpting in
Imaginary air.

He’d smoke some
Cigarettes
But there’s
No one around.

Helpless as the night

I gave him two pounds in change
Because he was cute
And I was spaced out
And wondering if that guy’s
Cock that I’d just sucked
Lotion off the end of
Had been carrying any diseases.

The new guy was sat
In a small underpass
That led up to the train station
That I was heading to
To make my way home.

He had a shaved head
And looked too clean
To have been on the
Streets for long;

He told me that if memories
Were ghosts
Then that would
Make his head
A haunted house.

Almost offered to buy
Him a drink
But I’d started walking
Before my mind had
Started to weight things out.

25 minutes later
Sat on a windy mocking
Platform with a sore hard-on
And a sweaty face,
Dehydrated, out of money,

Considered going back
And picking up his sleeping
Bag, trying out the vague
Compromises that his almost
Puzzled, surprised stare might
Want to rest upon.

I knew he wouldn’t be there
And the only thing we would
Have in common was suspicion
And fear of one another;

Deals as good as deserted street,
With dreams as deep as the
Puddles that drown them.

The burning corners of three photographs

So that’s your mother? Shit, yeah I can tell. You kinda look like her you look so fucking girly. You look like you were getting so bored or you were trying to fuckin’ impress someone or look big in that picture. Come here I’ve got something to show you.

The art of Paul Thek

The first time I saw the work of Paul Thek was in Paris in the later half of 2007. Some of Thek's work was included in The Third Mind exhibition at Le Palais de Tokyo; a show that also featured work by William Burroughs, Andy Warhol, Cady Noland, and a ton of other great interesting artists. Since then I've often found myself Googling and gawping at images of Thek's work. I was recently clearing out the hard drive of my laptop and I found a little folder where I'd stored a random selection of .jpegs of his work, so I decided to post them here. And yeah, just for the record (not that it particularly matters) I think that the very first image is my absolute favourite. Enjoy. TM x

10 Deerhunter gig posters

*Just as an aside: does anyone reading this know where I can get a Deerhunter t-shirt from? I've looked online a couple of times but haven't been able to find one. Email me or leave a comment if you can help (you can get my email by clicking on my profile just on the right of here)! I guess I could just try and make one ...

I waited for four days in a row for you to do what you said you’d do

He updated his Twitter account and let everyone know that the photo shoot had gone well. He used a word that he didn’t think he’d ever actually said out loud before: bitchin’. The photo shoot was bitchin’. He couldn’t tell whether he sounded more ironically cool or just cool. Earlier that day he Tweeted that he was having an in depth conversation with a really intelligent homeless guy.

The car journey home made him feel lonelier than a million terms at high school and the landscapes that he’d passed ten thousand times if not more seemed to revel mean spiritedly about their familiarity, like they took pride in their blandness, adding to the weight of his mire. He tapped anxiously on the screen of his iPhone, studiously avoiding making eye contact with the taxi driver who he guessed was probably staring at him through the rear vision mirror.

On arrival at the rented house that he had called home for the past three weeks he paid the driver and stepped back from the car, unzipping his winter coat. He watched the taxi disappear, standing still, taking stock of what was happening.

He made three telephone calls. The first was to his mother, which felt like the easiest for it allowed him to slip into an autopilot form of conversing that seemed to carry itself on an invisible and mechanic wave of polite indifference. The next two calls were to friends – the first of whom was just on her way out so she couldn’t talk and the third ended up with him leaving a half ecstatic, half suicidal message on a freezing cold answer phone.

The long glass window that separated the eating area from the back garden squealed as he opened it. He rested a fresh cup of coffee on the wooden patio and stood with his hands on his hips looking up at the sky. The sky looked tired like the clouds had no imagination left in them, comatose on a fading blue curtain of light and predicable reflection.

The only contact he had that night was when his phone lit up like fake fireworks and played a tune liken he’d just completed a level in an old Super Mario Brothers game. It was an automated text advertising a telephone dating service, telling him that if he rang their number now then he could speak to hundreds of other fun loving, single, likeminded people.

Likeminded, he thought. I don’t want to spend another second with anyone with a mind remotely like mine.

Before bed he spent an hour surfing the internet, mainly reading about how some goth kid had committed suicide and broadcast the whole thing live on her webcam. Someone had put the video on Youtube. He clicked a link but the website had already removed the clip for violating the sites code of conduct. The nerves that had built before the anti-climax lingered for a few minutes, leaving his fingers feeling giddy, clicking on related videos, seeing nothing that caught his eye.

He Tweeted that it had been a long day and got into his bed. He didn’t use the word “bitchin’” that time. He kept it simple, plain.

His only hope was that he could get one night away from the bad dreams. The dreams where he followed himself, the dreams where he could never make out his own face.

A Thousand Fires

It’s gotten so dark out here;
I can only make out one half
Of your face now.

You’re looking away,
Back down the street that
Over the years we must
Have raced up close to
A million times.

It’s all changed now,
Even though it looks the same.

The sun’s going down.

It feels like
We’ve lit a thousand fires;

You’re nervous, I can tell
From the way you’re standing
With your hands hidden
Out of sight, so you can
Tremble as much as you need.
It’s making me nervous too.

I need you
To pull me near
But that would make us
Closer to the flames.

So an hour later
And we’ve moved
Much higher now,
But we can still see
The fires from here.

You’ve got your knees
Pulled into your chest.

If we squint it feels like
The world’s just made
Of Xmas lights.

Might be better for us
To stay like this until
One of us starts to fade.

We’re both embers
On damp ground.

Distant relative

I found out that I had distant relative living in a country about a thousand miles away and when I say that she was distant I mean that she was something like my fourth cousin ten times removed and not even blood or anything like that to be honest she was so distant that I couldn’t truthfully work out how and even if we were related but I wasn’t too fussed because I’d decided that day that I wanted to find a new relative so I just found one and she seemed to fit ok and I liked the way her surname was spelt or how the way it was spelt made it look because I couldn’t actually pronounce her surname because it was really long well maybe if I took a second and broke her name down into syllables then I might have been able to pronounce it but I didn’t want to and besides deep down I was probably thinking hey we’re not even related so why the fuck should I learn her name properly I’m never gonna say it and thankfully her first name was real easy to pronounce so when I called I just had to say hello is that so and so that I’m speaking to rather than excuse me is that errrrm and then insult her by bastardizing her surname which might offend her and put her on edge but I guess it’s ok because the first thing I said to my virtually-not-even-a-relative relative once I’d explained who I was and how I felt that she was part of my family in these kinda warped but maybe still valid if you wanted to believe it kind of way was hey I’m holding a fucking gun to my head as in I’ve got a fucking revolver so tight in my hand and so close to my head that I can virtually feel the cold metal leaning into my skull and then I can’t really work out how to type or spell out the sound she made because it was pretty strange I guess it was just a shocked noise and there was some shouting hers I think and I think it was to someone else in her house and there was some discussion in another language that I wouldn’t have been able to make out even if it was in English because it was really muffled like she was holding one hand over the phone while she panicked around or whatever and the long and short of the situation was that she said something to me that I didn’t even bother listening to because by the way that she had reacted to what I had said to her at the start of the conversation you know the bit I just told you about the gun well from that point onwards I guess the world just felt like the time on a microwave whizzing slowly down to a piiiiing

The light inside the fridge malfunctioned and caused a nervous breakdown that I don't think I'm ever going to fully recover from or even comprehend

The bulb’s broken
It does this thing
That makes you think
Things are going to work
But it stops right there
And makes you see
That you’re not going
To be able to
There’s a buzz
And it’s blue
And it’s yellow
And it’s gold
And it’s blue
And it’s nothing again
And things aren’t working
So you’re stuck in the dark
So you have no more blubs
So you think you might
Have to try and light a candle
But you have no candles
So you can’t light one and
So you’re still stuck in the dark
And you’re afraid of the dark
And you’re more afraid of the dark
Than anything else
That you can think of
Because when you’re in the dark
You’ve got nothing to do
Except sit there and think about
All the insane fucking shit
That ruins lives and usually happens
In the dark
And that has happened in the dark
And that you’ve seen in the dark
Even though it was a different dark
It wasn’t this dark
It wasn’t this specific darkness
And you try talk yourself around
So that you end up thinking
That not all darkness is the same
But whatever
It doesn’t work
You can’t talk yourself around
So you take a piece of
Broken glass
And you push is really hard
Into your neck so it feels like
There’s a big lump of pressure
And then it then it just
Fucking bursts and there’s this
Pain and this tearing that’s
Like nothing you’ve fucking known
Before and you don’t even notice
The darkness anymore
Because you’re scraping this big
Fucking shard of glass so
Fucking hard through across your
Neck that the force you’re
Pushing it in with starts to make
The glass cut into the hand that
You’re holding it with
So now you’re in the darkness
And it feels different to the
Other darkness you were thinking about
Because you’re dying in this one
And you’re screaming so hard
You can’t hear yourself and you’ve
Never been dying in a darkness before
And you’ve never been
Screaming so loud that you can’t even
Hear yourself before in a darkness
Before
So in short:
This is all new.

The green of the trees round the rotting gate

So you’ve used up all of the words that you know.
Guess you’re exhausted.
Guess you’re gonna have to find new ways to say
“help me” and all the other stuff
That’s been on repititon
For a while now.
You’re going to have to find new combinations
That add up to
“GET ME OUT OF THIS FUCKING PLACE
BEFORE I FUCKING KILL MYSLEF”.
Maybe shouting can be your new thing,
It’ll be like you’re shouting into the mouth
Of a great big blue whale.
So go ahead.
I think people will have lost interest and
To be honest I think that the change in your voice
Will mean that no one will be able to pick it out anyways,
So shout away as loud as you can till you’re
Ready to fall back down again.
Everything you need is within your grasp.

Your imaginary riots

Stand watching imaginary riots,
Pretend these buildings are more spaced out than they really are.
Nights like light that flickered as a reflection of white brick walls,
Breath fresh from rain, jealous of misheard sentences
And I’m supposed to find your arms easy to fall in when I
Need someone to trust.
I find no rest, no peace, no safety with you.

You seem evil

I almost wrote you back
Asking what time of day
Would have been good
To read that fucking email.

I’m glad I didn’t read it
First thing in the morning
When I woke up
Because that would
Have fucked up my day
And you would have
Seemed evil.

But now I’ve read it
Late at night
And we both know
That I won’t be able
To sleep
So now you seem evil.

But when would
Have been a better time
To read what you told me?

If I read it in the afternoon
It would make the day
Snap in two, finish it
Off like closing a book.

Adam's house

It’s Adam’s hose
But Adam’s
The only person
Who isn’t allowed
To enter

Guess he could
Ask the gardener
To tell him what’s
Been happening
On the inside

Check with neighbours
See if they’ve been in
Or took a tally of the
Different people
All of whom aren’t Adam

Who’ve been going
Inside Adam’s house
Whilst he’s kept outside

Adam’s tired:
There’s the car
His front lawn

Tries knocking a window
For the sixth or seventh time

The gardener let himself
In again
Pulled the blinds down

Quotes from Heathers

Perhaps one of the easiest ways to secure my friendship for life (and why wouldn't you wanna do that, hey?) is to ask me if I want to have a Heathers night. Heathers is without any questionable doubt one of the greatest works of art ever commited to existence and if you don't agree then you and I have some pretty major differences in our respective world view. But whatever. Seriously, I think that some parts of the script of Heathers are as close to God as you're gonne get. Here are some quotes from one of the most genius pieces of cinema I have ever let me eyes bare witness to:



Heather Chandler: Well, fuck me gently with a chainsaw.

Pauline Fleming: Whether to kill yourself or not is one of the most important decisions a teenager can make.

Veronica Sawyer: She's my best friend. God, I hate her.

Veronica Sawyer: Dear Diary, my teen-angst bullshit now has a body count.

Veronica Sawyer: If you were happy every day of your life you wouldn't be a human being. You'd be a game-show host.

J.D.: Seven schools in seven states and the only thing different is my locker combination.

J.D.: Your society nods its head at any horror the American teenager can think to bring upon itself.

J.D.: Yeah, but this is Ohio. I mean, if you don't have a brewski in your hand you might as well be wearing a dress.

----------
Officer Milner: [arriving on crime scene] So, what's the deal?

Officer McCord: Suicide. Double suicide. They shot each other!

Officer Milner: Hey, that's Kurt Kelly!

Officer McCord: And the line backer, Ram Sweeney.

Officer Milner: My God, suicide. Why?

Officer McCord: [holds up bottle of mineral water found next to one of the bodies] Does *this* answer your question?

Officer Milner: [appalled] Oh man! They were fags?

Officer McCord: [grimly] Listen up: [reading from forged suicide letter] "We realized we could never reveal our forbidden love to an uncaring and un-understanding world."

Officer Milner: [disgusted] Jesus H. Christ!

Officer McCord: The quarterback, buggering the linebacker... [shaking head]

Officer McCord: What a waste!

Officer Milner: Oh, the humanity!
----------

Kurt's Dad: My son's a homosexual, and I love him. I love my dead gay son. J.D.: Wonder how he'd react if his son had a limp wrist with a pulse.

----------

Heather Chandler: Grow up Heather, bulimia's so '87.

Veronica Sawyer: What is your damage, Heather?

J.D.: Chaos was what killed the dinosaurs, darling.

J.D.: People will look at the ashes of Westerburg and say, "Now there's a school that self-destructed, not because society didn't care, but because the school was society." Now that's deep.

Heather Duke: Veronica, why are you pulling my dick?

----------
Heather McNamara: Suicide is a private thing.
Veronica Sawyer: You're throwing your life away to become a statistic on U. S. fucking A. Today; that's about the least private thing I can think of.
----------

Veronica Sawyer: This may seem like a really stupid question...
J.D.: There *are* no stupid questions.
Veronica Sawyer: You inherit 5 million dollars the same day aliens land on the earth and say they're going to blow it up in 2 days. What do you do?
J.D.: That's the stupidest question I've ever heard.

----------

Veronica Sawyer: How very.

J.D.: Our love is God, let's go get a Slushie.

----------

Enjoy

TM x

Edward Furlong (for Kier Cooke Sandvik)

Hey Ed, stop looking at me like that.
I can call you Ed, right? Let me call you Ed.
There’s no way of making
What I’m going to say –
That when you were fourteen
Your face made me think of death –
Sound like a compliment,
But I promise you it’s the biggest thing
That I could say to anyone;
Even though it does make me feel
And look just like the cliché that I
Keep pretending not to be.
But this is about you – not about me,
So stop looking at me like that.
You were the sort of boy that
I used to obsess over when I was that age
And I wished for best friends like that,
Projected you onto a million boys
Projected you a million miles away from me.
All the boys I loved used to leave,
I don’t know why I said that in the past
Tense; seriously Edward –stop fucking
Looking at me like that because it’s the
Sort of face that I see in my nightmares,
And the sort of face that burns itself on
My retina like I’ve just stared right into
A burning hot light or a torch when I’ve
Given up trying to find my way out of
Some haunted horror film woods.
I guess you must have read a ton of
Weird fan letters and internet crap over
The years about your appearance in
That Public Enemy t-shirt and a ton of
Shit that talks about how you represented
Neglect and a ton of other stuff that was,
Oh I don’t know – fuck it, I guess.
Maybe I should download that
Spoken word album
That only got released in Japan –
Maybe that will make me feel closer to
This thumbnail sized photo
That I’ve been staring at, or maybe
It might be another thing to distract
Me from the fact that I’m trying to find
Ways to justify these warped little crushes
That used to dominate my life (there I go
Using the past tense as a convenient lie again),
And yeah maybe I should just keep talking
About haunted woods and shit like that,
I just want you to stop looking at me like that.

BonniePrinceKillme

I’m going to start a band
Called BonniePrinceKillMe
And we’re going to sound
Like this band that I heard
Playing on the stereo at this
Amazing record shop in Paris
Called Bimbo Tower that
I’ve been to a couple of times.
The band will sound fuzzy
Just like the cassette I heard
In Bimbo Tower that I totally
Regret not enquiring about,
And I’ll do imaginary gigs in
Paris in my mind that will be
Better than any underground
Gigs I’ve ever been to
In real life.

Pretty patterns

You like the idea
Of giving it all over
To him, so that below
The waist is all his,

For him to cut
Pretty patterns
Out of
Leave his hand prints
Leave his mark.

Maybe he could
Go down the middle
Over and over,
Cutting into you

You could be like
A paper chain of
About twenty girls
All holding soggy hands
With one another.

Sit up tall like he was
Typing, with you as
His paper
But his writing looks
Like he’s speaking in
Tongues

If this is the mess
You want him to
Make keep it up
And make those
Noises that you hope
He likes to hear.

You’re not going
To scare me away.

You said the sky looked bigger

Last things he ate before ...

Some semen, a strangers.

Three bowls of Coco Pops.

Some eggs.

Biscuits.

Some semen, his own.

4 rounds of toast.

Peanut butter.

A litre of milk.

A Twix.

Twix sandwich.

A bowl of cornflakes.

Half a banana.

Oxtail soup.

Orders

start with the eyes
fingers behind
three course meal
know you're making notes
storing things for you
knowing you're not calling
because you're calling someone
else now
guess you'll stick with me
making you feel good
until there's someone
else that you'd rather

Stars of the Lid have been soundtracking my novel editing

Memorial/Writer Versus Subject

TEENAGER:
“It’s funny because I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone talk about or write about the word LOVE as much as you do and have. I say it’s funny because out of all the people I know you’re the one that seems to have fucked more people over in some of the most selfish ways I can ever think of; it just seems weird that you talk about love so much but still manage to treat people like shit.”

WRITER:
“How do you know how I’ve treated people? And who are you to say that I’m selfish?”

TEENAGER:
“You wrote me, you made me up as one of your characters, so my whole being is made up of your creativity, which as you know if probably the most personal part of your whole makeup as a human being. I know how much it hurts you to write because I’m made entirely of that pain”.

WRITER:
“I write to make myself less confused.”

TEENAGER:
“Which is why things seem so clear from here.”

WRITER:
“I never feel any better.”

TEENAGER:
“That’s because nearly all of what you write is lies.”

WRITER:
“I’m truer in my writing than in any other area of my life.”

TEENAGER:
“I know. That’s why I’m happy to not be one of your friends.”

WRITER:
“I could write it so that you like me. Just to spite you.”

TEENAGER:
“My case in point.”

WRITER:
“I make you seem more complicated. You should feel lucky.”

TEENAGER:
“My whole life is an unfair judgement, on your part. You use me to try and justify your own fetishes. You feel guilty about your objectification of a certain type of teenage boy. It doesn’t sit well with the morals that you’ve spent years cultivating to serve some need for people to see you in a certain light.”

WRITER:
“You should believe in yourself a little more.”

TEENAGER:
“You should learn to trust yourself.”

WRITER:
“I can’t trust anyone in the way that I’d like to.”

TEENAGER:
“I know.”

WRITER:
“How do you think I can start making these changes?”

TEENAGER:
“Haha – you tell me.”

A random selection of photographs of varying quality that I took at Supersonic Festival 2009

An update on my novel in progress

As regular readers of this blog may have noticed, of late there have been a few less of the “New ideas” posts (like yesterday’s entry) than usual. I thought that it might be an idea to just explain what’s been happening with those, because over the year that I’ve been posting them, they have proved to be one of the more popular reoccurring series featured on here, at least judging by the large amount of feedback and correspondence that I’ve received about them. And as they haven’t been posted as frequently as usual, I thought that I should put up a note to let you know what’s going on regarding those posts.

I think that a fair amount of you know that all of the “New ideas” posts are short extracts from my novel in progress that I have been working on for just over a year now. I haven’t posted all of the work that I have done on the novel, but occasionally when I’ve felt that certain parts of the prose have warranted or I’ve felt that those pieces of prose are able to stand interestingly on their own, separated from the rest of the novel, then I have abstracted them and posted them on the blog. Also, as I’ve said a few times in the past, I like to use this place as a scrapbook of sorts when I’m trying to think aloud about certain parts of my writing.

Well the news regarding my novel (and therefore the “New ideas” posts) is that I’ve managed to make it to the end of my first draft. I’m obviously really pleased and excited about this, but it also has a knock on effect on some of the pieces that I’ve usually chosen to post here.

I’m currently working on the re-draft of the novel and am getting fairly heavily into the editing stage of things. The process of re-writing, cutting down, adding new parts, and re-structuring my work is proving to be a fairly involved but completely eye opening, inspiring experience. This being the first novel that I’ve ever worked on, makes the whole thing feel like a huge and very valuable learning curve for me in terms of how I think about my work.

There are some changes that I’m making at the moment that feel fairly major to the overall feel of the book and some that feel less so, but still vital. The knock on effect of said changes is that there will probably be a lot less of the “New ideas” posts than there used to be (as evidenced recently, I suppose) because things are still be hammered out and switched around a lot. Obviously, this blog being the part-time digital scrapbook that I mentioned earlier, there will still be some occasional parts of the novel posted, just on a much less regular basis, while I try and work a few things out.

But yeah, I hope you don’t mind me thinking aloud a little bit today, but I thought that it might be of interest to at least a few of you out there. And obviously, if anyone has any questions about any of this stuff then feel free to shout out.

Take care

TM

xoxo

--------
****************
EDIT
I actually wrote this update about a week ago, because I tend to like to be ahead of myself while I'm doing the blog, because I write every day and things tend to build up a little bit. But anyway, I'm writing this little edit on Monday August 3rd, so probably a couple of days ago to the day that you're reading this on. I'm not sure, but I think I might have actually finished my novel today. I'm not sure for definite, and I think it might be best to just leave the manuscript as it is for a few days and then come back to it with fresh eyes, but for now it feels done. I feel a weird nervy excitment. I've emailed the novel to a very small number of people who I really trust when it comes to stuff like this, and whose opinions on my writing really count, to see what they make of it. So once I've been in touch with them then I guess there will be some more adjustments and discussions about things that work and don't work in the book, but yeah, for now it feels like I've achieved something that feels good. There'll be some more stuff to fiddle with until it's 100% done, dusted, buried etc. But for now - breathe ...
***************

New ideas 128

When I look at porn I have to try and turn down certain parts of my brain, or turn up other parts. The actors are always older than I’d like. But also if I’m going to masturbate I think I’ve pretty much figured out that I’d much rather look at photographs. Videos can be horny, but photographs feel closer to the confusion or something because I don’t know what happened either side of the millisecond that I’m looking at. I’m not really even talking about photographs of pornography. I just want to look at people in their normal clothes, or with a slightly dumb look on their face like they’ve just been caught out by whoever has the camera, or like they haven’t noticed it. I don’t even think that I prefer to see people doing sexual thing, like I could just look at a kid standing with his skateboard or sitting on a bench looking worn out and just staring at nothing and that can totally bring me off in this way that feels more magical and closer to something that I almost understand or even if I don’t at least it’s closer to acknowledging all of the confusion that makes up sex and being alive and feeling things. Sometimes life only works if I think about it as a series of photographs.

Wishlist from a 12 year old

*Played on the laptop.
*Put off getting dressed and showering.
*Talked to the friend who’d let me crash.
*Felt damp.
*Wished I’d had clean clothes.
*Wished I’d got better sleep.
*Wished for a lot of other things
*Thought about music that makes me nervous.
*Thought about friendships that make me nervous.
*Didn’t call the person who had promised to call me.
*Smelt smokey.
*Messed with hair.
*Ate cereal and drank lemon squash.
*Walked fucked up Converse through grey puddles.
*Did anything to avoid going back to that house and back to that room.

New ideas 127*

*Bizarrely or not, all of these things have helped my novel in progress in some way.