I had another of those difficult days today when, for reasons that I just cannot fathom, the world went completely silent on me.
Normally my inbox is alive with emails of one kind of another. Today: nothing. Not a single one, despite my sending quite a few. It feels like I don't exist.
Hello? Do I exist? I'm sure that I do but, then again, is anything certain?
I wish I was Donald Trump. He seems to exist and, what's more, he's always very certain about it.
No doubt my non-existence is partly down to my losing my 'website designing' job. Or, at least, my job lost me. In truth, it wasn't a job as much as regular freelancing work which, month on month, was paying less and less. I finally decided that the people exploiting my good nature should start paying me a half decent wage for my services. Naturally, when I asked them to, the company decided that my services were no longer required. Interesting how that works.
On the positive side, I have more time to write this month. Next month: sweeping the streets.
Being exploited for your services is, sadly, the way of the world. Unless you are 'at the top' of any line of work, then you really are at the bottom. In a world economy there's always some amateur around the corner willing to undercut the professionals.
Word to the young: set you price and don't deviate. Of course, you're just as likely to end up as unsuccessful as me. But at least you'll still have your pride.
***
This is obviously also true in the world of writing. Some places do pay. Some don't. Some say they do and then they don't. Some say they don't and then they do.
But most of the time they don't.
It's why the silence feels particularly uncomfortable today. I've been writing solid for three days and have four articles finished that I think are quality. Trying to place articles is like trying to throw a cat up a chimney. Even when you nail the throw, the bloody thing comes back covered in soot and with its claws extended. I don't know why I carry on except I guess people wouldn't recognise me if my face wasn't scratched to hell.
I have to avoid the temptation of dumping 'failed' articles here. I want to be read but at what cost? I'm no charity but the world expects every writer to write for charity. I still occasionally get emails from strangers asking me to draw a cartoon for some website with a huge readership that they promise will give me exposure. When I ask to be paid they never reply. My life in precis form.
Regarding my writing, I'm pretty certain all of this is my own fault. Were I to start again, I would not try to write well or aspire to think intelligently. I would have learned to write quickly and to think little.
But that sounds presumptuous of me. I'm not even sure that I can write or think particularly well. All I know is that I can do neither quickly. 2000 words a day is about my limit if I'm going to polish those words. Polishing is all of the writing or it is for me. The business is hard and takes it out of me. I wish it didn't but it does.
I was reading Orwell (again) today and wondered to myself how he must have worked when there was no word processor around to hone his prose. How must he have done it? How would any writer have written (or how to they still write, given that some do still use typewriters) when the thing on the page is not something you can then pull into shape? I assume he did it through laborious retyping and then retyping again.
Will Self, I know, still uses typewriters. I should really see if I can find anything he's written about his process. Myself: I doubt if I could work that way. I write quickly but edit slowly. Perhaps I should write more slowly and edit very little.
That, I think, has to be the key. Most things I read at newspapers and magazines are clearly written in a rush. Nobody cares that they are. Facts are rarely checked that well, especially at some of the broadsheet's websites. The Independent tonight had an article about De Niro's new film. It looks terrible (Dirty Grandpa) and was definitely not directed by Larry Charles, who did direct Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Borat and Bill Maher's Religulous.
The Independent has become a woeful website, suffering from the worst kind of Buzzfeed syndrome.
On a more positive note, for a brief moment this week, my name featured on the same page as Will Self over at The New Statesman.
Is it sad to admit it was a career highlight? Well, excuse my French: fuck it. It was.
I rarely swear but always edit. I've broken one rule. Might as well break the other and publish this unedited. Let it be the mess I'll look back on to remind me never to post when I don't exist.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Friday, 20 November 2015
Saturday, 18 April 2015
These 10 Hollywood stars were born with tusks
I don't know who first said that all writing is an expression of loneliness so I suppose, in a way, I said it first. Writing is, after all, the most alienating experience a person can have without being forced to visit Ipswich on a Sunday.
I think of writing as the act of standing naked at a hotel window. Very few people would ever think of standing naked at a hotel window or, at least, you don't go 'junk free' unless you're an exhibitionist or you hold a Scandinavian passport. Writing makes you feel vulnerable and putting those words into a public space feels like it should be a very risky thing to do. However, like standing naked at a hotel window, you're probably not understanding the context of your public exposure.
I often look at the vast expanse of windows in the big hotels I find around the cities I occasionally visit. From the point of view of looking at the hotel, you'd be hard pressed to spot which window frames a naked person gazing back at you. Of course, nobody will ever read this so perhaps now is the time to confess that I only look at the windows in hotels hoping to see one of those glamour models looking back down at me as she poses for some candid shots. In all the years I've been engaged in this noble enterprise, I can sadly report that I've never seen a glamour model looking back down at me. I've seen the pictures on the internet so I know that kind of thing happens quite a lot in hotel windows. I've therefore come to the conclusion that I'm looking at the wrong hotels or simply looking at the wrong time of day.
Yet whilst I struggle to spot the beautiful models pouting and bending, the people who do pose in hotels windows probably believe that everybody can see their nakedness yet the reality is so very different.
What I'm trying to say is that writing a blog feels like standing naked in one of those windows. The reality is that there are a billion other windows and that nobody is actually looking back at you or reading what I write. I could yawn, stretch my arms wide, rock back and forward on my heels like so, my pen and pencil case swinging back and fro in the breeze and nobody can see a thing. It's would be liberating if it weren't so damn depressing because, frankly, what is the point of standing naked at a window if not a single person knows that you're there? It's that age old philosophical question: if you wiggle your junk in a forest and nobody sees them wiggling, does your junk even exist? The answer, of course, is that of course it bloody exists and the judge will also take into consideration the twenty two other indecency charges before deciding your sentence.
When I was pimpled and naive, the fashion among my generation was to wear ridiculously tight trousers and big puffy jackets that I never did own. I came from a relatively poor working class family where every penny counted. Yet I was at school with the sons of local farmers and businessmen who had their own cars at thirteen and everything at fourteen that a fourteen old boy could every possibly wish to own.
I had none of those things. I had normal straight-legged trousers and some humble non-inflatable coat which therefore made me one of the unfashionable kids deserving only scorn and the occasional beating for being so deflated and straight-legged. My pants didn't cut off the circulation to my testicles and my coat was black when the fashion was for lime green with vanilla blazes. I imagine now that there are men my age suffering for the fashions of their fashionable youth. I like to think of some old schoolyard nemesis being told that his testicles were damaged by the drainpipe tight trousers he wore all those years ago and that's the reason why his lime green bud earphones pop out every time he crosses his legs.
As an adult, I think back on the misery of those years and realise that, oddly, my fashion back then was exactly what was subsequently considered cool. If I'd been born a decade or so later, I'd have been the coolest kid in the school. I looked and dressed like Kurt Cobain before grunge was acceptable. I was also dressing like a hipster in reefer jackets and desert boots long before either of them became the norm. I'll probably be wearing them still when they drop out of fashion again but I really don't care. Because I was so miserably aware of fashion as a teenager, I've never followed fashion as an adult. My natural instinct is to turn away from anything that's popular and that really sets me at odds with the internet.
The two threads of this barely cogent essay are really one and the same. It's about the writer's need for attention when the reality is that having the instincts of a writer makes you as popular as a septic cold sore in a cramped locker room.
There are some bloggers, of course, who are read and are popular. They're very often the kind of bloggers whose faces appear on the TV news above the caption 'Writer and Critic' or 'Editor of the Harvard Nose Review' or 'Scholar, Lover, Highly Gifted on the Flute'. They're the self-confident types who seem to emerge from university at the age of 24 and walk through the door of The Spectator and straight onto our TV screens with a fully formed world view. Watching the election coverage, I'm shocked by how many of that type there are out there and how they all look and sound the same. The men have narrow lofty heads, great teeth and bland Oxbridge opinions; the women have big broad faces and expensively casual Chelsea hair which they have to keep stroking over an ear whilst explaining the bleeding obvious. It's the breezy confidence they have and the certainty that they all have fresh minty breath and body odour undetectable by a bomb squad dog. Today they're dictating the news agenda, tomorrow they're announcing their retirement from Twitter due to continual abuse which they then turn into a 2000 word article that wins them the Pulitzer and 24 hour protection from Special Branch.
Journalism has entered into the Buzzfeed age where everyone is playing the same schoolyard game. I long to be one of those cool people but my trousers aren't tight fitting. I guess I'm still too straight legged. Yet that also means that I don't want to join in. I want to write long rambling essays that aren't structured around lists. I want to give my articles titles that are uncool and don't immediately attract a reader with a false promise of some amazing revelations about butter. I don't want to ever find myself posting an essay titled:
'These 10 Hollywood stars were born with tusks' [Damn! Failed again!]
'See the woman with Dick Tracy walkie-talkie tits'
'Eighteen ways to train your knees to launch you over a car!'
'Scientists plan to soundproof Canada'
'Read the secret Vatican evidence that the Pope is Korean'
'Do your earlobes prove that you're descended from the Russian Royal Family?'
They're fun titles, of course, but they're too easy to write...
'Turn your nut allergy into your super power'
'Man born with big toe that resembles Billy Crystal'
'What your arsehole says about your career choice.'
If none of my madness makes sense, it's because I don't expect anybody to gaze this direction and find me standing here ball-shine crazy in my hotel window. I write too often that I hate blogging but it's not the blogging I hate. It's not the effort of writing, the struggle with words, the lack of a theme or even a conclusion. I don't even mind standing here naked. I don't feel particularly fragile or exposed or compromised or any of those things that an ordinary person would probably feel if they confessed these muddled things.
The reason I find myself hating blogging is that sometimes it just reinforces the loneliness. A blog is the corner of the school field where the lonely writer goes to gaze through the iron railings wishing they were somewhere else when, deep down, knowing that they really want to be back with the cool kids. Back with the privileged few, in their tight trousers and lime green puffy jackets with vanilla blazes, whose dumb inarticulate cries rally their adoring fans for yet another assault on anybody or anything that dares to be different or strange.
I think of writing as the act of standing naked at a hotel window. Very few people would ever think of standing naked at a hotel window or, at least, you don't go 'junk free' unless you're an exhibitionist or you hold a Scandinavian passport. Writing makes you feel vulnerable and putting those words into a public space feels like it should be a very risky thing to do. However, like standing naked at a hotel window, you're probably not understanding the context of your public exposure.
I often look at the vast expanse of windows in the big hotels I find around the cities I occasionally visit. From the point of view of looking at the hotel, you'd be hard pressed to spot which window frames a naked person gazing back at you. Of course, nobody will ever read this so perhaps now is the time to confess that I only look at the windows in hotels hoping to see one of those glamour models looking back down at me as she poses for some candid shots. In all the years I've been engaged in this noble enterprise, I can sadly report that I've never seen a glamour model looking back down at me. I've seen the pictures on the internet so I know that kind of thing happens quite a lot in hotel windows. I've therefore come to the conclusion that I'm looking at the wrong hotels or simply looking at the wrong time of day.
Yet whilst I struggle to spot the beautiful models pouting and bending, the people who do pose in hotels windows probably believe that everybody can see their nakedness yet the reality is so very different.
What I'm trying to say is that writing a blog feels like standing naked in one of those windows. The reality is that there are a billion other windows and that nobody is actually looking back at you or reading what I write. I could yawn, stretch my arms wide, rock back and forward on my heels like so, my pen and pencil case swinging back and fro in the breeze and nobody can see a thing. It's would be liberating if it weren't so damn depressing because, frankly, what is the point of standing naked at a window if not a single person knows that you're there? It's that age old philosophical question: if you wiggle your junk in a forest and nobody sees them wiggling, does your junk even exist? The answer, of course, is that of course it bloody exists and the judge will also take into consideration the twenty two other indecency charges before deciding your sentence.
***
When I was pimpled and naive, the fashion among my generation was to wear ridiculously tight trousers and big puffy jackets that I never did own. I came from a relatively poor working class family where every penny counted. Yet I was at school with the sons of local farmers and businessmen who had their own cars at thirteen and everything at fourteen that a fourteen old boy could every possibly wish to own.
I had none of those things. I had normal straight-legged trousers and some humble non-inflatable coat which therefore made me one of the unfashionable kids deserving only scorn and the occasional beating for being so deflated and straight-legged. My pants didn't cut off the circulation to my testicles and my coat was black when the fashion was for lime green with vanilla blazes. I imagine now that there are men my age suffering for the fashions of their fashionable youth. I like to think of some old schoolyard nemesis being told that his testicles were damaged by the drainpipe tight trousers he wore all those years ago and that's the reason why his lime green bud earphones pop out every time he crosses his legs.
As an adult, I think back on the misery of those years and realise that, oddly, my fashion back then was exactly what was subsequently considered cool. If I'd been born a decade or so later, I'd have been the coolest kid in the school. I looked and dressed like Kurt Cobain before grunge was acceptable. I was also dressing like a hipster in reefer jackets and desert boots long before either of them became the norm. I'll probably be wearing them still when they drop out of fashion again but I really don't care. Because I was so miserably aware of fashion as a teenager, I've never followed fashion as an adult. My natural instinct is to turn away from anything that's popular and that really sets me at odds with the internet.
***
The two threads of this barely cogent essay are really one and the same. It's about the writer's need for attention when the reality is that having the instincts of a writer makes you as popular as a septic cold sore in a cramped locker room.
There are some bloggers, of course, who are read and are popular. They're very often the kind of bloggers whose faces appear on the TV news above the caption 'Writer and Critic' or 'Editor of the Harvard Nose Review' or 'Scholar, Lover, Highly Gifted on the Flute'. They're the self-confident types who seem to emerge from university at the age of 24 and walk through the door of The Spectator and straight onto our TV screens with a fully formed world view. Watching the election coverage, I'm shocked by how many of that type there are out there and how they all look and sound the same. The men have narrow lofty heads, great teeth and bland Oxbridge opinions; the women have big broad faces and expensively casual Chelsea hair which they have to keep stroking over an ear whilst explaining the bleeding obvious. It's the breezy confidence they have and the certainty that they all have fresh minty breath and body odour undetectable by a bomb squad dog. Today they're dictating the news agenda, tomorrow they're announcing their retirement from Twitter due to continual abuse which they then turn into a 2000 word article that wins them the Pulitzer and 24 hour protection from Special Branch.
Journalism has entered into the Buzzfeed age where everyone is playing the same schoolyard game. I long to be one of those cool people but my trousers aren't tight fitting. I guess I'm still too straight legged. Yet that also means that I don't want to join in. I want to write long rambling essays that aren't structured around lists. I want to give my articles titles that are uncool and don't immediately attract a reader with a false promise of some amazing revelations about butter. I don't want to ever find myself posting an essay titled:
'These 10 Hollywood stars were born with tusks' [Damn! Failed again!]
'See the woman with Dick Tracy walkie-talkie tits'
'Eighteen ways to train your knees to launch you over a car!'
'Scientists plan to soundproof Canada'
'Read the secret Vatican evidence that the Pope is Korean'
'Do your earlobes prove that you're descended from the Russian Royal Family?'
They're fun titles, of course, but they're too easy to write...
'Turn your nut allergy into your super power'
'Man born with big toe that resembles Billy Crystal'
'What your arsehole says about your career choice.'
If none of my madness makes sense, it's because I don't expect anybody to gaze this direction and find me standing here ball-shine crazy in my hotel window. I write too often that I hate blogging but it's not the blogging I hate. It's not the effort of writing, the struggle with words, the lack of a theme or even a conclusion. I don't even mind standing here naked. I don't feel particularly fragile or exposed or compromised or any of those things that an ordinary person would probably feel if they confessed these muddled things.
The reason I find myself hating blogging is that sometimes it just reinforces the loneliness. A blog is the corner of the school field where the lonely writer goes to gaze through the iron railings wishing they were somewhere else when, deep down, knowing that they really want to be back with the cool kids. Back with the privileged few, in their tight trousers and lime green puffy jackets with vanilla blazes, whose dumb inarticulate cries rally their adoring fans for yet another assault on anybody or anything that dares to be different or strange.
Sunday, 23 June 2013
The Sparkling Strangeness
What strangeness. What sparkling strangeness…
My Sparks cartoon appeared on their Official Facebook page tonight.
This is me (holds up finger) passing this close to greatness (passes finger past nose). My nose isn't a great nose but for the purposes of this metaphor let’s imagine it is. It’s a monumental nose. It’s a nose that makes the best albums in the business and, when seen live, my nose is a revelation. In fact, I hope my noses plays Manchester soon so I can see it again.
Excuse this ramble but, if you follow this blog, you’ll know that last week was a bad week because of my elbow injury (the swelling is now almost down) but there were other things too grim to mention. You might say I was filled with momentary euphoria when I saw my doodle on the Facebook page of my favourite band. Hell, my work getting posed anywhere is remarkable. I remember when my book first appeared in bookshops; I’d just go into Manchester or Liverpool and look at it in utter bemusement. Mind you, when it was pulped, I also stood there looking at it in bemusement…
However, this Sparks boost was a great surprise. Last October, I’d been standing across the road from the HMV Ritz in Manchester, shivering as I waited for the coach replacing my cancelled train home. I could see Sparks fans waiting around the stage door. I couldn’t wait. I wouldn’t have waited even thought I wanted to wait. It seems a strange thing to do: to annoy artists you admire by loitering and staring at them… And I say that as a man who wrote a book of spoof letters in which I annoyed artists I admire by writing them funny letters. Or I least I hope they found them funny. The best ones usually did. I’d written to Ron Mael about six months earlier and suggested they tour again. Some small part of me hoped I’d played my part in making it happen.
So, even if I hadn’t played a small part in making it happen, this cartoon gave me real pleasure. I’d drawn two strips based around Sparks and to have the first received so well filled me with confidence. Humour is a tricky venue to play, especially when you know that your humour is too warped for the mainstream, though I partially blame Sparks for that.
I remember Sparks from earliest childhood when I was too young to understand the music but Ron Mael’s glare would fascinate me equally as much as Russell’s missing tooth. I think even then my humour was warped. Or perhaps Sparks warped my humour. That’s something I’ve often considered. All I know is that I’ve always loved things that are left of centre. Cartooning, my heroes are the often incomprehensible B. Kliban, the I-dare-you-to-like-me Robert Crumb, and that wild visionary Ralph Steadman. My favourite books are the dense ‘Heart of Darkness’ and the second volume of Hunter S. Thompson’s letters. Films: Orson Welles’ ‘F for Fake’, Huston’s ‘Treasure of the Sierre Madre’, and Tony Hancock’s ‘The Rebel’ (which I maintain is *the* greatest movie about modern art ever made). Musically, it’s always been Tom Waits, PJ Harvey, and Sparks…
So, I write this blog for myself like I write my books for myself, hoping to find others that like them. So, imagine my delight when I saw that my cartoon had made Spark’s Official Facebook page. My grin reached from ear to ear, taking two circuits around the living room in the process. People seemed to like the strip. I’m feeling really happy and then…
‘Am I the only one who doesn’t find this cartoon funny in the slightest?’
I paraphrase. I’m not going back to read that comment again. Just cue the mangled cry of the brass section falling down the stairs. Cue the comic slide whistle descending the depths of pathos.
Never ever look. Never read the praise. Never read the hate.
Hard lessons have taught me that. From my first absolutely stinking review on Amazon to snide comments to my work online, I’ve learned never to listen. When I was interviewed on Radio 4 last year, I never went back. Never listened to it. I don’t look back. I just move on. That’s my approach and why I don’t use Facebook or Twitter. Perhaps I should try the Stuart Lee approach (and why I rate him as the finest stand-up in the business) which is to embrace the hate. Only, the problem with embracing the hate is that you really need to know you’re good in the first place to carry that off. My problem is that I feel that my cartoons are essentially worthless. Working class paranoia runs deep up here in the north and I find self-doubt the greatest obstacle when engaged in creative projects. Admitting you're a writer around here is like admitting to being a sheep strangler, something that's not encouraged and possibly illegal. So when the blank page faces me, it’s cruel. Marking it is a defiance and I will scribble something rather than face nothing. It’s the best way.
‘Am I the only one who doesn’t find this cartoon funny in the slightest?’
But that line lives with you before you pick up a pen or type a word.
‘Am I the only one who doesn’t find this cartoon funny in the slightest?’
The audience’s voice is always there in everything you do, ready to mock you for even trying to create something different, for simply trying to make people laugh and feel better...
‘Am I the only one who doesn’t find this cartoon funny in the slightest?’
Then I think: what would Hunter S. Thompson say.
And I think: fuck them. Fuck them in the desert where black ants can dance drunken Irish jigs on their shrivelled eyeballs. That’s probably what Hunter S. Thompson would have said but better than that, tapping deeper reserves of justifiable anger.
Because here’s the crux of the matter: there is more stupidity in the world than there is creativity.
Something happened to me a few months ago that puts it into context.
A friend teaches English Literature at a local comprehensive and one of her students needed help on an A Level project. It happened to be on the author I wrote about for my doctorate. I never have reason to use my PhD so I was delighted to write down some ideas about how to tackle the project. The suggestions were passed on. It felt like my ten years of university weren’t a total waste.
Fast forward two months. My friend mentioned the student so I asked how my advice has been received. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘they ignored your suggestions completely.’
‘Completely? You mean all of them?’
‘I know. She did something else. We couldn’t stop her, even though it didn’t make any sense…’
I shrugged but here’s the thing: when I got home that night, I actually went to my books and I researched the very thing I’d written down just in case I’d been wrong.
Of course, I wasn’t wrong. In fact, I was more right than I’d suspected and it was actually a pretty imaginative way of tacking the project. But after studying an author for ten years and having written a 100,000 word thesis, why did I think that I might have been wrong? Just because some vacant 16 year old, who couldn’t take her studies seriously, decided to take an easy option?
Then I realised it was just self-doubt, self-loathing… We all have it.
So, I’m writing this to myself as well as to anybody who creates and actually reads things like this ramble on the web. My advice to myself and to you: never listen to the critics. Never accept the praise. Ignore the scorn. Just write, draw, keep your head down. Produce. The poverty will get you long before the critics get to have a say.
Remember: the only thing that matters is the work. And occasionally getting your work on Spark's Official Facebook page. That makes it all feel almost worth it.
My Sparks cartoon appeared on their Official Facebook page tonight.
This is me (holds up finger) passing this close to greatness (passes finger past nose). My nose isn't a great nose but for the purposes of this metaphor let’s imagine it is. It’s a monumental nose. It’s a nose that makes the best albums in the business and, when seen live, my nose is a revelation. In fact, I hope my noses plays Manchester soon so I can see it again.
Excuse this ramble but, if you follow this blog, you’ll know that last week was a bad week because of my elbow injury (the swelling is now almost down) but there were other things too grim to mention. You might say I was filled with momentary euphoria when I saw my doodle on the Facebook page of my favourite band. Hell, my work getting posed anywhere is remarkable. I remember when my book first appeared in bookshops; I’d just go into Manchester or Liverpool and look at it in utter bemusement. Mind you, when it was pulped, I also stood there looking at it in bemusement…
However, this Sparks boost was a great surprise. Last October, I’d been standing across the road from the HMV Ritz in Manchester, shivering as I waited for the coach replacing my cancelled train home. I could see Sparks fans waiting around the stage door. I couldn’t wait. I wouldn’t have waited even thought I wanted to wait. It seems a strange thing to do: to annoy artists you admire by loitering and staring at them… And I say that as a man who wrote a book of spoof letters in which I annoyed artists I admire by writing them funny letters. Or I least I hope they found them funny. The best ones usually did. I’d written to Ron Mael about six months earlier and suggested they tour again. Some small part of me hoped I’d played my part in making it happen.
So, even if I hadn’t played a small part in making it happen, this cartoon gave me real pleasure. I’d drawn two strips based around Sparks and to have the first received so well filled me with confidence. Humour is a tricky venue to play, especially when you know that your humour is too warped for the mainstream, though I partially blame Sparks for that.
I remember Sparks from earliest childhood when I was too young to understand the music but Ron Mael’s glare would fascinate me equally as much as Russell’s missing tooth. I think even then my humour was warped. Or perhaps Sparks warped my humour. That’s something I’ve often considered. All I know is that I’ve always loved things that are left of centre. Cartooning, my heroes are the often incomprehensible B. Kliban, the I-dare-you-to-like-me Robert Crumb, and that wild visionary Ralph Steadman. My favourite books are the dense ‘Heart of Darkness’ and the second volume of Hunter S. Thompson’s letters. Films: Orson Welles’ ‘F for Fake’, Huston’s ‘Treasure of the Sierre Madre’, and Tony Hancock’s ‘The Rebel’ (which I maintain is *the* greatest movie about modern art ever made). Musically, it’s always been Tom Waits, PJ Harvey, and Sparks…
So, I write this blog for myself like I write my books for myself, hoping to find others that like them. So, imagine my delight when I saw that my cartoon had made Spark’s Official Facebook page. My grin reached from ear to ear, taking two circuits around the living room in the process. People seemed to like the strip. I’m feeling really happy and then…
‘Am I the only one who doesn’t find this cartoon funny in the slightest?’
I paraphrase. I’m not going back to read that comment again. Just cue the mangled cry of the brass section falling down the stairs. Cue the comic slide whistle descending the depths of pathos.
Never ever look. Never read the praise. Never read the hate.
Hard lessons have taught me that. From my first absolutely stinking review on Amazon to snide comments to my work online, I’ve learned never to listen. When I was interviewed on Radio 4 last year, I never went back. Never listened to it. I don’t look back. I just move on. That’s my approach and why I don’t use Facebook or Twitter. Perhaps I should try the Stuart Lee approach (and why I rate him as the finest stand-up in the business) which is to embrace the hate. Only, the problem with embracing the hate is that you really need to know you’re good in the first place to carry that off. My problem is that I feel that my cartoons are essentially worthless. Working class paranoia runs deep up here in the north and I find self-doubt the greatest obstacle when engaged in creative projects. Admitting you're a writer around here is like admitting to being a sheep strangler, something that's not encouraged and possibly illegal. So when the blank page faces me, it’s cruel. Marking it is a defiance and I will scribble something rather than face nothing. It’s the best way.
‘Am I the only one who doesn’t find this cartoon funny in the slightest?’
But that line lives with you before you pick up a pen or type a word.
‘Am I the only one who doesn’t find this cartoon funny in the slightest?’
The audience’s voice is always there in everything you do, ready to mock you for even trying to create something different, for simply trying to make people laugh and feel better...
‘Am I the only one who doesn’t find this cartoon funny in the slightest?’
Then I think: what would Hunter S. Thompson say.
And I think: fuck them. Fuck them in the desert where black ants can dance drunken Irish jigs on their shrivelled eyeballs. That’s probably what Hunter S. Thompson would have said but better than that, tapping deeper reserves of justifiable anger.
Because here’s the crux of the matter: there is more stupidity in the world than there is creativity.
Something happened to me a few months ago that puts it into context.
A friend teaches English Literature at a local comprehensive and one of her students needed help on an A Level project. It happened to be on the author I wrote about for my doctorate. I never have reason to use my PhD so I was delighted to write down some ideas about how to tackle the project. The suggestions were passed on. It felt like my ten years of university weren’t a total waste.
Fast forward two months. My friend mentioned the student so I asked how my advice has been received. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘they ignored your suggestions completely.’
‘Completely? You mean all of them?’
‘I know. She did something else. We couldn’t stop her, even though it didn’t make any sense…’
I shrugged but here’s the thing: when I got home that night, I actually went to my books and I researched the very thing I’d written down just in case I’d been wrong.
Of course, I wasn’t wrong. In fact, I was more right than I’d suspected and it was actually a pretty imaginative way of tacking the project. But after studying an author for ten years and having written a 100,000 word thesis, why did I think that I might have been wrong? Just because some vacant 16 year old, who couldn’t take her studies seriously, decided to take an easy option?
Then I realised it was just self-doubt, self-loathing… We all have it.
So, I’m writing this to myself as well as to anybody who creates and actually reads things like this ramble on the web. My advice to myself and to you: never listen to the critics. Never accept the praise. Ignore the scorn. Just write, draw, keep your head down. Produce. The poverty will get you long before the critics get to have a say.
Remember: the only thing that matters is the work. And occasionally getting your work on Spark's Official Facebook page. That makes it all feel almost worth it.
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