Getting on my WIC 2010

I’ve had a wicked weekend, mostly cuz I managed to dump me kids off with the neighbour and had some well deserved ME time. Instead of going out on the lash with the girls I went to the Writing Industries Conference at Loughborough University to see what a writer looked like in the flesh. Contrary to what ppl might think they don’t all wear brown and have tortoise shell glasses. They come in all shapes and sizes and have different coloured hair. There were quite a few biddies here as well, but they seem to be everywhere nowadays. I don’t know why the government don’t do something about them.

I didn’t take any money with me cuz I thought it would be free but it was well expensive at £42. I could go and see Jon McGregor four times at the Broadway for that! I think they did it because that Hitchhiker writer guy Douglas Adams said that 42 was the answer to the universe and Damien G Walter - who helped organise it - is one of them sci-fi geeks so he probably thought it was funny, which it would be, if the answer to the universe was 3.

Fortunately it cost me nowt. A bouncer let me slip in through the back door on condition he cud do the same. Cheeky monkey! Conferences are the second best place to network (after FaceBook) and give you the opportunity to meet ppl in the flesh and blood like they used to do in the old days before Sky TV. Well I'm happy to report that this type of real ppl networking really does work cuz I did a Barrymore and struck it lucky. The bouncer that let me in only works the door in a couple of clubs in town and said that he’d let me in for free as long as I was nice to him again.

There were loads of talks there but I only went to two. The first was about community journalism and blogging where I caught up with two of me old mates, Al Needham and Jon Coster. Al Needham’s a right dirty old sod who’s always talking about his todger and trust me he knows what he’s talking about. LOL! Jon’s an old family friend who did time with one of me Ex’s. He started up Leicester’s Citizen Eye on his release whereas my ex just started a fight and got sent back down.

The other talk was by Graham Joyce (I’ve had him as well) and he listed his top ten ways of making money from writing which were:

1. The advance
2. Digital streams
3. Teaching writing
4. Performance, live spoken word
5. Lectures, talks, workshops
6. Non-fiction writing
7. Develop your story into script
8. Write online drama (e.g. Kate Modern)
9. Games writing

I’m not going to go into detail about what all of these mean but basically if you want to make any money from writing you’ve got to do loads of stuff. He said that he was leaving the tenth answer blank which I thought was a bit cheeky. If he couldn’t think of a top ten he should have just done a top nine. Simple, innit? Anyway, I got to thinking about this and I realised not finishing things is just what writers do – just look at Jon McGregor’s recent book Even The Dogs. One of his characters keeps stopping dead in the middle of a sentence. This is clearly something that you have to do if you want to be a successful author so on that note I’m

As Joycey didn’t list a tenth option for making money out of writing, I’m going to offer one: Print out your manuscript and selotape it together. Then bash someone over the head with it and rob ‘em. This could be a regular income source if you did it once a week (and you don't get caught.) It could also lead to an interesting idea for a story, probably better than the one on your manuscript. You know, the one them publishers keep rejecting. LoL!

Jon McGregor 'Even the Dogs'

I’ve got a big problem with Jon McGregor and I know that this isn’t gonna go down well with all of you bookie types because he’s one of them darlings of literature, but, seriously, he’s taking the piss in his new book. He’s written this story about a bunch of druggies and instead of making it sound dead exciting and fun like in Shameless and pointing out all the ace stuff people do when they don’t have a job like getting hammered and watching JK in the morning, he, well, he doesn’t really say anything. If he’d done some proper research and read Hunter S Thompson or William Burroughs he’d know that this genre is meant to be more upbeat. My advice Jon is quickly change the title to ‘Even the Staffies’ and get that three legged dog that follows one of the druggies around to to eat some pills and jump out a window like what Irvine Welsh does. It’ll be well funny then and it might even get made into a film.

Now I like Jon because he’s one of us from Hood town but I fink he might have been on drugs when he wrote the book because in his opening chapters he doesn’t even finish off his sentences, the lazy bastard. He just stops in mid-sentence and then starts harping on about something else, a bit like my nana when she tries to tell a story. Bless. But my nana has got an excuse because she’s an old biddy and that’s the kind of shit that biddies pull on you so you can’t get away, but he hasn’t got any excuse. Talk about taking the piss. If I buy a book at the very least I expect it to be finished. Imagine if you went into a shop and they tried to solt you a banana without a skin or you bought a chocolate éclair and it didn’t have any cream in it? You’d go mental wouldn’t you? And that’s what I did. I went absolutely mental at being ripped off and then I read some more and realised that he wanted me to feel like that because the lives of all the druggies in the book are mental. Bloody smart arse that - making the structure reflect the narrative, and there was me thinking he was being lazy.

What does worry me about Jon is his descriptions of the morgue. They’re so real that it’s a bit freaky. Makes you wonder what he’s been up to so I decided to do a bit of research to find out because if there’s weird guys hanging around morgues then I need to know about it to protect my kiddies. Apparently, Jon doesn’t write at home. He gets up at 9am each morning and goes to an office to write and finishes at 5pm. Now. Just. Hang. On. One. Minute. Surely the whole point of being a writer is that you don’t have to get up in the morning, what’s the point if you end up doing a 9-5 like the rest of us, well not me of course, but you get my point. Then it clicked. That’s what he’s been doing in the office. He’s been watching autopsy documentaries on 4OD and the iPlayer. You know, that one with the crazy German who wears the hat and gets all excited when he slices open bodies. So I ended up finding this book quite inspirational because I spend a lot of time watching stuff on the iPlayer which means I’m half way to becoming a writer!

And If I become a writer I can charge people ten pound to hear me read because that’s exactly what Jon is charging at the Broadway cinema which is like, loads. But then the Broadway is full of all them poncy types who carry around them silly brown leather man-bags and talk weirdly into their mobiles like they’re on the Apprentice. It seems a lot of money just to hear someone say ‘a man has died and we’re going to cremate him.’ But then when I thought about it I realised Jon’s being clever again. In the book a ‘ten bag’ is a £10 bag of heroin, and he’s saying just like his characters are addicted to drugs, these arty ponces are addicted to culture and will pay over the odds to satisfy their cravings. Think if I write a book I’ll call it 9 bar and make £450 each out of the dick heads.

9th March 2010
6.30pm, Broadway Cinema, Broad Street.
Jon Mcgregor in conversation with Ross Bradshaw.
Tickets from the Broadway Box Office, 0115 952 6611



Even the Dogs is available from Bloomsbury for £12.99

His Broadway talk int really £10. It's the price of a film.

Biddy Lit: Francis Thimann 'Cello & other stories'

OMG! You’re not going to believe what I’ve just found? And no, it’s not another STD before you start. What are you lot like, eh? Catching something twice is stupid but three times, that’s just indulgent. Anyways, where was I? Oh yeah. I think I’ve just discovered a new genre of literature called Biddy lit. It’s a bit like chick lit except instead of writin’ all the problems us young uns have - like two timin' boyfriends and deciding who should be your 'magic number' - it’s about old stuff, mostly dying to be perfectly honest with you.

When I read it I thought to myself, God, what a bloody moaner. She sounds just like me nana, not that I can hear her anymore, she’s in one of them home places with other biddies, playing cards and watching CountDown. Bless. No this Francis woman keeps harping on about how she used to be young and special once and now she’s just old. Well ain’t we all got problems love? I kind of get where’s she coming from because ppl think just because I’ve got four kids by five different Dad’s* that I wasn’t young once also. But come on girl, we’ve all got to go sometime. The only difference between you and me is that you’re going to experience it a little quicker. But even that’s not for certain. A kid on our estate died joyriding and he was only sixteen. One year young than me! So I guess what I’m saying is we don’t know when our numbers up. Shit, that reminds me. I ain’t done the lotto...

Hiya, back again. My lucky numbers are 4, 8, 14, 21, 23, 30. They’re the dates when my kiddies father’s pay in their maintenance. Now where was I? Oh yeah, biddie lit. When I get older I’m not going to sit about moaning about how no one understands me any more. I’m gonna do smack. See the problem for these biddies is their legs stop working and so instead of getting out the house they sit about remembering the good old days when they went clubbing and did donuts in the Asdas car park. What they should do is smack and travel through their mind instead. That’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna shoot up and see loads of different colours and just chill out for a bit.

I can see good bits in this collection of stories and I think she’s trying to pass on some knowledge but the problem is that she doesn’t really offer any practical advice. I mean, none of her characters have been poked on Facebook and she doesn’t even get into the real things that matter, like whether Peter Andre really is a good Dad and if it really matters whether Jedwood can sing. I suppose the only good thing about the book is that it’s real thin and so it’s dead easy to read. It only took me seven weeks. My advice to the biddy author is change the title a little bit. Instead of calling it Cello and other stories, how about iPod and other playlists. Know what I mean?

*I’m not sure who one of the father’s is, hence the dippy maths!

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