The Future Begins Here

I start my new career tomorrow.

Eek!

In other news, I have decided to stop whingeing about my writing career, after a few conversations which went something along the lines of...

- How are you?

- Oh well, you know, my life is a disaster, I'm a failure...

- How so?

- Well, I got published in a foreign country, and it's all really awful...

- But you got published?

- Well yes, but it's all in foreign, and...

- But people can still read it?

- Yes, but I have no money and I have a baby and now I have to go and start a completely new career and I won't have any time to write at all and I'll have to give it up...

- Forever? You're saying you'll never have time to write anything, ever, in your whole life?

- Well, I can probably start again in a year or two, but I failed to make a living out of writing, and yadda yadda money... numbers of book sales...

- Is that why you write? To make money and sell thousands of books?

- Well no, but if you want to do it full time you have to make a living out of it, and...

- But don't most creative people have to make money via other avenues? Isn't it better to do it for fun? Doesn't it ruin it to try and make money from it? Isn't it a bit arrogant to assume you ought to make a living from it?

- Er...

Pardon?

Behind me in the queue at Netto, I heard a voice...

"Oh come on, some of us have got things to do."

I assumed he was referring to the woman in front of me, who was having some kind of issue with her receipt.

Then another voice chipped in:

"It's not my fault, it's that Kevin, he's always doing it."

OK... so it's nothing to do with the woman in front. It's two people having a conversation with each other.

The conversation continued - the first guy complaining about various stuff, the second guy making various justifications.

After I'd packed my bags and was leaving anyway, it was easier to turn round and look at them both. By now I was intrigued.

They were both on mobile phones. They weren't talking to the woman in front. They weren't even talking to each other.

Doh.

Eh?

I just found a pile of unopened mail which must have got buried under a load of crap when my other half cleaned the kitchen while I was away cycling with my son...

...and in amongst it was a royalty statement, dated 30.6.09, which is only three weeks after the foreign edition of my book was published... and after a bit of head-scratching over what any of it meant (cos it's mostly in foreign, and they do weird things with their decimal points and their commas)... according to the statement, at that point 3,186 copies had been sold! Eh?

Of course then I remembered what happened with my first book, which apparently earnt out its advance in the first 6 months and I got paid £43... only to get a negative statement 6 months later, when the bookshops returned all those unsold copies. So it might just be that 3,186 copies of the book have been sent out to bookshops. Who might not have sold any at all. Certainly it's not doing well on Amazon.

But still. It's kind of good news. I think. 3,186 copies! My first book only had a print run of 3,000 and sold less than a third of that.

for the benefit of rss and feeds and all that

I'm never quite sure how the feed stuff works, but just in case you don't get told when an existing post is updated... I just updated the previous post. So much so that you may as well call it a new post. Cos it's got, like, millions of new words in it an' everything.

Like.

Y'know.

Go back and read it again.

Cos it's different.

Beat This

Hmm. I haven't time to write a new blog post, but I didn't like the fact that this post was sitting at the top of my blog in its current form, so I've decided to edit it.

It started off like this:

"This made me cry, several times. In a good way. It's great."

...followed by this:



...and then I wrote this: "I got it from a new blog I discovered today called Vacant Wind. I like."

...which was true.

So why didn't I like it being here at the top? Two reasons, I think. No, three. And I reserve the right to come up with more as I go along. The first was that I'm not a big fan of blog posts which contain minimal original content and are mostly just links or references to stuff done elsewhere by others. So. Well. Here you go. I'm adding some original content, innit? Although not making any claims as to its quality. But anyway, moving swiftly on...

The second reason is almost the same as the first, but not quite... it's some kind of anti-sheep thing, I think. I baulk slightly at the idea of being identified as a fan. A fan of anything, I suppose, but particularly anything really really popular. Except that... I also get really annoyed by people being sniffy about stuff, just cos millions of other people like it too. Like when people refused to read Harry Potter purely on the basis that everyone else was reading it. Fine if you read it and then decide you don't like it, but sometimes, you know, when things are popular? It's cos they're good. So, um, I seem to have argued against myself on that one. Oh. Hmmm. No. Maybe I haven't. Because the point is that I don't tend to be a MASSIVE FAN of anything much, cos it seems to require suspending critical faculties. But I also don't like people taking against things purely because they're popular. Yes, that's it. But anyway, I was never a massive MJ fan. You know, I thought he was all right, and now that his best stuff is being aired all at once I realise he was really rather good, but the reason I posted that vid was nothing to do with being a Jackson fan or not. And that's not why I cried, either. And neither did I cry cos he's dead. It was the togetherness of it that made me cry. Lots of people, doing stuff together and making each other smile. People doing what people do best, which is cooperating. Entertaining. Making something bigger than the sum of its parts. And there were kids involved. People doing stuff together in large numbers, particularly spontaneous stuff... often makes my eyes water. But if there are kids involved? Sob city. But in a nice way. I have been known to go to other people's kids' nativity plays, just so I can do happy-sobbing. I guess I'm weird like that.

But anyway... the third reason of not liking the MJ vid staring me in the face every time I logged onto my own blog (not that I'm forever reading my own blog, just that I use it as an easy way of checking which of my favourite blogs have been updated)... the third reason was, that he may well have been a great musician and even though I wouldn't have called myself A FAN I still thought he was pretty talented and all that, BUT he was probably, almost certainly, a child abuser. And that's about the worst thing anyone could be, I reckon. And I didn't want anyone to think I was even slightly condoning that, in any way at all. Which I doubt anyone did. But, you know. In case you did. I don't.

Glad we got that cleared up. Now, where was I...

[wanders off with giant to-do list trailing behind her]

Then Again...

You could of course say that the reason my book hasn't been published in English is cos it's rubbish. It's a possibility. Or it could be the economy. Or maybe my agent was rubbish. Who knows? I certainly don't. But look at the lovely packaging!

I Have a Dream

So there I was, all miserable and Down With Writing and I'm Not Going To Be A Writer Any More Cos It's Rubbish, and Nobody Can Read My Book And I Don't Care, and then I went on holiday and had a nice time and my lovely not-quite-aunt was all nice to me and made me feel good about myself and I started thinking, maybe...

It's a dangerous word, I've been caught out before. I start out with maybe. I move on to a few perhapses, then a sprinkling of what-ifs, and before you know it I've got another Grand Plan. They start out small, and then get bigger...

It's like pushing a snowball uphill. I heave and I heave, and it gathers more material, and we get close to the top of the hill... and then two things are possible. I might stop to look at the view and get distracted while the plan goes over the top and down the other side. Sometimes I watch in dismay as it destroys itself and everything in its path. Sometimes I remain distracted and never find out what happened to it, wandering off in a different direction instead. But sometimes I find a little dip at the top of the hill, and roll it in. Then I surround it with smaller snowballs or pebbles, or maybe shore it up with sticks. I use fridges to keep it cool, and I start building it higher, making a face with lumps of coal or turning it into a giant snow tower. Finally I have something I'm happy with, sitting up there all nice with a spectacular view.

Anyway. What I thought was, it's a shame my book can't be read in English. There are plenty of people who want to read it. And maybe, in the tiny bit of time that's left before New Career, I could whack the book up on Lulu.com, give it a basic cover, and produce something basic for people to read? Just so they can?

But then I thought... if I did that, it would look pretty rubbish. And Lulu books in general, although handy for some purposes, are not the greatest quality. The covers are low-grade card and have a habit of curling, and there are often errors in production. So perhaps... I could create separate dust covers, on good quality paper... yeah, and I could make them really snazzy, with holes in strategic places to reveal the Lulu cover beneath in imaginative fashion, and I could wrap them in magic ribbon... cos the book is about the way magicians convince people of silly things... I could say that if you stroke the ribbon you'll become telepathic... because after all, if I'm going to produce the book myself, why not go to town? Why make something shoddy? But if I really went for it I'd have to have a proper book launch, cos it'd be a waste not to...

Hmmm, but this will take time and effort and money wot I haven't got... but to hell with it! Why not go All Out and make something really special! Why be in a rush? Wouldn't it be a shame to create something crap? Doesn't my book deserve more than that?

One of the problems with Being Published is that you have little say in what goes on. This makes sense to some extent: Marketing, cover design, typesetting etc, are all skilled areas which the author probably knows fuck all about. But you're also in competition with all those other thousands of writers, and it can be frustrating when your book doesn't get the attention or resources you think it deserves.

But... given that I've abandoned the idea of making a living from writing... and I'll soon have a proper income again... more than I need, in fact... why not put proper time and effort - and money - into producing a beautiful thing? Why not forget any notions of money-making or High Sales and focus instead on giving an enjoyable aesthetic experience to a small amount of people? Just for the hell of it? Selling thousands of copies is important if you're trying to make a living, and if you want Big Fame. But beyond that, what's the point? You can't get meaningful feedback from a high number of readers. The worry about sales figures bites deep into the fun and satisfaction of writing in the first place. Wouldn't it be better to forget all that and focus instead on making something lovely?

What if I set up a website called forthehellofit.com, somewhere people could come to help each other make Wonderful Things, with no attempt or expectation to make any money at all - indeed, with the assumption that it will cost them time, money and energy? Just because they can?

The ball was gathering so much snow, I was struggling to reach the hilltop. This website, forthehellofit.com, would take a lot of maintenance. It might become a draw for all those people so desperate to be published that they've lost sight of how to monitor the quality of their output, and would get pretty headachey very fast...

OK, let the snowball melt a little... go back to the core...

...which is the following two ideas:

(1) I wrote a book, I put a lot of effort into it, significant numbers of editors and agents liked it, it did get published after all (albeit in a foreign tongue)... and I think it's rather good. And I'd like it to be accessible, to people who speak my language. People I know.

(2) If I do it, I do it properly. It won't get big bucks spent on it by anyone else. The only chance it has of being beautifully packaged is if I do it. And why short-change it? If I'm in control of the process, why not make the most of it?

So, here's the plan: Over the next year or two, I'll design a beautiful object. I'll need help. I might have to pay people. But the priority will be on Making A Lovely Thing. And then when it's ready (in one year? two? who knows) I'll have two massive parties, just like I did for my first book. One in my home city and one in London. I'll tell everyone. I'll sell a few copies. I'll enjoy seeing them in people's hands. I'll make a massive loss, but I'll go to bed happy.

Will I reach the top of the hill? Will the snowball fall backwards and squash me flat, go careering in the wrong direction with my hands, feet and chin protruding at comic angles, dump me broken in a ditch with nothing to do but wait for it to melt? Will it go nowhere much at all; disintegrate on the first sunny day?

Fuck knows. But it's a nice little dream to smile about at bedtime.

That's enough for now.

(Then again...)

___

UpDown With Spam

I have a few short days of children-in-childcare left before some FullTimeMumitude, which will be followed by The New Career and busy-busy-busyness, so I'm trying to clear the decks and remove all commitments.

One small part of this is to reduce the volume of spam that lands in my inbox, so I don't have to delete it every day. I've done this by disabling the email address that gets the scam / penis-enhancing / weightloss-product rubbish, and then wading through all the unsolicited "newsletters" from people who once sold me some widget or other and clicking "unsubscribe". This in itself is a bit of a revelation: Every single one of these emails had a tiny-print unsubscribe link hidden somewhere within them, and they have all promised faithfully to remove me from their mailing lists. Whether they do or not will become evident in the next few days, but if they act on their word... who knew it was so easy! I should have done it months ago. Except...

Now I have no emails. None at all.

I feel lonely.

THANKYOU

Thankyou for buying Dance Your Way to Psychic Sex.

Now. There was a time when skies were blue and grass was green and I had a snuggly thing called my smelling nightie, and I couldn't sleep without it wrapped around my nose, and sometimes it smelt of bacon, and... oh, sorry. Start again. There was a time when I had lovely plans to make danceyourway.co.uk all clever and fancy and get it to automagically tell you how many copies had been sold... but then my son got ill and my bones got tired and... whatever. I'm just not that clever, OK?

So please please please leave a comment below to tell the world that you have bought a book / some books. And then jump up and down and go on about how excited you are and how you can't wait and how you are running off now to tell all your friends to buy my book.

You can miss that last bit out if you want.

Feel free to be anonymous.

THANKYOU.

(NB if you are seeing this post via some kind of fancy rss wotsit, please ignore. This is for people who buy my book via DanceYourWay.co.uk, from 5th August onwards)

Fluless

Incredibly, I don't have swine flu. Yet. But I do have several friends with it, so it's probably only a matter of time. So I am holding my breath and holding my breath amd hoping hoping hoping but not quite daring to hope that tomorrow morning I will be able to go on a months-ago-planned cycling holiday with my son and my dad. A generational velocerous sandwich, if you like. But... me and plans, lately... [squeezes eyes shut tight and hopes very hard]

I don't have swine flu but I do have a gardening bug, which sees me going to bed - well, all right then, bath - aching, tired, covered in mud and very happy each night. So I don't have time for much else. But I do have a garden bursting at the seams with green waste which is stupidly hard to get rid of so I'm going to BREAK THE LAW (eek, oo-er, etc) and have a bonfire tonight. I expect I'll catch fire and become horribly disabled and unable to go on my cycling holiday. Or I'll create a gigantic smoke cloud which will coincidentally fell all train drivers in the vicinity and make it impossible for me to reach my destination, or I'll start a huge city fire, the worst since 1066 (no, that sounds wrong. 1466? 1664? ah feckit, it was in London, quite a long time ago, the number six was involved and possibly the number four), the houses will all burn down and fall on the train tracks...

...but if THAT doesn't happen then I will be travelling the country for the next week or two while Mr Other Half Man guards the homestead. Hurrah!

Right. Time to climb a ladder. Have secateurs, will create more green waste. Enjoy your swine flu. xxx

The Life Begins

Well, that's it, I'm 40.

Funnily enough it feels pretty much like 39 did, only slightly better cos I had a brilliant weekend away camping in the countryside and am feeling the benefits. Loads of people turned up, I went swimming in the river, and I have discovered the definitive answer to the question, How To Do Camping With Kids? The secret is to choose somewhere reasonably close, and (crucially) accessible by train. Then one parent (the one who is a bit weird and gets untold satisfaction from packing bags and cars, unpacking bags and cars, pitching tents, dismantling tents, packing, etc) (ie ME) goes down in a car jam-packed full of STUFF in the morning, spends all day chilling out in the countryside, drinking champagne, putting up tents, blowing up beds, making everything organised and tidy. Then the kids and the other parent arrive by train. Everyone has fun for a few days. Then the kids go home by train and the anal parent packs everything away at her leisure and plays a live Stone Roses CD very loud all the way home. Sorted!

Of course, on our return we discovered that one of the happy campers now has swine flu. I spent yesterday afternoon with my older son in a rammed health centre, queueing for tamiflu for the stricken friend, who is under house arrest. It was weird. Giant signage everywhere directing people with flu symptoms to another part of the building where some poor soul sat behind a desk with a face mask on. We, on the other hand, were peered at before being granted admission to bored-looking staff who herded us all under a "Flu Friends" sign. I am a friend of the flu. There were sandbags too, but they looked a bit abandoned. I suspect somebody picked up the wrong URGENT SITUATION guidelines and panicked in the wrong direction for a while before coming to their senses.

I'm assuming we'll all get it some time this week, but it makes a change to anticipate family illness instead of being taken by surprise. I'm just not making any plans for the next few weeks, and working on the basis that those already made will probably come undone.

In other news, I dreamt last night that I had a new agent, which was very exciting, except that she insisted my book should be called Memento Ravia, even though neither of us knew what it meant - or even how to spell it - and she hadn't actually read the damn thing. Still, it was exciting for about five minutes. She was blonde, flighty, posh, young, and called Jemima. Or maybe Felicity. There's a surprising number of them in publishing.

Oh, and a couple of Russian speakers have emailed me and duly had signed copies of the book posted off to them. Fuck knows what they'll make of it, but it's kinda nice.

Right, I need to get my third novel into some kind of abandonable shape before the swine flu gets me.

[cough]

[sneeze]

Oops.

The Birthday Begins

This evening my friend insisted on coming round and giving me 40 birthday presents, because they couldn't easily be brung to the Birthday Proper.

Because I am Very Stupid Indeed, it took me several texts and several presents before I finally rememberd that, in the context of this birthday, the number 40 was significant. I thought she just happened to have acquired 40 presents for me, cos she's a bit prolific like that and is the manager of a charity shop. So anyway. For every present (they were numbered and had to go in a particular order, and every single one was wrapped, and had a numbered tag with a clue on it) I had to remember what I was doing for that year of my life. Which was mathematically confusing, because we were drinking beer and I am a bear of little brain and I was born in July on the turn of the decade, so every year of my life encompasses exactly half each of two of your earth years, and one of them ends in (Age minus one) and the other is (Age plus one) but I can never remember which way round it is, so we spent a lot of time saying things like "When you were 28 it was 2007, no 2008, no..." until we reached 39, at which point I screwed my face up yet again and said "Well, it must have been 2009..." and Ally said, "you opened lots of presents..." and I said, "I had a baby! Three days after my birthday!"

...and when I was 40 my life suddenly came together and everything made sense for the first time in ages.

Maybe.

Hopefully.

Well for fuck's sake, how do [i]I[/i] know???

Filmy Stuff

I've been feeling guilty. Because I wrote a not-altogether-good review of a book written by someone I sort-of know, and I never normally do such things. It felt like it was all right because I didn't believe the person in question really existed. Except that he does, of course he does, but then again he doesn't, probably. But he does. But... etc.

Well, anyway. This kind of blog post doesn't really help. Blah blah holes, yadda yadda digging. But in some sort of vague attempt to redress the balance, I'd like to draw your attention to this film review blog here, cos it's rather good and nobody seems to have noticed it yet.

We Easily Believe...

I've just been watching Big Brother, where one woman has already been the unrequiter in two love intrigues. I love watching human interaction played out under such a microscope. The set-up may be artificial but nobody can act for that long, so the stuff that happens between people is very real. But anyway...

So there's this bloke, fancies a woman, she doesn't fancy him back. But he won't see it. He keeps finding evidence that she must be interested in him, and refuses to accept anything else.

The obvious reaction as an observer is to laugh and call him a fool. Everyone else can see what he's blind to. And having watched this happen so often to women I know... a man who won't take no for an answer... is boorish and demanding and then sulky when he doesn't get what he wants. I get impatient and annoyed with selfish fools such as this.

But the other thing which drives me mad is when women encourage the delusions by being a little too friendly, bestowing the occasional chaste kiss, generally giving just enough encouragement that the idiot can convince himself of whatever he wants. Having been close to women who do this kind of thing, I know they often don't mean to tease or manipulate. They just don't want to hurt, don't want to disappoint, are hopeless at saying no or being frank about how they really feel, but mistakenly believe that the chasteness of their responses is enough of a hint that they're not really interested - rather than the clutched-at straw it inevitably becomes.

But then. I suddenly remembered this weird 'relationship' I had with a bloke, back in the early 90s. We worked together as service chefs, at a pizza / pasta restaurant in Manchester. I was besotted with him. He was all quirky and enigmatic and he had good taste in music and a lovely purple cord jacket (isn't it funny the things that stick in your mind?). I was forever inviting myself round to his flat and just kind of... hanging around. We had various odd sexual encounters, and he kept me at arm's length... but not far enough that I gave up the chase.

I knew he wasn't in love with me or anything like that, I knew it was all rather one-sided, but he gave me just enough rope that I thought it was worth tugging away at it.

Poor man. I was like a kitten that's found the end of a tampon, somewhere inappropriate.

One time I insisted it would be a good idea for me to stay the night, and we could just cuddle. Which we did, me of course in as little clothing as possible, but next thing I knew he was sucking my elbow. Which quietly led to even more delightful stuff. But this was the least ambiguous of our encounters. Another time he had given up trying to get rid of me, so suddenly announced he was having a bath. And I of course invited myself into the bathroom, and next thing we were flicking foam at each other, and in any other circumstances this would be obvious flirtation... but nothing happened. He got out of the bath, put his clothes on and we ate toast. Once he came round to my flat, submitted himself to a certain amount of finger-sucking and then abruptly announced he was going home. At which point I became all whiny and disappointed, so somehow we ended with me naked in the bed, him kneeling by its side, with his coat on, and basically shutting me up before going home.

Looking back, it's pretty effing obvious that he never fancied me. But he was rubbish at saying no, and I was determined to snatch at the tiniest piece of positive evidence or encouragement and ignore everything else.

There's a quote I use a lot, it's from a 19th century mentalist called HJ Burlingame, and it forms the basis of my second novel. It goes like this:

We easily believe what we ardently desire to be true.

Oh deary me, don't we just?

Sanitisation

Yuck. I don't like it much, but I think it's probably sensible to make my non-anonymous website a little less new-career-unfriendly. Which means removing anything to do with sex or drugs. Including this double dactyl, but it's one of my favourites and I don't want to lose it altogether so I'm putting it here instead. So there.

Higgledy-piggledy
Jessica Parker can't
Act her way out of a
Brown paper bag.

Co-actress Kim says that
Sarah can't come unless
Animatronically
Aided, the slag!

I should probably point out I don't have anything against Sarah Jessica Parker. Or people who bear resemblances to horses, or indeed slags. I mean actual slags, rather than people who bear resemblances to slags. Not that I have anything against them, either. In fact I've been known to be a bit of a slag myself. And proud of it. Right. Glad we cleared that up. I'm not that keen on Sex and the City though, I have to admit.

Stretch

Hot weather and an awareness that inactivity will soon cease to be an option, have combined to make me super-lazy. Hence lack of posts.

But I just thought I might mention I've got less than a week of under-40-ness to go. It's my birthday on Friday. I'll be celebrating all (next) weekend with somewhere in the region of 50 close friends and family. Rah me.

Hello

Hello new people.

[waves at new people]

If you stick around, I may write about cat poo, cancer, neighbourliness, cultural differences and Islam.

Then again I may not. You'll just have to take your chances.

But hello anyway. It's nice to see you here.

In Mourning

Ugh. I’m crying again.

The good news is that my new career has been confirmed. I have a future.

The bad news is that I’m in mourning, for my old career.

It was a small thing set me off. Well, it seemed small. But the more I dwelt on it, the bigger it got.

I was reminded of a sentence I’m particularly proud of. I like the way that happens, the way all my books have particular lines which stand entire in my head. So, anyway. I went off to the Russian translation, to see how that bit came out.

Butchered. That’s how it came out. It went from one gloriously-rich analogy to three bare words. Which do you prefer: “It is the east, and Juliet is the sun” or “It's her, innit”? It was that kind of thing. Not that I’m comparing myself to Shakespeare. I’m not Shakespeare, I know that. That’s part of my problem. I know I’m not a great writer, that even the original in its native language is no literary masterpiece and unlkely to set the world alight. If I thought I were a misunderstood genius I’d be a lot happier. I could sit here muttering at those bastards holding me back, or go down arms aflailing, shouting to be heard and ignoring the just-not-quite-good-enough truth.

But anyway. Every time I look at a particular line in the book, the translation comes up lacking. I know, I could be wrong. It may be language, or culture, or the English was overwritten and the translation is stripped back and elegant.

Or perhaps it’s a crap translation.

If this were just one territory among many, it wouldn’t matter too much. But this is the only version of my book available. My book, that I slaved over for four years. That I edited and rewrote and rewrote again. Every line pored over, tweaked, perfected… and now it’s gone. And somehow I managed to lose my agent, at the exact moment when I really needed one, and there’s little chance of anyone reading my words, the ones I wrote, rather than someone else’s approximation of what I maybe sort-of meant.

And I have to let it go. Because I have a new job to start very soon, and it’s going to take all my time, and this is the wrong moment to be looking for a new agent or writing a new book and I just have to wave goodbye.

Yes, it’s only temporary. I can come back to it, in a few years’ time. Maybe one day in the future I’ll find another agent and they’ll fall in love with the book and find people other than Russians that want to read it. But for now… it’s over.

And I’m grieving.

And Another Thing

And the whole stupid mess turns me into a blubbering self-pitying tedious one-track wreck, which is fucking annoying to say the least, for me as well as you.

Poor bloody me.

Argh.

Let Life Begin

[apologies for wonkiness - and copiedness-from-comments-boxness-ness - i have a baby on my lap. will attempt to come back later and tidy up a bit]

Lucy's talking about a list of things to do before she's 40. I'm going to be four decades long in only three weeks, and the very thought of such a list makes me want to jump back under the duvet and not emerge for at least another month.

But I have a good excuse: I (possibly rather sillily with hindsight, but there you go, I had little control over the timing) went and had a baby when I was 39, and that rules out most pre-40 excitement.

I was thinking last night, though, that although I disapprove of age-related moaning, a lot of my recent miserablism has been exacerbated by pre-40 jitters. I feel as though I'm about to be Officially Old and haven't achieved a whole load of stuff that's only going to get harder - if not impossible - with age.

I'm having running battles with myself these days about a giant banner I've erected above my psyche. It reads Failed Writer. My second book is only available in Russian. My first book is barely available at all. Neither of them are much good. And crucially I'm about to stop writing altogether, before I manage to finish my third.

It's all bollocks, for many reasons: I'll return to writing in the future, the Russians are perfectly capable of being discerning readers, and crucially writing is something that tends to mature with age, not get harder. There are few skimpy bikinis involved in the life of your typical writer. But still. I'm not where I wanted to be, where I thought I'd be.

But still but still. It's basically bollocks. So I gave me a good stern talking to and reminded myself that life begins at 40 and there's a load more excitement ahead. So that's all right then. And fuck lists.

Here's my list of things I'll do before I'm 40.

1. Whinge.
2. Cry.
3. Whinge a bit more.
4. Sob.
5. Eat cake.
6. Nurse a crying baby.
7. Eat chocolate.
8. Make a massive To Do list containing items like "sort out broadband" and "hem trousers" and "make a squillion doctors' appointments for every member of the family".
9. Eat chocolate cake.
10. Fail to do any of the items on the To Do list.
11. Fail to do any of the items on this list, and then get swallowed up in a giant existential feedback loop.
12. Cry.