Archive for the 'writing' Category
I know, slow on the old blog the last couple of days. Been busy with a few jobs Mrs. tyger lined up for me. Plus: I still have that laptop review to write (sorry Lucy, hellishly busy), not to mention a whole heap of copy to complete. Oh, an it’s my bro-in-law’s birthday, so there is a whole Pro-Evo-party thing going on tonight. More tomorrow peeps.
Sphere: Related ContentLast night, while sulking alone in my hotel room, I started reading some of the old posts I have stored on my laptop, and began thinking about the words that I frequently use. It was quite interesting (for me at least).
Whenever I write about George W. Bush, I tend to refer to “The House of Bush†and the “colossal†misjudgement that is Iraq. Maybe I have a talent for drama – that, or my writing is hyperbolic nonsense, which is ironic considering that exaggerated prose is one of my pet peeves. However, I would argue that Iraq is such a massive political disaster, that such language is perfectly warranted.
Around the time I started listening to the excellent Letter to America podcast, I started referring to my readership as “dear readers.†Jett Loe, the chap who produces LTA, refers to his “dear listeners†regularly, so that’s where I got it. I make no apologies for this, no one is forced to read this blog so I love every last one of you.
“Dude” – this Americanism, I presume, really grates with some British readers, but if you have watched as much South Park as this writer, you’ll understand why it’s so deeply embedded in my lexis. So please excuse the term, dudes.
This post was intended to be longer, but I’m a bit rushed, so that’s your lot…*snip*
Sphere: Related ContentI have been incredibly busy for the last few days. I mean really fucking busy. It’s getting to the point where I’m waking up in the middle of the night for a piss and I’m checking my emails. I don’t recognise myself.
Anyway, I get home today and Mrs. tyger has made me a little writing space at the bottom of the stairs. I’m chuffed. It’s small, but very cosy and professional. I have my laptop, my desktop PC, my printer, and all my cables (oh, my beautiful cables…). So now I have a little place to myself to write and work. Brilliant, eh?
I’m in Suffolk tomorrow. Should be fun.
Sphere: Related ContentTurkish literature has been thrust into an embarrassing situation as its greatest living writer has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (that’s the big one).
Orhan Pamuk had only recently been acquitted on charges of denigrating the Turkish nation. Pamuk raised questions about Turkey’s massacre of more than a million Armenians in 1915. To talk of the Armenian genocide is considered treason, and so, outside of Istanbul’s liberal intelligentsia, Pamuk is considered a traitor.
The award, bestowed on Turkey’ highest profile novelist and intellectual, will be rued more than it is celebrated.
Sphere: Related ContentNovosibirsk, Siberia | 13:08 (07:08 GMT), August 2, 2006
I suppose I should be commenting on the ongoing fighting in the Middle East, but I guess others are doing so, and as they are ‘in touch’ with the 24-hour media juggernaut that is the internet and satellite television, they should probably be much better informed and worthy than me. So I shall not dwell on those troubles and simply enjoy my afternoon drinking tea, alone – but for a snoozing little boy - in the apartment, pondering to myself, and now of course, to you.
I am reading Alistair Cooke’s Letter from America (I have misplaced my copy of Graham Green’s A Quiet American, it is hiding from me somewhere in the apartment, it will reveal itself soon enough I’m sure). I bought Cooke’s book, which is a collection of his best radio broadcasts, sometime ago in a bookshop in Newark. I have been meaning to get stuck into it, but as it’s in essay form, one can read one or two and put it down again. This leisurely approach to literary digestion suits my usually busy schedule, but here on holiday, when time is in such plenty, I hanker for the escape of a good novel.
The choice of English-Language books here in Siberia is very poor. You can get classics, some of which are fairly contemporary (such as Greene), but you cannot purchase recent tomes you may have read about in a newspaper or heard discussed on the radio. I would very much like to read one of Margaret Attwood’s novels, as I hear they are among the best of the current cannon. I regret not picking up one of her novels at the airport.
If I am honest with you, I actually adore spy thrillers by Robert Ludlum. The Jason Bourne books are of course my favourite; I have all the books and DVD’s of the films. His other books are always enjoyable, but I have a soft spot for Bourne, and I love the way the films follow a different narrative to the books. Such trashy literature is a vice I know, akin to gorging on hamburgers and fries, but we all have our own transgressions, don’t we?
I must return to my book soon, I have no idea how much longer little tyger jnr. will sleep. He will demand, and of course deserve, my full attention. Such idle time wasting will no longer be tolerated, and I will no doubt be playing hidey-boo and wrestling unsuitable objects from his vice-like grip soon enough.
Tonight Mrs. tyger and myself plan to go to a restaurant together, just the two of us. It may be very nice Russian one we went to last week, but as ever I am holding out for Korean (I saw a restaurant in the city as we drove by, I have a sharp eye for culinary establishments, to which my friends will attest). Korean food is, in my opinion, simply the best in the world. It’s a spicier menu than Chinese, more substantial than Thai (Mrs. tyger’s favourite), and more varied than Japanese.
I suppose I must be sure I do not consume dog, although I have never actually seen it on a menu, but maybe here, so deep into Asia, it may appear. It’s not a myth is it? I have eaten lots of weird and wonderful things, but I couldn’t eat dog, certainly not a pooch, almost like eating a friend. Could you? I suppose if I were starving, it would be infinitely preferable to death or feasting on ones own arm; poor Rover would certainly then be seasoned, thrust in a pot and stewed, but not if I have the choice. Pork I think.
Anyway back to the wonderful Alistair Cooke. Good-bye.
Sphere: Related ContentI write to you from Russia somewhat drunk. We have had many bottles of Baltika, Sankt Peterburg’s finest beer. We have also consumed many sesame seeds, olives, much chicken and copious amounts of salty fish – as is tradition in Russia (but not the rotisserie chicken, that was my idea). Everyone is either out on the balcony gossiping or playing puzzles together on a laptop.
What is it with Russians and puzzles?
I spent the day inside writing today. It was nice with the blistering sunshine coming through the windows into the nice cool apartment. Tea flowed, as did the juices of creativity as I wrote a nasty little chapter about a house siege.
Here is an extract:
A punch from somewhere on Ajeti’s right crunched into his jaw. As his head rocked to the left a broken tooth and bursts of blood filled his mouth. He fell to the floor writhing in agony. A foot stamped down hard on his shoulder, the cracking of bone could be heard. A second foot into his stomach, from another goon, Ajeti screamed out. Now his wife was screaming, begging in English and broken Albanian to stop. Zani stood and grabbed her by the hair, thrusting her facedown into the sofa to muffle her screams. It worked, she relented, sobbing and crying.
Ajeti, spluttering blood with every word begged, “What do you want? What do you want?â€
“We have what we came for.â€Zani stood up and walked towards Ajeti, now prone and crawling towards his crying wife. As Zani approached he looked down at Ajeti like a beaten dog. “Consider this your first warning.†Zani lifted his foot and stamped down on Ajeti’s head, and again all was dark.
It’s hard finding time to write, but I need to get the novel finished.
*Pls note, I am some 6-hours ahead of GMT here in Russia, so don’t think I am so drunk so early!
Sphere: Related ContentI was awake last night until 3 am. I went to bed at about twenty past twelve; I just laid there, eyes as wide as a nocturnal rodent. But then it came. It’s what drunks sometime refer to as a ‘moment of clarity’, a conscious moment where the clouds of the mind open and reveal a perfect blue sky.
For weeks I have been mulling over a difficult sex scene in my novel. Should I tackle it and risk coming across as either a talentless pervert, or a clumsy buffoon; or should I a la Nick Hornby, cop out, and tell the reader it’s none of their business. But as the clouds moved it came to me, a tender sensuous encounter. Honest but not explicit.
I’m not sure what brought on this short episode of lucidity and creativity, but it got my mind racing into plot twists, narrative devices and set pieces. It’s a shame we’re sharing a room with our 14-month-old toddler, because I dared not open the laptop fearing the whirling of the hard-drive would awake him from his slumber. Thankfully this morning the memory of last nights brainstorm remains, but instead of an open cloudless sky of creativity ahead, there is now a murky uneasy vista…
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