Reading Instead Of Video Gaming

So with video games off the menu until the end of Lent, I just finished reading Northern Lights, the first book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Yes, yes, I know I'm way behind the times, but better late than never, eh?

My verdict on the first book? Loved it. After years of editing other people's manuscripts I can't quite turn the internal critic off, but even with my scouring for loopholes and duff lines, I was gripped and I really enjoyed it. It's nice to feel like sometimes a book is really popular because it's very good. The book deals in lots of very standard Fantasy tropes, like the false, decadent king challenged by the valiant true heir, the airships and steampunky accoutrements of Science Romance, and the whole many-worlds portal-linked multiverse thing, which is so common as to often be almost assumed as existing in many SF worlds, but it executes all of these familiar elements really, really well. It confirms my growing feeling - influenced in part by my interviews with the author Steve Aylett and with Helen Corner of manuscript consultancy agency Cornerstones, in my book We Can't All Be Astronauts (have you read it yet? Probably - but if not, hey, you can buy it here) - that originality is an overrated quality that readers (and people in general) aren't that bothered by. Readers want a pacy, thumping good read that they can understand, with characters they care about and situations that excite them and make them think.

I'm currently doing some research and assembling with ideas for, gulp, another novel. I think it might be not rubbish this time. It definitely won't be a tale of dysfunctional middle-class relationships. It will be the same colourful, weird nonsense I always do. I don't know why people wouldn't want to write about that kind of thing. Sure, I enjoy books that don't have magic and fireballs and time travel and robots and airships and zombies and portals and spaceships and scrambler-riding dinosaurs, but not as much as books that do. SORRY, MAJORITY OF THE WESTERN LITERARY CANON

Speaking of books set squarely in our drab, everyday reality, there's an interview with me over here about We Can't All Be Astronauts and my being a writer. Oh, and, despite being a memoir Astronauts has a bit where I suplex a T-Rex through the Acropolis. I put it in after the final proofread, because, y'know - wouldn't you want something that rad in your memoir? EXCEPT YOU DON'T HAVE ONE OH SNAP

Christmas Is Coming

Hey look, Christmas is just around the corner. If you're stuck for a present for that frustrated writer in your family, or that artsy depressive, or that smug schadenfreude-loving accountant, then you could do a lot worse than snapping up a copy of We Can't All Be Astronauts, my award-winning book about desperately wanting to become a bestselling author, and being jealous of all my mates. It's dead cheap, you'd be helping to boost my sales, and if you want me to sign it to make it seem all fancy-like just drop me an email. So yeah, don't hold back - solve all your gift dilemmas and give me a merry Christmas simultaneously!

We Can't All Be Astronauts Wins Best Biography / Memoir!

So, yeah, guess what? Last night, my first book, We Can't All Be Astronauts, scooped Best Biography/Memoir at the East Anglian Book Awards! That's good, isn't it? The judges called it: 'A funny, poignant, beautifully written account of a budding writer's quest for literary success.' Yep. No argument there, judges.

As you can imagine, I am - ah ha, ah ha, wait for it, wait for it... over the moon. Eh? Eh? Because 'astronauts', you see? Not just a funny pun though folks - also true. I was really surprised and I accepted my award in a sort of dazzled fug. Wow. Happy times. Thanks so much to everybody who's read it and those of you who've taken the time to write to me to confirm it didn't make you sick in your mouths.

We Can't All Be Astronauts - at HOMEWORK, tomorrow!

So yes, hooray, tomorrow, Wednesday 30th September, I'll be reading from my first book, We Can't All Be Astronauts, at the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club. But wait! Not only will my esteemed Aisle16 brothers in arms Luke Wright, Joe Dunthorne and John Osborne be providing support with new work, but we have a very special guest in the form of journalist and broadcaster Jon Ronson!

Basically, we think he's brilliant. You might suspect me of being sycophantic just to big him up for the gig, but one, you're much too clever to fall for obsequious propaganda, so I simply wouldn't bother, and two, I've posted very prominently before now - on this very blog - what a massive fan I am of This American Life, a show which he has contributed some of the best stories to. Check out Them, Habeas Schmabeas, Pro Se, and It's Never Over. In fact, while we're talking about superb radio, why not check out an episode of Jon Ronson On? May I humbly suggest The Wrong Kind Of Madness and The Worst Internet Date as two good places to start?

So yes. Come. The Timeout listing is here. Doors at 7:30pm, and we usually get started some time after 8:00pm. We'll all have books to sell and sign too, if you fancy one. I suspect it's going to be funtimes.

We Can't All Be Astronauts Shortlisted For East Anglian Book Awards

So We Can't All Be Astronauts has been shortlisted for East Anglian Book of the Year 2009. You can see who else is on the shortlist here.

That's exciting, isn't it? I feel very chuffed that the judges liked it. Hopefully a few more readers will stumble across it as a result. I'll be spinning some yarns from Astronauts at this month's Homework, on Wednesday 30th September at Bethnal Green Working Men's Club. Homework is Aisle16's regular literary cabaret night, with a mix of poetry, stand-up, music, literature, and pretty much anything else we can think of. We've had Kate Nash and Tim Key as previous special guests, and this month's special guest is someone we're all very much looking forward to, since all of Aisle16 are big fans. I'll let you know who in a couple of days...

More What I Did On My Holidays

My word, I am pooped. This weekend just gone, I set off for four gigs over two days. My voice still hadn't (and still hasn't) recovered from Latitude, so I left little Tim Jr back in Cambridge and resolved to stick to spoken word.

I was in fairly high spirits after my gig on Thursday, supporting Byron Vincent on his Poetry Link tour, at Wax Lyrical in Colchester. It was my first time at the Wax Lyrical night, and Molly Naylor and Ross Sutherland were both on the bill as well, meaning essentially I got to perform with a bunch of much-valued chums. The audience were really lovely and I think I did one of the best twenty minute sets I've ever done. I felt very at ease and enjoyed just sort of blathering, telling anecdotes and making up my set on the fly. It also provided yet another reminder of the value of decent lead-ins - not only do they set up the poem nicely for the crowd, but I find now that the right sort of preamble actually helps to put me in the best mental state to perform the poem well. Anyway, basically it was great fun, and I really enjoyed getting to watch Ross, Molly and Byron perform their sets all on one night, to appreciative spectators. Oh, and the sound tech guy was a total champ - he stuck a lovely tickle of reverb on Tim Jr and made him sound all Hawaiian, full, and dreamy. Kudos to that guy.

On Friday it was off to Camp Bestival, down on the south coast, at Lulsworth Castle. There's something particularly cruel about Camp Bestival's location - from on site, you can see the ocean shimmering just a mile away. It felt like it was constantly teasing me - I mean, festivals are okay, but with the insanely hot weather Camp Bestival had, you can't help but wish you were down on a beach instead, cavorting on the sand or diving into cool blue waves.

Camp Bestival started out as a bit of a culture shock - we arrived to find ourselves kicking through drifts of jammy-visaged sprogs three or four deep. Squealing tykes battled with plastic swords, scampered about with balloons and crammed ice cream wafer sandwiches into their red, mewling gobs. The music on the main stages at Camp Bestival was pretty shite. I condescended to watch Florence and the Machine, against my better judgement, and wished I hadn't. I don't know what all the fuss is about - all I saw was some crapulent, equine-mawed toff caterwauling and dropping barrages of slurred f-bombs between her nondescript dirges, much to the consternation of the watching parents and children. Beatboxer Beardyman on Saturday was a similar waste of time - a smug, irritating cunt trying to spin a meagre party trick out into a career. I'm easily impressed by beatboxing, but you have to have some kind of interesting content or be exceptionally good at what you do - Beardyman has neither, and he compounds the problem with his constant toe-curling attempts at humour. It's like being stuck in a lift with Timmy Mallett.

But when the sun goes down, all the children suddenly seem to get removed by some sort of snow plough, and then Camp Bestival turns into a really excellent dance festival. Better yet, because it's such a family festival, the atmosphere in the late evening stays convivial - there aren't so many of the boss-eyed spannered townies you associate with banging choons. On Friday night we had a good ol' dance for many hours, ending up in the Silent Disco. Clare's Law: as the length of a Silent Disco increases, the probability of both DJs playing Cheese approaches 1. I bowed out gracefully as soused revellers bellowed Hey Jude up at the tent ceiling.

My readings on Saturday went okay. It's a bit tricky judging content and holding an audience when there are packs of roving kids swarming here there and everywhere, but I think I did okay. The hard thing is that a lot of parents tend to use book tents as creches, plonking themselves down on a cushion and leaving their kids to shriek and run about. There wasn't too much of that when I was on, though, and I'm usually shouty-shouty enough to make little children run away crying. I did a reading from We Can't All Be Astronauts in the early afternoon, then a poetry set with Scroobius Pip in the evening. I felt as if my rendition of Dear Man I Saw On The Platform At Colchester was a bit lacklustre - I think I might retire it for a while, just until I get the feeling back. I'm not an actor, so if I'm not feeling it then it just turns hammy, and I don't want to force that awful am-dram bollocks on some poor crowd.

By the time we were due to leave Camp Bestival, I'd become acclimatised to the huge numbers of kids, and found myself - embarrassingly - putting a hand to my chest and sighing with increasing frequency, as I saw and heard lots of very cute, very endearing things. Camp Bestival isn't my cup of tea - despite curator Rob Da Bank's claims of championing new bands, the music in the day is exclusively toothless crap - but the children there were obviously having an absolute whale of a time, and I was really happy for them.

Saturday evening we headed west, down to the Port Eliot Lit Fest. Aisle16 and Port Eliot have an association that goes back longer than I've been involved - at the last Port Eliot in 2007, we ended up doing about 20 plus hours of performance over two days; they might as well have renamed it Aisle16stock. I always enjoy Port Eliot because of its limited size - if you do a gig there, you instantly acquire a pseudo-celebrity that lasts for the whole weekend, and you can just wonder around chatting to people.

On the Sunday, me, Ross Sutherland and Joe Dunthorne did a performance of our show Found In Translation, about our attempts to infiltrate enigmatic French experimental literature group, the Oulipo. It went really well, as we suspected it might, because audiences at Port Eliot are always lovely. None of the mothers complained when I did my groin-thrusts and fecal splattering, which was gratifying. The weather on Sunday was crappy in the extreme - it was raining when we got up and it continued, unabated, all day and all evening, not letting up once. Port Eliot isn't really designed to cope with that sort of weather, and the tent we were performing in was leaking badly, the DI boxes for Ross's laptop sitting in an ominous marsh and bits of paper plastered to the stage with water.

Later on, I did a reading in the Round Room of the house. As the name suggests, it's a huge circular room with an elaborate and quite disturbing frieze painted across the wall and a large domed ceiling with a big chandelier hanging from the centre. I was directed to stand right beneath the chandelier, and as soon as I did, I could hear my voice being amplified and projected across the room. I believe it's called a Whispering Gallery - the acoustics are such that, if you stand in the centre of the room, your voice is projected by the architecture and you can hear everyone in the room perfectly. Lots of people turned up and I really enjoyed reading from Astronauts with my newfound big, booming voice. I did my first ever Q & A at the end, which was fun, and allowed me to babble enthusiastically about a bunch of things I like. Thanks Port Eliot!

Aside from some issues with our car breaking down, we had a great weekend. I think all this living outdoors has worn me down a bit though - I'm feeling ever so slightly under the weather, and I can feel my glands swollen up in my throat like big ol' gooseberries, so I'm committing to lots of water and quietness for the rest of the week, in the hopes that I can recover my performing mojo in time for Saturday, when I'm off to the Kendal Calling festival for yet more spoken word shennanigans and living under canvas. Hooray!

What I Did On My Holidays

So, after a day of sleeping and staggering groggily about the flat with Supernoodles dangling from my slack gob, I've officially recovered from Latitude festival 2009. My voice is still pretty buggered, so no arias for a week or so, but aside from that I'm compos mentis so woot.

Despite intermittently shitty weather, this year turned out to be a bit of a corker. I was performing every day, doing sets in the Poetry Arena and also reading from We Can't All Be Astronauts in the Literary Tent. The reading from my book was a particularly nice surprise - they told me to tell the audience that I'd be signing copies afterwards, and I cringed at a vision of me sitting glum and alone behind a pile of my books. Instead, we sold out of copies! I felt incredibly flattered and a tiny bit fraudulent, but, you know, I think in these instances it's best to drop the self-effacement and just enjoy it, which I did. Thanks if you bought a copy. You made me feel really chuffed.

In the Poetry Arena the audiences seemed bigger than we've had in previous years, and on Thursday and Sunday they were particularly enthusiastic. I didn't catch everyone who performed, but I felt Nathan Filer, John Osborne, Kate Tempest, Dockers MC and MC Angel had particularly good innings. Kate Tempest with her band Sound of Rum managed to get a crowd who had started out listless and subdued up on their feet and dancing by the end of their set, which was incredible to watch. John Osborne did the best performances I've ever seen him do - I particularly enjoyed the point where audience members started spontaneously yelling out names of bands that only use the vowel e. One guy shouted out ELO, to which John responded: 'That's a rubbish attempt. There are three letters in that name. One of them's e, and one of them's l. Do you see where you fell down?'

The tent on Sunday just got warmer and warmer as the evening went on, until it was rammed and the crowd were really up for it, whooping and cheering and belly laughing. My highlight of Aisle16 and Friends was watching MC Angel start a rap battle with Keith Allen. Keith Allen was better at freestyling than you might have guessed, and it was great, drunken, knockabout fun that had the audience laughing and questioning their sanity in equal measures. Aisle16's late night sessions in the Poetry Arena always teeter on anarchy, and the upside of that is that amazing bits of performance can arise spontaneously and give everyone present one of those festival 'moments' that we're all fiending after. Watching Ross Sutherland carry the mic into the middle of the audience to lead the tent in a rousing chorus of Total Eclipse Of The Heart was another bumper, albeit silly, moment.

Thank you to everyone who came to watch us, or gave poetry a try over the weekend. It's really salutory to do it and basically not be crap. It reminds me of why we do it in the first place - we just want to give people something fresh and new that can be funny and exciting and emotional all at once. That sounds gushy and pretentious until you're in the middle of a show that's going really well, then you realise, oh, it's true.

In another news, yesterday I stumbled across the Decemberists for the first time. Someone mentioned them in the same sentence as Jonathan Coulton, and I was like, aha. I love what I've heard so far. After my nap yesterday I got up and had a little dance around the living room with my wireless headphones on. Here are just two, Valerie Plame and The Legionnaire's Lament. Funtimes.

Ukulele Record Breakers, Glastonbury and Horrific Torture

So here's a video of our attempt to break the world record for most ukuleles playing together at the London Ukulele Festival. I'd been there to open the Grass Ukes Stage, and also because they had an open mic, but I think the world record attempt was pretty much the biggest open mic I've ever been too! You can see me right in the middle of the shot with Tim Junior; I'm wearing a khaki shirt:



It was hella fun.

So today is Homework, the Aisle16 scratch night in Bethnal Green. Doors are at 7:30pm and it only costs three spondools, so you should come. Me, Chris Hicks and John Osborne are providing suppport with new material, then Luke's doing a full preview of his new Edinburgh show, The Petty Concerns Of Luke Wright, where he asks 'How does the desire to be loved by millions turn into an ego trip?'. It will be dead spesh.

I'm feeling pretty down at the moment. I suspect the reasons are threefold. One, publicity for We Can't All Be Astronauts is just about over now, so that's kind of it. Now, we just wait and see whether people buy it, and whether the people who read it like it and tell other people. I guess I'm feeling the post-party crash, and hoping I've done enough to not make it a pricey disappointment for my publishers. Having now been through the process of getting published, it's terrifying to see how much of a book's success or failure hinges on a handful of decisions by just a few people. Having someone pick it to review or decide to use it in a feature can mean the difference between a book reaching its target audience or sinking into obscurity. I'm not sure which of those categories Astronauts will fall into, yet.

Secondly, my grandma phoned and casually gave me the weather report for Glastonbury - torrential thunderstorms. People laugh about these things but constant rain ruins Glastonbury. Despite its history, as an outdoor event it doesn't deal well with bad weather and as a punter, five days of clammy, shivery vagrancy without anywhere to properly sit down is a dismal trial that saps your will to live. Last year was only good because, on Saturday afternoon, the rain relented, and, on Sunday, it was sunny. Sunday was glorious, and I had a great time. The rest of the festival was miserable. Not only that, but last year, we had the awning of Luke's caravan to shelter in, with camping chairs and a cooker and a kettle for tea. This year, we've got none of that - just little canvas cocoons to wriggle into, all sodden and wretched.

So yeah, I'm not looking forward to that. I feel very lucky that, as part of Aisle16, I've been able to perform at Glastonbury three years on the trot, to generally large and appreciative audiences in the big Cabaret Tent. Weather be damned, I love performing there and that's why I'm prepared to stick it out through all the grimness. I've got a grudging admiration for the kinds of people who seem able to shrug off the bad weather and enjoy themselves anyway - that takes a level of resilience I haven't developed yet - but, for me, the sight of a night time downpour blasting thousands of tiny tents just fills me with dread.

Finally, I think I feel bad because I woke up from a nightmare where I was being horribly tortured by a man who had discovered that I was a spy. I was pinned down, and he had a long, thin needle and he was moving it about fast, threatening to jab it into different parts of my body like the soft inside part of my elbow or the corner of my eye, and I was hysterically telling him that I'd confess everything, that I'd tell him what he wanted to know, he just had to stop because I couldn't concentrate if he kept punishing me, but he wouldn't, there was nothing I could do to stop him torturing me, but I knew that it'd be worse if I didn't talk and he wouldn't stop until I'd told him everything he wanted to know. I was hysterical and frantic and the worst thing was feeling like I had no control, like all the usual socialised mechanisms of getting a response out of someone weren't working, and there was nothing I could do to prevent my suffering - my options were 'bad' or 'worse'. I woke up gasping for air, my heart crashing in my chest.

I expect it was my fault for watching the videos from this post on Metafilter about the terrible human rights abuses that still go on today in the North Korean gulags. They're extremely disturbing, but I'm glad I watched them - it's obscene and outrageous that such atrocities continue to happen, although what the international community might be able to do about them is another, far thornier question. Certainly anyone thinking of going on a kooky North Korean government mandated 'sightseeing tour' of NK should think twice about pouring their tourist dollars into a grotesque totalitarian regime.

It's rare that something I've watched translates so quickly and so obviously into a dream. My sleep patterns have been all out of whack for the past week or so. I've had a couple of late night writing sessions that have turned into all-nighters, but also my hayfever was making being up in the day a pretty rubbish, wheezy experience, so I preferred to do my work at night, when the pollen count is lower. One of the effects of messing up your sleep patterns is your dreams become a lot more vivid and memorable. Irritating that they've become memorable-horrific rather than memorable-porny, but I'd rather have horror in my dreams and technicolour carnal theatre in my waking hours than the other way round.

Anyway, if you see me at Glastonbury, give me a hug, eh?

Aisle16 at Glastonbury Festival

It's appropriate that Glastonbury is organised by a farmer, because the ancient and fundamental principle of the yearly harvest also applies to the festival - if the weather's shit, it'll be shit. I hope that the weather isn't shit at Glastonbury 2009, because firstly, have you seen the line up? WHAT. It's actually mental. Blur, Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Art Brut, Nick Cave, Roots Manuva, our chums Wave Machines, our chum John Smith opening the Acoustic Stage on Friday, ROLF HARRIS. I repeat - WHAT. You should read through the line-up, because I guarantee there will be someone who I haven't mentioned who will make you exclaim: 'Tim - how could you leave out x? x are amazing!' where x is the name of an artist or band you admire.

I know your AwesomeScanner currently reads: critical density reached, HOWEVER get ready for it to overheat then short out in a blast of sparks, because I'm going to be performing too, as part of performance poetry collective Aisle16. We're doing half an hour on Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the Cabaret Tent (that massive yellow and blue one in the Circus Field) from 11:40am to 12.10pm. We're also doing a slightly longer set in the Poetry & Words Tent on Saturday afternoon, 5:15pm-5:55pm. That's over two hours of Aisle16 - longer than most of the headliners get. I know, I know. We're incredibly chill.

Come and see us one of those times! It's poetry but the twist is it's not shit. If you're not familiar with Aisle16 allow me to break down the Glastonbury roster into a quintet of crude archetypes: Joe is the sardonic scholar. John Osborne is the kindly uncle. Chris is Michael Douglas in Falling Down. Ross is Charles Bukowski, if instead of being drunk he was just a bit tired. And I'm the sex-pest who takes onlookers' embarrassed laughter as encouragement.

So yes. Aisle16 at Glastonbury - 11:40am every day in the Cabaret Tent, and 5:15pm on Saturday in the Poetry & Words Tent. Set a reminder on your mobile. You'll only forget otherwise - you know what you're like. I'll also be making a number of solo appearances - catch me wandering dead-eyed across the festival site at 7:30 every morning, clutching a bundle of soiled rags to my chest and howling something about needing medicine for my baby.

In other news, while browsing the Ebury Twitter feed I found a link to this review of We Can't All Be Astronauts on a blog called The Slammer. It's a really positive review and I feel chuffed: 'A less safe pair of hands would make certain passages sound whiny and irritating, but Clare’s passion for the subject matter lifts these moments into a real-life triumph of the underdog tale. His self-deprecating humour is also a major virtue - particularly when it comes to briefly being "Jeffrey Archer’s bitch" on national TV.' Ha - that first sentence becomes unintentionally damning when you remember that the 'subject matter' is me.

Lots of people who've read Astronauts have got in touch to let me know what they thought of it. I try to make a point of replying to everyone, but thanks anyway to all the folks who've taken the time to write to me. I'm surprised at how many people have said that certain sections resonated with them - it's obviously struck a chord with a few frustrated artists out there, and it's been nice to hear that it helped some readers feel slightly less alone in their futile struggle for recognition. Other people just wrote to let me know that they'd laughed at what a twat I am. That's nice too! I can be a bit of a twat - I'm glad that at least I'm a twat who uses his twattery for the forces of good. Too many twats squander their talent. Stupid twats.

Interview With Me, Plus We Can't All Be Astronauts 'Hilarious' Reveals Grazia

There's an interview with me up on essentialwriters.com, which you can go read if you're somehow not satisfied with the current volume of unsolicited self-disclosure on this here weblog. In other news, I am SO in Grazia today. Well, We Can't All Be Astronauts is anyhoo. Lauren Laverne dubs it 'hilarious'. Thank you, Lauren. Do people still chortle? What's a chortle sound like? It's not very onomatopoeic, is it? I imagine it's the kind of noise that'd be made by a toddler choking on a gooseberry.

But I digress.

We Can't All Be Astronauts Launch Pics

These are some pics from the launch of We Can't All Be Astronauts. Joe Dunthorne, Ross Sutherland, Steve Aylett and Salena Godden all did some terrific readings, and a good time was had by all. Pics courtesy of Dan 'Scoopmeister' Derrett.

We Can't All Be Astronauts - Review 2

So I got another review of We Can't All Be Astronauts, this time at writers' website essentialwriters.com. You can read the full thing here, if you like.

The reviewer, Judy Darley, is mostly nice about it. She says some bits are 'truly fascinating', that 'you can’t help but be awed by his audacity' and that 'you’ll be alternating between feeling depressed and inspired by Tim’s revelations, and may even find yourself making decisions about your own future as a writer'. But she also thinks I'm whinging and self-indulgent and sections of the book read like me chucking my toys out the pram.

I think that's probably a fair comment. When I was working on Astronauts I had lots of decisions to make about how to portray myself, my moods, and my aspirations. On the one hand, I wanted to be honest. On the other hand, I didn't want to come across as such an unlikeable arsehole that I alienated the reader. Severe depression can have a weirdly narcissistic component to it - sometimes you end up projecting all your feelings of doom and self-loathing outwards, deciding that there's no possible way you can be happy in this shitty, fallen world populated by hollow bastards. Like I say in the book, I puffed up myself and my idea of my future because as a teenager I was lonely and unhappy, and an aggrandised narrative gave me something I could cling to. Up close, depressed people are often hugely unsympathetic, but their suffering is still real, as are its consequences.

In the end, after several discussions with my agent and my editor, I went for being as honest as possible, because that seemed like the most interesting option. In her review, Judy says that in places I come across 'like a kid with a strop on because they didn’t get the part they wanted in the school play'. I think that's very perceptive and I absolutely agree. And it's easy, if you get the part you want or you're not invested in the play at all, to dub that kid a grasping obnoxious pranny and move on. Jealousy isn't a very noble pursuit, and it rarely evokes our sympathy.

Personally, I wanted to investigate. Most of us experience jealousy to a greater or lesser extent, although we're not all prepared to admit it. I expect most people deal with it better than I did, but then, the useful thing about a grotesque is it's easy to see the mechanics of the trait it embodies. I don't want to start vaunting the cheesy, life-improving benefits of Astronauts, but I do hope that some readers recognise smaller, less destructive instances of the same sort of thinking in their own lives, and can let go of it a little as a result (or at least feel like slightly less of a twat for not being perfect).

I realise that the moments in the book where I say 'I know I was being really self-indulgent and actually I was a very fortunate young man' don't negate the fact that much of the story focuses on a character who has his priorities badly out of whack, so I think it comes down to whether the conflict and psychology of that interests you. It's just who I was, and who, to a certain extent, I still am. I get the impression that Judy would have preferred a straighter account of the writer's path, with all the various hurdles between page and publication. Which is fair enough. I'd prefer The Bill to have more ED-209 cameos but until we get out of this damned recession and ITV starts filming bespoke episodes I'll have to make do with my crappy retro fan fiction. In one episode, ED-209 and Tosh uncover a cache of stolen video recorders in a Sun Hill lockup - but who's the culprit?

How To Get A Book Deal - Director's Cut

So, I thought I might as well post up the original text of my article on how to get published that The Independent commissioned then wankerishly mangled. I know I'm being a teensy bit precious but it is a bit galling when you get an article printed in a national newspaper but they edit out some of the most important bits. In a way, it was doomed from the start - 'how do I get published?' isn't a particularly helpful question. We don't live in a country that needs more published authors - what we need are better authors. In all the freelance editorial work I've done, and in all the writers I've known socially, I've only ever seen two cases of people who were struggling to find an agent, and yet were exceptional writers - in both instances, their manuscripts started weakly then got rapidly and dramatically better a few pages in. Also, both authors were writing in somewhat obscure subgenres, where the number of lists dealing in that sort of thing are limited.

For almost all the unpublished authors I've read over the years, the answer to 'how do I get published?' is, very simply, 'write better'. The vast majority of rejected writers don't get published because they're not good enough. For some reason this simple truth seems to make a certain subset of aspiring writers apoplectic with rage. 'No!' they bellow. 'It's because dipshits like YOU refuse to give me the secret password that will get me past the gatekeeper! What do you mean, "write better"? What sort of trite bullshit is that? Agents send my work back with a standard rejection letter! That means they can't possibly have read my masterpiece! How dare you insist I "write better", you smug gobshite! I'll fuck you in half!'

These are the people who nod with credulous glee when told that the publishing industry is a clique-ridden clusterfuck that genuine talent will never penetrate. These are the people who end up forking out thousands of pounds to self-publishing companies, companies who perpetuate these myths because they stand to profit. These are the people who will always be a bit rubbish.

The novel I spent years working on and then trying to sell? It didn't fail because of a global conspiracy. Nobody published it because it was a bit mediocre. Dude. Write better. That's it. That's the secret, you irredeemable bellend.

So anyway, here's the full original piece in all its discursive, flabby glory:

How To Get A Book Deal

When I went undercover at the London Book Fair, posing as CEO of Fabulous Books Inc, an aspiring author gave me the lowdown on how to get published:

‘I sent my manuscript to agents and editors but I just got it returned. It’s very difficult to get anything read. The way the modern industry works, it’s all about self-promotion. The thing is, you’re asking people to put their money into your work. So to convince them you’ve got to show that you know how to sell a novel, so they know they’ll get their money back.’

Dressed in a pinstripe suit, with a red silk handkerchief stuffed into his breast pocket and cherry-red braces, he was walking from stall to stall, handing editors copies of his children’s book. While in India, he had paid to have over 2000 copies printed. The cover was drawn in pencil crayon.

‘This is Phase Two of promotion,’ he explained. ‘I’ve been posting copies through the letterboxes of people in the neighbourhood.’

‘What, friends?’

‘No, just, you know... local letterboxes.’

Imagination is supposed to be one of a writer’s strong suits, but ever since I was a child and a teacher first asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I said: ‘Someone who writes stories,’ I never managed to think of a better reply. Back in school, a group of kids could answer ‘nurse’, ‘train driver’, ‘builder’, ‘inventor’, and you’d never hear: ‘Very good – except you Johnny. Inventor? Are you mental? That’s not even a real job. I mean Jesus Christ. Go and stand by the coat rack.’ We were encouraged to dream. Learning what was and wasn’t feasible would come later in a series of informal realisations, by which time we would be so off our faces on burgeoning hormones that our only aspiration for the future was that, one day, we would get to squeeze a breast.

If you want to be a footballer, or a heart surgeon, or an astronaut, there are clear prerequisites and cut-off points – before you proceed you must acquire such-and-such a qualification, if you haven’t achieved such-and-such by the age of 20 your chances of a career are zero. By stark contrast, becoming a professional author calls for a highly subjective skillset, recognises no age limit, and can even co-exist alongside other jobs. Obviously I’m not advocating some Logan’s Run style cull of older writers – my point is that, with most other vocations (including mother), there comes a stage where you can say: ‘well, it was a pretty dream, but it’s impossible now,’ and finally let go, safe in the knowledge that no amount of hairshirty exertions will ever be enough.

Most people who put pen to paper and attempt a book are perfectly aware of the horrendous odds they face, but becoming a novelist has little to no start up costs, and offers theoretically limitless profits. Anybody – including you – could be plucked from the doldrums of their shabby, average job and hoisted into a life of status, meaning, and comfort. Knowingly being on the wrong side of probability doesn’t stop thousands of people buying scratchcards every week. A lottery ticket’s value doesn’t come from an expected return on one’s investment – what you’re buying is a tiny, white hot nugget of hope, that you get to carry around with you, drawing warmth from it until your numbers come in dud.

For all the supposed allure of the distant finish line, in my experience, writing a novel is a long, lonely path, lined with signposts pointing in contradictory directions. It’s like trying to unclog your drains by yourself. You spend countless miserable hours alone, elbow deep in your own excrement, and at the end of it all, you don’t get published.

Magical thinking thrives in unpredictable environments. Even for industry stalwarts, the dense mesh of variables that governs whether a book sells in barrowloads or slumps into ignominious obscurity makes publishing a baffling business – which, of course, is part of its attraction. There are no control groups to test successes or failures against, meaning that editors tend to rely on trend-chasing and hunches, garlanding the process with statistics to lend it a spurious air of scientific rigour. As Mark Le Fanu, General Secretary of the Society of Authors, told me somewhat ruefully: ‘The fact is, for almost everyone involved, it’s a very unpredictable, tricky industry.’

It shouldn’t be surprising then, that to the uninitiated would-be writer, the book industry can seem variously like a glamorous dream factory, an unfeeling monolith honeycombed with toff cabals, and a kind of clapped-out zeppelin piloted by monkeys that randomly distributes food parcels. You find yourself fiending for guidance, and there is no shortage of pundits, hucksters and gurus all willing to sell you a map that shows the one true route through the labyrinth.

The fact is, there is no one-size-fits-all prescription for getting published. What we refer to as ‘the publishing industry’ is a whole stir-fry of different companies with different agendas and different end-products, many competing with each other over a shrinking consumer base. Books end up on publishers’ lists through a variety of processes, and the only general advice possible is to embed yourself as deep as you can in the belly of the beast, then use every means at your disposal to get your work read by the people with their hands on the purse strings. Of course, this policy presumes that you have spent years honing your craft, know your market, and have produced a manuscript that showcases your skills firing on all cylinders. Yes, the occasional purblind idiot may blunder across the minefield unscathed, but most will get blown to smithereens. Think of talent as your insurance policy.

My friends took a variety of routes to publication. One entered a children’s writing competition with a novel he’d written in a week, came runner-up, and was offered an advance five times that of the winner. Another came up with the proposal for his first book on a single side of A4 the night before he was due to have a meeting with a publisher, who promptly accepted. Two got to know their editor socially, bandied around some ideas, wrote a sample and pitch, then wrote the rest on acceptance. One spent four years studying creative writing at university, won a writing award, attracted an agent, finished his first novel, then had his agent sell it off in an auction between publishers.

As for me, I spent years working on an elaborate Fantasy novel that didn’t quite hang together, then lost my job, split up with my girlfriend, moved back in with my parents, and had a nervous breakdown. For the next 18 months, I watched as my best mates started achieving things that, just a couple of years before, were nothing but whimsical fantasies. I played video games, ate breakfast at two in the afternoon, and listened to my recently retired dad shuffling round the house like Marley’s Ghost. Eventually, partly at the behest of my therapist, I began to write about what I was going through – the tight knot of jealousy in my stomach, my heart-to-heart chats with my father. Writing about my feelings spurred me into action – stupid, ill-conceived action, mostly – which in turn gave me more to write about, until soon I’d wrestled some of my darkest demons and decided that I could live without the glory of being ‘someone who writes stories’. At which point I showed what I’d written to an agent, who showed it to a publisher, who said: ‘no this is self-indulgent flatus I will not give you money for it’, and then my agent kept on showing it to publishers until one said: ‘this is very good I will give you money for it’.

Simple.

And apparently useless as a practical model for getting your magnum opus out of your desk drawer and onto the bookshelves of homes all round the country. Except, maybe it isn’t.

Tenacity and flexibility make a formidable team. Take pleasure in creative failure – it’s a sign you’re pushing yourself – but learn from it too. I had to bash my head against a brick wall several times before I thought: ‘Hey. Maybe I should change direction!’ Getting published isn’t a matter of pushing books through strangers’ letterboxes – it’s about practising until you’re really good, then persevering until you’re really lucky.

//BOXOUT
HOW NOT TO GET PUBLISHED
1. Don’t dilute your vision by reading others’ work. Especially avoid new genres and forms.
2. Never lose faith in your original draft. To edit is to scorn your infallible muse.
3. Submit your work with as much supporting material as possible. Self-portraits in green crayon scream ‘I am creative’.
4. Approach editors somewhere they could not reasonably be expecting to field submissions. This will catch them off-guard and you will be more likely to negotiate a favourable deal.
5. Bear in mind that the Writers’ Handbook and Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook are both produced by publishers, and are therefore biased. Ignore them.

How To Get A Book Deal

So, I've got a little article in The Independent today. Annoyingly, some doltish sub-editor went in, cut out several important sections and changed the box-out at the end. Originally, they emailed and said 'oh, and I thought it would be rather amusing if Tim wrote a tongue-in-cheek 5 steps on "How Not To Get Published"', which I duly did. I wrote them in a deliberately pretentious, arty-farty voice because, you know, that was kind of the joke. For example, Number 5 was 'The Writers' Handbook and Writers' and Artists' Yearbook are produced by publishers, and are therefore biased. Ignore them.' This got changed to: '5. The Writers' Handbook and Writers' and Artists' Yearbook are both produced by publishers. Ignore them at your peril.'

They're saying that's my suggestion for what not to do? Oh pillockish Indy and your cash-strapped knee-jerk hackery! Did it not occur to you that I might mind your chopping my article to bits then printing it under my name without asking? Grr.

In better news, we did the London launch of We Can't All Be Astronauts last night in Soho, at Salena Godden's Book Club Boutique. Joe Dunthorne, Ross Sutherland and Steve Aylett all did brilliant readings and I met up with people I haven't seen in ages. Copious, grovelling sackfuls of thanks to everybody who took the time to come down. I felt very flattered and special and basically great about myself and all my friends. If you were there, thanks very much and I hope you enjoyed it. Also, you have very good taste and you're cool.

We Can't All Be Astronauts - Review

So, We Can't All Be Astronauts got reviewed on a blog called Geek Pie - and it sounds like they liked it.

They call it a 'brutally honest, hilarious and engaging memoir', and describe it as 'the best possible tool for any budding writer or someone wanting an insight into the creative process'. Um, I'm not sure that I'd go that far, but thanks! I'm really flattered and I'm glad that they felt they got something useful out of it. My favourite books are ones that help me to see some part of my life, large or small, in a new way, so I hope that Astronauts manages to do that for readers too.

Anyway, I'm just chuffed to get such a positive review - it even managed to make calling me 'self-obsessed, precious and arrogant' sound like a ringing endorsement! If you'd like a copy of We Can't All Be Astronauts of your very own, or if you know any aspiring writers who might enjoy laughing at misfortune, seething jealousy and self-aggrandisement, you can always pre-order a copy here. The release date is Thursday 4th June. The Norwich launch is on Friday 5th June, and the London launch is on Monday the 8th. Come along!

We Can't All Be Astronauts - Extract and Competition

Oooooh! Guess what space cadets?

Ugh. Okay, that made me a little bit sick in my mouth. Note to self: don't use chipper wankerisms like 'space cadets' ever, ever again.

So, in any case, hello undifferentiated morass. With just over a month to go, there's a short sneak preview from We Can't All Be Astronauts up online, using Ebury's pretty funky Flash reader gizmo. Have a peep here. You could even go ahead and preorder here.

It's up there to help promote a contest we're running in conjunction with the Bookseller. It's a writing competition with a twist - we're looking for entries from people who work in bookstores. I reckon there must be a whole host of diligent, well-read bookshop staff who are also keen writers in their spare time, and this is a great chance to recognise their talent. It's also a great chance for me to feel like some smug, philanthropic industrialist 'giving back to the community', even though my book's not even out yet. So seriously, if you work in a bookshop or you know a writer who does, get them to go here. You'll be flattering my fragile - but very real - ego, and putting them on to a nice opportunity to get some well-deserved recognition.

We Can't All Be Astronauts - Launch Parties

Oh look. It's me with my ridiculous pudgy face, gazing down like a proud father on my very first book. It's all downhill from here. Thirty years from now, that book will keep a tattered copy of this photo in its shirt pocket, taking it out between slugs of bourbon to stare at my face with a mixture of longing and rage. Why weren't you there for me, Dad? Why didn't you care?

So. Look, there are two launch events to celebrate the fact that We Can't All Be Astronauts hasn't been smothered in its crib, one at Borders bookshop in Norwich on Friday June 5 starting 5:30pm, and one at the Book Club Boutique in London on Monday June 8 starting 7pm. You can find details for the Norwich launch here, and details for the London launch here.

I don't want to gush like a gauche wazzock, but I'm really looking forward to both, because I've managed to cobble together an awesome support line-up out of people who appear in the book. The Norwich launch has support from John Osborne, ('Osborne is this season's hot property' - Horncastle News) whose first book, Radio Head, about British radio, is due out next month (and which you can pre-order here - go on, it's one of those rare, genuinely good reads) and also from mythic poetry godfather Yanny Mac, who you may remember from his interview here - one of the most popular I've done! Afterwards, we'll all head out to the pub and lark around as if we've forgotten we're just temporarily sentient aggregations of meat that will rot back into the soil, every memory and trace of our identities completely, irrevocably obliterated. The London launch has support from my two cohorts from the recent Found In Translation tour, poet Ross Sutherland, whose first collection is called Things To Do Before You Leave Town, and author and poet Joe Dunthorne, whose acclaimed first novel, Submarine, is out in paperback from Hamish Hamilton. Completing the line-up is Steve Aylett, prolific, award-winning author of novels such as Slaughtermatic, Lint, Shamanspace, Dummyland, and many more. I know it sounds ludicrously hyperbolic, but now I think about it, you've basically got one of the UK's best poets and two of the UK's most talented novelists there... plus me. Then afterwards there's music and DJs and drinking til midnight!

The mental thing is, both nights are free. And everyone will have books available for signing. If you're a reader of this blog, you are cordially invited. We'd love to see you there. Let's meet up and talk about hundreds of things. I only get to have a debut book launch once. The rest of my life will be a dreary anticlimax. Please - catch me on the upswing, eh?

But Not *All* Of Us, All At The Same Time, Surely?

Today, the guy behind the counter in my local Tesco, a slightly podgy Indian chap with a big boil on the side of his nose, caught sight of one of my badges.

He frowned. 'Why you say... We can't all be astronauts?' He pointed at the big blue badge, with the title of my soon-to-be-actually-published-and-real-book on it. His face broke into a beaming smile. 'Because we can! We can!'

'Well... not all simultaneously,' I said.

'Yes we can!' the man retorted, nodding with rare vigor. 'Of course we can!'

I picked up the bag containing my microwavable lasagne. 'Not everyone in the world at once.'

The man behind the till threw his head back and laughed.

For some reason, the encounter really cheered me up. All the practical limitations in the world seemed a little flimsy in the light of that laugh. I mean, sure, it might be simply that he's an imbecile, who could spend many hours in happy enthrallment at a hen hidden beneath a dishcloth, but still. My life needs more gentle optimism and less 'yeah but's.

(cartoon courtesy of Moe)

An Inappropriate Time For Ham

After yesterday's second We Can't All Be Astronauts comic by Line And A Dot, I just happened to be browsing through some of (MS Paint Adventures creator) Andrew Hussie's other web comics, when I stumbled across a couple of awesome, deceptively simple single-premise series that made me chortle like the mentally subnormal.

'Inappropriate Time For Ham' is exactly what it sounds like - a series of cartoon depictions of times when ham is inappropriate.



And my personal favourite (as if you care, you glib bastards):


The second series is called 'A Steep Price For Pie', and... well, you'll get the idea.






You can see more here. I suppose one of the reasons I like these is that I can imagine the conversation that spawned them. You know, one of those times where you're chatting in the bar with your mates, and you hit upon a rich comedy seam, and everybody starts riffing off it, and you're all pissing yourselves laughing. I just get the impression he was sniggering just making these up. And once you've got the premise, you can really go to town. It's like when you come up with a great conceit for a list poem, and you spend the next couple of hours just brainstorming every single iteration of the idea: 'Right, so in this poem I've made a crazy wish, and my mouth is now an anus and my anus is now a gun? What would be the hilarious consequences of that?' I'm now busily imagining comics in which not everyone gets to be an astronaut. I daresay I'll put my infantile drawing abilities into practice sooner or later, and commit some to this here blog. Just you wait.

We Can't All Be Astronauts - The Official Comic #2

Hooray! Line And A Dot has released a second nose-tingling installment of We Can't All Be Astronauts, the graphic novel adaptation (the text version of which is TOTALLY available to pre-order on Amazon!). Click on the pic below for a bigger image, and click here for part one.