Sunday, 1 July 2012

Diss Con 1 - This Is Your Brain On Shakespeare

Hmm...clearly something's gone wrong with my maths somewhere - wasn't supposed to reach Diss Con 1 till Monday.

Blood this morning was 5.8, which is OK.

People tell you not to operate heavy machinery or make big decisions while under the influence of alcohol, or drugs, but nobody ever tells you not to write blogs while watching a maudlin Shakespearian history.

Last night's entry came to you courtesy of Richard II - one of the more wishy-washy of Shakespeare's historical kings, which happened to be on my TV while I was writing.

Apologies, therefore, for the rather heavy tone of some of the later bits of it. I had an email from my pal Wendy this morning that said:
"Stop being a ponce!"

Sage advice, as ever...only slightly diluted by the fact that when I asked her about it, she admitted it had been written in the wee small hours of the morning, when she was drunk as a glass of whiskey, and in the painful sobriety of the morning after, she couldn't remember what she'd texted me.

Today has been more of the same - decimating the office, discovering things from my past. So far I've discovered:
A page or two of sex scene from my very first collaborative piece - with Karen "Slinky", back when we were both in school. It was printed in dot matrix ink on that old printer paper with the holes in that was fed on a big roll.
A few pages of handwritten novel from my friend Sian, written a decade ago.
Scads of letters from my various friends over the years.
Pictures of the amateur dramatics troupe I was with as a teenager. Was kinda fun spotting all the pre-teens who are thirtysomethings now...
Postcards from my pal Jon, when he went touring the world.  Bittersweet to read them, as he later committed suicide.
My first prize for writing, when I was 19.
A professionally produced 'front-page' all about me from when I left my first job as a journalist...

It's been something of a grand tour of my history, but one thing really springs to mind - none of the things I always thought would be in there...are in there. Always figured by 40 I'd be published. Clearly, this is my own bad, because I seem to do practically anything else, other than write. But have had some really good ideas lately, so intend to get on with things. Likewise with the Disappearing - intend to try and get back on the bike tonight, so as not to let blisters drift me into a standstill-week. No uber-commute tomorrow, so Tuesday will be pretty honestly the result of this week, so I'd hate all the early work to be undone by the sitting-on-my-ass portion of the week.

But I guess we'll see. I'm honestly not stressing out about the thing.

Honest...

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