illernessed

At about 11.30 last night I was convinced my cold had gone, that my back had got better and I was on the brink of beginning a novel that would identify a generation.

I sat resplendent on my leather armchair, legs crossed, glass of wine in my hand pontificating to myself. I took some more notes and sighed with relief. Great.

This morning I have a wine-based hangover, one of the first I can remember in a while. It’s not too bad, just present but my fucking cold has most certainly not gone, if anything the bastard is worse than yesterday. Indeed my back is being a fucking idiot as well and as for the novel, well, maybe it won’t identify a generation but it’s got legs.

I wrote a book couple of years ago. It’s a funny process, or rather, it was as far as I was concerned. I’d been chewing on an idea for a few months and an opportunity arose which enabled me to sit down and make proper notes with a view to starting the bloody thing.

Here is where it gets weird, once a basic plot has evolved one becomes a permanently distracted twat, there is only one direction the mind wanders, the book becomes a permanent default setting in the brain, it creeps into conversations, meetings and encounters. Once the writing process has begun it’s like a succession of delight, pain, agony, delight over and over…. Now the distraction begins to morph into obsession, when the book isn’t being written it’s a single permanent thought, when it’s actually being done the desire to push on is almost too much to bear, the process seems endless, fruitless, even, until finally, at some point an ending is declared.

The aftermath is extraordinary, it’s a combination of exultation and despair, and that’s before one has had a chance to actually check ones final work which is suprisingly hard to do. In the end what I’d really acheived was a half chewed novel that I bunged out to a few agents, I got some standard ‘fucks off’, a few non standard, ‘nice one but no’s’ and one ‘really interested in your work but this isn’t it’. After that I couldn’t be pissed so the book sits crinkling in my drawer.

But this new book, well, it’s going to be fucking great.

The sooner this cold fucks off the better, my right nostril is now utterly rammed with cemented snot, my head is merely a fragile shell containing a pounding mass of slippery raw liver, the stuff I’m coughing up could be used to grout bathrooms and I’m shitting exhaust pipes.

Look, sorry to bang on about this but I really shouldn’t be here at work, the only advantage to being at work is that you get to read a new Piqued. That’s right, you. I get nothing.

I’m quite literally laying down my fucking life, for you. And what do I get? Mmm? Iller, that’s what.

Today’s offing is long, unpleasent and important. Bye