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All responses Most smiled responses
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Perhaps significantly, I kind of read this question using the slashes as question marks: "Have you written? Are you writing?" before the rest of it told me that the items were interlinked.
Because, the sad truth is, I'm barely writing anything at the moment, and haven't been for some time. Life, work, not enough time - it all piles in on you. And it's not the effect on your writing so much, but on having the time to just *think*. Because, as far as I'm concerned, without time to think, you can't write.
Which probably doesn't answer your question, does it?
So - one day, yes, I would like to write a novel. Maybe when I retire. Or when I can take a sabbatical from work (I wouldn't even dream of being able to give up work). More realistically, I would one day like to have a collection of short stories - that would be something. A real something. I think too much importance for writers (and readers) is placed on 'the novel' - yet, in this day and age, I think fewer and fewer people have the attention span for it, whereas they can handle short stories. And short stories are an art unto themselves.
So, not working on a novel, but maybe one day I'll write one. But a book of short stories first, please. And even before that, just writing again first, please (and please and please). -
If only it were more salacious. But if my knees - er, my knee - did tremble, it was only because I was getting thanked for all the good work I'd done over the past seven months. It was a new experience - never happened during the whole eight years of my previous job.
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I can feel nothing at this moment, apart from sheer terror.
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Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
You are funny. Also: you clearly don't know me, since there is now way known on this pitiful Earth to flirt with me. I think I have a bad (or good, depending on your outlook) case of Flirt Immune Syndrome.
For instance: catching my eye won't work, because I try not to look at anybody. And that's just the start. After that it's all downhill fast. -
Because you are not being enough of a filthy trollop on Twitter, as I occasionally am. It's all about the publicity, just ask [insert name of inane celeb here].
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"Being mental" isn't a phrase I like, but okay, I know what you mean.
Hmm, one answer to this is that I don't feel like I've been creative for over a year, so I guess I no longer have a tortured soul.
But more seriously, I think an understanding of oneself, an ability to look inside one's mind and deep into one's fears, anxieties, neuroses is certainly useful, but not crucial.
A decade or so ago I went through a stage of reading esteemed tomes that scientifically linked creativity to mental illness. I thought they were brilliant, and confirmed that my depression and various other mental hang-ups instantly labelled me as a tortured writer. Significantly, I now think such books were probably rubbish. To be creative you just need to be ... creatively-minded. Yeah, I know, I is profound innit. -
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Because it passes the time, and without the point we would all be slightly rounded. Like a Moomin.
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It's 4.07pm on a Friday. Not soon enough, baby. Not soon enough. (Also, one of my least favourite Smiths' songs, surprisingly.)
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A day is a long time in politics ... oh wait, I don't mean politics, I mean classic song titles.
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Please. Oh yes. Please. I promise not to tell anyone apart from the people reading this, or reading my tumblr, my blog, my Twitter and any other means of communicating over the internet that I can lay my hands on. You can trust me.
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Yes. Mostly around my nose, because otherwise it quickly takes on the roughness of a piece of violently grated hard Cheddar. Mmm, delightful, aren't I?
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Three-part question? Cheating, that is.
(a) No, despite this flirtation with formspring when I saw the bandwagon roll into view, I haven't. I never got my name onto Myspace when it was popular (unlike other people), and the only two of all those myriad of services missing their final 'e' that I have troubled myself with are flickr and tumblr. So there.
(b) Don't ask. (Or, let's put it this way - in the past 18 months I have had two tough and very thorough interviews for social media/webby type jobs. I didn't get either of them. But I'm not bitter. Much.)
(c) I would introduce a social media service called MURDR. I think the title is self-explanatory. -
They can be, if they let me rub myself against them often enough and vigorously enough. Sadly, very few of them do.
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Do I look like Mystic Meg?
Oh, now that mutually assured nuclear destruction looks unlikely, more's the pity, I think the world will probably implode through tedium, or because somebody turns off the internet.
As for when ... I don't care. Just make it well after I've published my first novel, so I can soak up the acclaim for a little while, please. -
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(Please God let this be a journalist willing to pay substantial amounts of money for my revealing answers.)
Yes, I did. In the early days of UK blogging there were things called 'blogmeets' (this sounds ancient, I know, like gathering round the village well to pull water), and Belle de Jour - I think before she began her now rather infamous career diversion - was present at some of them. We chatted a couple of times, but I don't recall more than that. It would be wrong of me to say more, because I really don't remember much, and I only put two and two together thanks to a post on LinkMachineGo when BdJ revealed her true identity.
(In truth, I guess I also feel a *little* guilty, because when the "Who is Belle de Jour?" fever was at its heights, I was a particularly outspoken and sarcastic commentator on the whole soap opera. I still stand by my opinions of the time, but I guess they would have been a little more reserved if I'd realised that we were distant acquaintances via the same social circle.) -
He is a Doctor. His name is not Who. Who is a question. It is science-fiction. I loathe and despise sci-fi because, somehow, it carries with it feelings of bad-skinned geeks with body odour issues. Yet I love Doctor Who. (Checks underarms warily.)
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Hinduism. I love the colours. Sometimes I want to go in and do a spot of colour-matching with their materials. Kind of like Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen Does Religion (BBC Two, Thursday evenings, 9.00pm)
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An Unreliable Witness’s Bio
Frequently pretentious since 1971. Clearly ambiguous since 2000. Completely and utterly incomprehensible since 2006.
