On a writing routine.

This morning I finished the fourth edit of Gregor. There were some times when I wasn’t sure, that I didn’t like it so much, but I’m happy with it now. I think? Am I happy with it?

I’m still reading Barthelme. I read a bit each morning before I get going. I guess it puts me in the right frame of mind.

I’m aware other writers do that. I read Rupert Thomson has Flannery O’Connor next to him. I’ve got her collected stories too. I’ve got an awful lot of short story collections. It goes with the territory. Be a short story writer, read short stories.

When I’m writing something I usually have a mood board. This is the one for my snooker book.

Etgar Keret

Kick the Latch

Everything Like Before

Flesh Szaly

Back in the Day

Sam Pink

The Night Always Wins

Willy Vlautin. Don’t Skip Out On Me. And The Horse

The Lonely Hearts Club

Micky Supreme

As if

I didn’t do it for this short story collection I’m writing. But that’s because it came out of the blue. But all the stories are a homage to other writers. Gregor, which I’m working on is clearly Kafka. Metamorphosis was my first Kafka. I listened to the audiobook a couple of weeks ago. Not bad Franz!

Thank to this short story collection that has hit me out of the blue like a tank of dolphins my snooker book is on hold. It’s the World Snooker Championship right now. Wu Yize, a 22 year Chinese player is on my TV screen right now in the final.

My snooker book is not about such wunderkind. Instead it is the arse-end of the circuit set over one day in an out of season Welsh resort. In honour of the World Championship here are the first paragraphs:

Barnacle had never forgotten what his dad said to him when he won his first competition at the Butlin’s holiday camp in Blackpool when he was just nine years old, keep this up son and you’ll have all the glamour in the world, all the girls you want and a posh house in Monte Carlo. You just see if you don’t!

    Some twenty years later Barnacle opened his eyes and surveyed the cheap fittings of the hotel room, the flatscreen tv fixed above a narrow ledge containing tubes of Nescafe and individual sachets of tea sticking out of a disposable plastic cup, the alcove where you could hang your clothes on the hangers fixed to the rail so the hangers couldn’t be stolen, the waste bin overflowing with the cans he and Talbot had sat drinking from, knee to knee on their narrow twin beds before they had fallen drunkenly asleep. 

    Barnacle was currently ranked number forty-nine in the world but sixty-seven on the one year list and if he didn’t have a good run here then he would be off the tour and back to Cue School. 

I want to finish the snooker book and the next short one Jet Set Willy by the time I’m 60. I’m 55 now.

This morning I woke at 0530. The first thing in my head was Gregor. I was excited to get back to the fourth edit as I was near the end. I hadn’t looked at it since 10am the day before. May the 4th be with you, I told myself.

If this substack is about writing advice then all the above is mine. I await the thousand plus likes and shares. But of course I won’t be taken seriously.

I see Murakami’s routine has been talked about again. How he writes every day. Gets up at 4am. Writes for 4 hours. Runs 10km.

Well hold my beer Murakami. I work 7 days in a row in an office. Do 69 hours. Cycle every day to work and back. Cycle to walk my dogs in my lunch break. And still write.

Write and write.