K.P. Webster's Blog, page 28

The Naming of Things and Girls Who Read

Titles are hard.

 

UNTITLED

 

Covers are hard too.

 

Making books is hard. Let’s stick with that.

 

I’m still trying to find a title for my soon-to-be-self-published life-changing colossal bestseller. I decided to laugh in the face of my self-imposed deadline. Then I spat in its face and blinded it with a sharpened stick. The universe will wait for me. It has no choice.

 

I’ve devoted what feels like an extraordinary amount of time to this title so far. Because apparently it has to be right. Of course it has to be right.

 

And titles have never come easy to me. Just look at the title of this blog post. I haven’t got a clue. You would never guess that I used to be a sub-editor.

 

Here are some of the titles I have toyed with so far:

 

Come Die With Me
Two Hundred Years In May
The Little Deaths and Love Affairs of Hana Charlotte Lee
The Tender Loves and Little Deaths of Hana Charlotte Lee
The Greatest Gift a Human Being Can Give
The Lives and Deaths of Hana Lee
Birth Marks and Love Bites
Storm Children
One Will Come
The Woman With Stars In Her Eyes
The Woman With Scars In Her Eyes
Cheering Gods and Terminal Bliss
Not Like Other Women
A Talent for Death
Little Miss Serial Killer 
The Woman Who Killed Lots of People But Was Mostly Good
Happy Finish
Sex & Death & Sarah Palin
The 200-Year-Old Woman
A Woman of a Certain Rage
Hana Lee
The Momentary Trick of Death
A Uniquely Challenging Gift
The Uniquely Challenging Gift of Hana Charlotte Lee
Hana’s Gift

 

I have been momentarily convinced by a few of them, and then I have changed my mind.

 

UNTITLED

 

Unfortunately there’s nothing you can do to help, because you haven’t read the book and you don’t even know what it’s about – although a skilled reading of that list of titles should probably tell you all you need to know – but you don’t have time for that, I know. And why should you? You have your life to lead. Good for you.

 

Anyway, I’ll find it. It’s out there. And I will find it.

 

This morning I’ve been reading through pages and pages of quotes from Dorothy Parker and Doris Lessing and Shakespeare, quotes about sex and feminism and whatnot, hoping to find the inspiration for the perfect title there.

 

I failed.

 

But I did find this, a piece of writing by a young woman from the Philippines called Rosemarie Urquico, and although it didn’t help me find a title, I was happy my search for a title lead me to it…

 

 

 

You should date a girl who reads.
 
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve. 
 
Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.
 
She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.
 
Buy her another cup of coffee.
 
Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.
 
It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.
 
She has to give it a shot somehow.
 
Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.
 
Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.
 
Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.
 
If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.
 
You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.
 
You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.
 
Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.
 
Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

 

That’s what I want. A girl who reads. A woman who reads would be even better. And yeah, a woman who reads and writes, better still.

 

That and a title.

 

UNTITLED

 

 …

 

 

The 100 Best Titles Ever

 

 

Fools Rush In … Then Out Again

For the simple reason that a number of important things in my life have already happened on January 31st, I decided a while ago that I would publish my novel SEX & DEATH & SARAH PALIN (provisional title) on that date, which is now only a matter of a few hours away.

 

I finished the final read-through of the novel a few days ago and I am very happy with it. That was the first time I’d read it in around three months and it still made me laugh and cry and rage at the cruelty of human beings throughout the ages – specifically men. In truth, I see no reason why, with the application of shrewd marketing and the help of a tsunami of positive word-of-mouth, I won’t be sitting – within six months – on a publishing success that makes Fifty Shades of Grey look like Bete de Jour :: The Intimate Adventures of An Ugly Man.

 

The only problems at the moment are as follows:

 

I haven’t decided on the title.

 

I have no cover.

 

I haven’t managed to get on top of the formatting and the book is still a little bit of a mess with italicised words coming out underlined, margins and fonts playing up and what-have-you.

 

I have no internet access where I’m staying at the moment. My mum (because of a bad experience trying to get free of a BT contract) is convinced that the internet is the fifth horse of the apocalypse.

 

So I have two choices. I could a) ignore my self-imposed deadline and publish at some other date in the near future. Or b) I could purchase 24 hours of internet access from BT and make a challenge of it. Obviously, as you can see, I am plumping for the latter.

 

It shouldn’t be too difficult if I’m honest. Just so long as everything goes according to plan. Which of course, it definitely will. And if it doesn’t, and if I fail, I won’t have lost anything. Just a fiver, one day (which won’t really be lost) and one self-imposed deadline. But not heart, my friends. Not heart.

 

So here we go. Twenty-four hours to publish a bestseller. Who’s with me?

 

Regular updates will appear at the end of this post so do keep checking back. Right up till the moment I realise this is a really stupid idea.

 

Feel free to cheer me on, help me out with your knowledge or merely tell me I’m a flaccid-faced jerk who’ll never amount to jackshit. Just knowing you’re there will be tremendous solace.

 

Right then. It looks like we’re ready. Cue the Richard E Grant voiceover…

 

21:00 hours. First bloody Mary administered. Experiment begins..

 

…

 

21:42

So I’ve paid £5 to BT for 24 hours’ net access. It sticks in my craw frankly, but needs must.

 

My mum insists on giving me money for looking after her as she’s recovering from her operation so I bought the ingredients for a bloody Mary earlier. Or a series of bloody Marys. I have the first one in front of me. If this turns into a proper 24-hour slog, she also has a shoebox full of other drugs I can plunder, although I’m not sure Tramodol will keep me awake. But it can’t hurt.

 

Right. I’m now going to try and fix the formatting problems in my mobi file. Mobi by the way, is the file-type associated with Kindle books. I’ll publish on other platforms later, but my first marketplace is the largest. If anyone knows anything about Scrivener, please get in touch.

 

22:19

Jesus, time is suddenly going very quickly.

 

I’ve received a couple of the latest attempts at the cover. The guy who’s doing it for me unfortunately has a family and a job and I’ve rather dropped this 24-hour thing on him, like a bad nappy. So we may have a problem with the artwork. Unless I can persuade him to take the day off work tomorrow. No, just kidding. I couldn’t do that. He should just do it though really, if he believes in the work.

 

Also, I am asking the advice of a self-publishing dynamo vis-à-vis Scrivener, which is the app I’m using to convert Word to mobi and which is currently twisting my melon.

 

Also, I’ve just received a random email saying wonderful things about my writing. I’ll quote you a tiny bit in the way Duncan Banntyne would: ‘It is people like you who keep me moving towards something positive.’ You see? I mean, even if I end up in a gutter somewhere, at least I helped a stranger feel positive about life. There’s always that.

 

22:59

Bother. I’m feeling rather disillusioned. The technology is squatting over me and doing its business in my eyes. This was an idiotic idea, wasn’t it? Idiotic? Or courageous? Oh shut up.

 

I’m going to have a cigarette out of the window.

 

01:42

The title’s bobbins, isn’t it?

 

Fuck it. It’s gone.

 

I shall now consult the universe for a new title. The universe won’t let me down.

 

09:39

It’s been a funny old day. Well, not funny. Whimsical maybe. Wry? I don’t know exactly. I was woken up between snoozes by a rude wrong number around 8. He didn’t even say sorry. I hate that. But I forgive him. The shit. Then some other things happened, none of them as interesting as that. Suffice to say, I now have an oven to wash.

 

So, turns out there is more than one way to skin the cat of self-publishing. You can try getting your manuscript clean enough to bung on to Scrivener or somesuch and hope that everything stays as is, or you can crawl into the CSS and perform HTML surgery on your own ass. As you can see, when it comes to the latter, I don’t really know what I’m talking about. So I stayed up till about 3 cleaning. I am still cleaning. And you? What are you doing this bright chilly morning?

 

12:00

Nine hours to go and I’ve got to the point where I genuinely couldn’t give a fuck. Real life has taken over. The NHS are a shower of cunts, aren’t they? Yeah yeah yeah, I know there are some wonderful people who work for them, of course there are, but admin-wise they couldn’t organise … well, apparently they couldn’t organise the delivery of some dressings, despite promising said delivery for three days in a row. And that’s just the tip of the shitberg. What a fucking world eh? What a world where if you want a decent education, or decent care, you have to have money. People are just fucking awful. What’s the point of books?

 

Maybe I should give up and get a job in a supermarket. That was my first job, when I was 16, stacking shelves. You know, it wasn’t so bad. There’s a Morrisons near here. Nice wide aisles. Chubby check-out girls with pasty white cheeks and small fish and chips with peas for £3.15. On a Friday.

 

Oh God.

 

15:50

Oh, this is intolerable. I’m going to have to buy a dongle.

 

And I’m going to have to change the title of this blog post.

 

I’ve been doing other things for the past couple of hours. Doctors, chemists, phone calls, supermarket.

 

What a stupid fucking idea this was, eh?

 

This song is in my head. Get it in yours too if you like…

 

 

19:42

Fuck it. I don’t mind failing. Besides, I may have lost the battle, etc.

 

Let’s try for Monday.

 

Goodbye.

 

You Have Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself (and Failure)

I have a friend in Italy who – because she cares – enjoys pointing out my failings. Which is to say, the reasons I’m in my mid-40s and I have nothing. Which is to say, no money, no wife, no children, no job and no car. Whilst she points out my failings – to keep me from becoming depressed – she tends to drop into the conversation every now and then my wonderful qualities. A couple of weeks ago we had this conversation and amongst the wonderful qualities she listed was my courage. She insisted that I was very courageous.

 

I couldn’t find a picture of me being courageous, so here is a picture of someone else being courageous instead.

 

Lots of people who have lives which might be described as ordinary – with partners and children and cars and commutes and two or three holidays a year – think I’m courageous precisely because I don’t have those things, because I apparently eschew them in the seemingly never-ending quest to become a hugely successful author, or a moderately successful author, or whatever.

 

But there is a very thin line between courage and idiocy.

 

Look – here I am dressed as a clown.

 

Clown? Or hero? Clown. Definitely clown.

 

In truth, I do agree that I have done some courageous things in my time.

 

Here are some of the courageous things that I think I have done.

 

1. Going to live in Italy in 2000 without a home to inhabit or a job to do or any idea how to speak the language.

 

2. Going on television with a paper bag on my head and being interviewed about being physically deformed by Penny Smith and others.

 

3. Attempting to go around the world with the intention of visiting 80 festivals with only £400 to my name.

 

Here I am on GMTV. Courageous, idiotic or a delicious cocktail of the two?

 

Often it is the outcome of the venture which has people decide whether it was a courageous or an idiotic thing to do.

 

For example, going to Italy turned out to be a courageous thing because I found a job and somewhere to live, I learned the language and found a girlfriend. (These things are generally thought to be the trappings of success.)

 

Going on TV in a paper bag could probably be defined as a courageous thing, as it came on the back of getting a rather brilliant book published, but it might also be described as an idiotic thing as the book didn’t sell many copies and so what was the point? Eh? Eh?

 

Setting off to visit 80 festivals in five continents with £400, however, is difficult to view as anything other than idiotic as I only managed to visit four festivals and ended up in lots of debt and without a job or anywhere to live and with no other option than to go and live in a field in France for 18 months. (Some people think that was courageous too.)

 

In the end, like everything else in this crazy old world, it’s all a matter of perspective.

 

I mention all this because what I’m about to do now feels to me like the most courageous thing I’ve ever done.

 

What I’m about to do is self-publish a novel., in eBook form.

 

That might not sound so courageous to you. After all, somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 ebooks are self-published every single day (made-up figure). It can’t be that courageous if so many people are doing it.

 

Well, maybe you’re right.

 

The reason it feels so courageous to me, however, is because of what it represents.

 

This novel, for me, is the Alamo.

 

This is not the Alamo, I know. This is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid seconds before they are shot and killed. Maybe this is more what it feels like. I haven’t decided yet. Maybe I need to find out a little more about the Alamo. But I really don’t have the time.

 

I’m not saying I’ll give up writing if this novel doesn’t bring me considerable success. I won’t. For the simple reason that I can’t. But I might try to. What I am saying is that my attitude towards writing, and my attitude towards life, will change. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure how, but I know the disappointment will be transformative. To be honest, I’m halfway there already, in preparation. Although that’s not to say I’m not optimistic. I kind of am.

 

We’ll see. Time will tell. Keep hope alive.

 

I’m in the East Midlands at the moment, looking after my mum, who’s just had most of her intestines removed. I’ll stay here as long as she needs me and in my spare moments I will attempt – once it’s live – to market the book, attempt to get myself noticed and read, attempt to convince people that what I’ve written is worth their time and money. And then, if that doesn’t work, fuck it. I’ll drop off the internet for a few years and milk bees in Italy. At least this time – at the very least – I won’t have killed any more trees.

 

Will Write for Teeth

Over a year ago I had my teeth cleaned in Camberwell. I’ve cleaned them myself since then of course – I’m not Shane MacGowan – but that, until just before Christmas, was my last professional intervention. The dentist told me at the time that if I was wise, I would be sure to get an unpleasant molar checked out, because it looked like the filling was deteriorating. Unfortunately, I was not wise. Rather, I was scared and lazy and stupid. I was also living in France at the time and was consequently afraid of French dentists – even more afraid of French dentists than I was of English dentists, which was a lot. So I did nothing.

 

Then I came to Italy where I was informed that, rather than a mere cracked filling, I actually had a fractured tooth and a half-eaten jaw. No, not half-eaten. Slightly eaten. A little eaten. That was the how the dentist put it when she showed me the x-ray. ‘Un pò mangiato.’

 

Would you like to see? Of course you would. Here…

 

 

 

Apparently, the darkness is bad. There shouldn’t really be any darkness at all in this X-ray. Darkness means decay. Decay means death. Jesus. A person could really get a bit down looking at something like this.

 

Indeed, it is not a pleasant feeling at all being told that your jaw is being eaten away. Obviously, it could be a lot worse and I’m thankful that for now it isn’t. But still.

 

So, rather than a new filling, I need to have the tooth removed and an implant … implanted. When I asked for an idea of the price, I was told that the implant – at the very least – would set me back €1,800. I was informed that dentistry in Italy is particularly expensive. It was even suggested to me that I might want to take a trip to Eastern Europe and have the operation performed there. Apparently lots of Italians do that. However, perhaps unsurprisingly, I am actually rather afraid of bargain bucket Eastern European dentists. The fact is, if someone is going to pump my head full of Michael Caine and start drilling into my skull, I want to be able to understand what they’re saying. Pointless though it would actually be.

 

So I had a look online, and the first place I saw – the Brighton Implant Clinic – was around half the price of Italy. So I’ll probably go back to England for a week.

 

The extraction I’ll have here. On 7th January. 2013. Monday. This Monday. It will cost €120. Is that a lot?

 

Then I’ll apparently have to wait a couple of months to heal. By which time I will have to have found the money for the implant.

 

Which brings me to the other important part of this story.

 

I wrote a novel when I was in France. I sent it to my agent, but in the absence of any real return on his belief in the Bête de Jour book, he had already become transformed from a nice guy full of time, kindness and beautiful promises into someone who rarely responded to my emails. I sent it to him anyway. But he didn’t respond to my email. So he is no longer my agent.

 

I have tried to find another agent, but it’s tough. A personal recommendation meant that at least one agent actually read the book and in the end, had nothing but good things to say about it. But ultimately she was put off by the ‘fantastical element’. My book has a fantastical element. There can be no doubt of that.

 

This agent was very helpful, however, and offered to put me in touch with other agents who might be able to help.

 

Which is great.

 

But there’s always a huge wait with agents. And the mess in my mouth cannot wait. So I have to take matters into my own hands.

 

Therefore, as well as pitching magazines and papers with all kinds of what-have-you, I’m going to self-publish a fantastical novel at the end of the month. And all I’m really hoping for (that’s not true, but I’m going to pretend it is) is to make enough money to pay for a new tooth.

 

You’ll help me out, won’t you? You don’t have to answer now.

 

I will be mentioning this again.

 

Antilamentation

 

Antilamentation by Dorianne Laux. Reprinted without permission. But with love, and slightly wet eyes…

 

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read

to the end just to find out who killed the cook.

Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,

in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.

Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,

the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one

who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones

that crimped your toes, don’t regret those.

Not the nights you called god names and cursed

your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,

chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.

You were meant to inhale those smoky nights

over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings

across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed

coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.

You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still

you end up here. Regret none of it, not one

of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,

when the lights from the carnival rides

were the only stars you believed in, loving them

for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.

You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake,

ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house

after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs

window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied

of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering

any of it. Let’s stop here, under the lit sign

on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

 

Day 550 :: The Beginning of a Great Adventure (Part Three)

Saturday December 1st

I received a comment on a blog post recently. It was left by someone calling himself ‘P****d off man’. Here it is here…

 

 

I am not meaning to be rude to you, but perhaps you need to replace words and phrases like “bail me out”, “dreams” and “closed doors” with something such as “commitment”, “reality” and “contribution”. Life is hard for everyone these days, not everyone has a talent, so perhaps you could channel yours in a more positive and giving way that may mean conforming a little more, but hey ho, we all have to do that to succeed at some point in our lives … and no, it isn’t always pleasant, but sometimes necessary.

Perhaps you could try volunteering overseas?

Contentment isn’t about surrounding ourselves with sycophants, but knowing where we are going, being happy in our own skin and leaving this world in the knowledge that we have perhaps been a little selfless at some point along the way.

Good luck for your future. It’s in your hands.

 

 

To which I replied…

 

 

No, no, quite right. Do I sound whiny and negative? Awful, isn’t it. You just want to slap me. I am pretty happy in my own skin though, and I know I’ve been a little selfless along the way. I’m just not sure where I’m going. Don’t be p****d off. Good luck to you too.

 

 

To which he responded…

 

 

No, I don’t want to slap you, I think it’s a shame that you aren’t able to contribute your undeniable talent in some way that will make you feel more fulfilled.

There are so many places in the world and so many people that could really benefit from your kind nature.

I hope you find that place.

 

 

I felt slightly defensive about his remarks, as was perhaps clear from my response, but I could see that there was truth in them. I am a self-centred so-and-so and no mistake. I always have been. But it’s never too late to change. At least to a certain extent.

 

So for a couple of days after reading that comment, I found it floating around in my head, annoying me. Volunteering overseas, I scoffed. As it happens, I have an ex-girlfriend who did VSO and I spent three months with her in the Gambia. VSO is a great thing, for sure, but it’s far too much of a commitment for me. As with any other job that becomes routine, I fear I’d get bored and grow resentful. Then I remembered something called WWOOFing that someone – I don’t remember who – told me about many years ago. WWOOFing – in a nutshell – is working, on a voluntary basis, on organic farms.That’s all I knew, but when I was next online, I did a bit of reading. And there it was. The beginning of a great adventure.

 

I’m prone to whimsy I won’t deny it. And I go off half-cocked a lot of the time. Sometimes completely uncocked. But reading about WWOOFing and realising exactly what it is and how it works was like a moment of great revelation for me. Eyes opening, pennies dropping, thunder clapping all over the place. I just thought, ‘Oh, so that’s what I’m supposed to be doing.’

 

Since then, I’ve done a lot of reading and I’m currently making my way through a 104-page document that lists the hundreds of habitations in Italy that are willing to put me up and feed me while I help them do what needs to be done and learn everything they’ve got to teach me.

 

At times I’ve found reading about their lives quite breathtaking. It’s not just the nature – the beehives, the pomegranates, the olive presses and the hay-baling – it’s the people. People who say things like, ‘We are curious to share precious moments with you.’ Me too! That’s what I’m curious for! Precious moments.

 

It’s also the fact that discovering WWOOFing gives the past two years a shape and a sense that until now, I didn’t know they had.

 

Which is to say, I feel like I’m going in the right direction, or at least that I have a direction. It feels like the things that have happened in the past two years have happened in order to bring me to this. The festivals fiasco led me to France, and a taste of rural living in France has led me directly to WWOOFing. The more I read about it, the more surprised I am that it isn’t more well-known and that more people I know don’t do it. But this is no bad thing. On the contrary, it means I can help spread the word, which of course I fully intend to do.

 

So there we are. The future is bright, and it has dirt under its fingernails. Lovely, clean dirt.