Andrew Chapman An Authors Life, The Other Stuff, Uncategorized

When Kids Ruled the World

I had a terrible realisation recently. I think I might be 11. And there’s a good chance you are too.  Let me explain. I remember my dad when he was in his thirties, as I am now. And I remember, very distinctly, that he was a proper grown up. He knew what he was doing. He had a business and a mortgage, he took us on holidays, could fix anything that broke. There was no sense that he was pretending to be an adult. I do not feel like that.

I remember when I was 11 and my birthday was coming up and I thought “When I’m twelve I won’t be a kid anymore.” And then nothing changed. And then my 16th birthday came up and I thought, “Finally I’ll be an adult.” I turned 16 and nothing happened. Soon I was 18. I felt the same. Now I’m 32 and wondering at what point some internal thing will click into adult mode and I no longer find fart jokes funny. Maybe it will be when I turn 40. I am still an 11 year old waiting to grow up.

I have no idea how the whole grown up thing works. From the outside looking in I probably seem like a fully functioning adult. I’m a dad, and I’m managing to parent well enough, I have a job and pay my bills, but secretly I have no idea what I’m doing. And then I thought, what if everyone else is secretly 11 too and we’re all just pretending at being an adult? What if our leaders are secretly running the country with no fucking idea what they’re doing? It would explain a lot.

And then I saw this picture on the front page of the Guardian newspaper of Theresa May and Michael Gove and I thought, “Shit! They’re 11!” God help us all.

20160728_233845

Further evidence –

Gove_713317c102465109RestrictedMichaelGoveNEWS-large_trans++eo_i_u9APj8RuoebjoAHt0k9u7HhRJvuo-ZLenGRumATheresa-May  gove-may1402327762670_wps_3_From_the_left_Home_SecretBoris-JohnsonGeorge-OsbourneObama-Crazy2770E34200000578-0-image-m-49_142871285569128166-unaxzb

I rest my case.

 

Andrew Chapman An Authors Life, Words and Writers

And should not be at the beginning of this sentence.

StrunkAndPtah

I don’t know what the key to this whole writing thing is. I’ve spent the last fifteen years trying to find out. I must have read fifty books on the subject. I think maybe its clarity. So much writing is just filler, or confusing sentence structures.

It becomes a kind of music. I know I break some grammatical standards but hopefully not in a way that jars. There is no sensible reason for a sentence to not start with and. Or begin with or. Here is some dialogue between two students whispering to each other in an English lesson –

“Why can’t a sentence start with and?”

“Because she said so. And maybe she’s right. Fuck it. I don’t know. And anyway, that’s not how we speak so why write like that?”

“But what if we lose marks by writing realistically.”

“You shouldn’t start a sentence with but,” says the Teacher, overhearing the conversation.

“Why?” says the boy.

“Because that is the rule.”

“You shouldn’t start a sentence with because,” says the boy, “It’s a subordinate conjunction that requires more than one clause.”

“I’m glad you’ve been paying attention,” says the teacher, “but my first clause was in the sentence you interrupted when I said; ‘You shouldn’t start a sentence with but’.”

“This is all very confusing,” says a drunk man stumbling into the classroom by accident.

“Can I help you sir?” says the teacher.

“None of this is real,” says the drunk.

Why did I write that in the present tense? The second most difficult tense for a reader after the second tense. I’ve never written in the second tense before. I think I’ll give it a go;

               You walk into the gents at the pub. A man by the urinal is touching   himself inappropriately. You enter the cubical with the broken lock. You drunkenly undo your trousers and let them fall to the ground. You sit down and pee. You would have pissed at the urinal if it wasn’t for that masturbating man. Why did you sit down anyway? Too drunk to stand. You focus on a round convex lens on the back of the cubical door and think to yourself, why is there a camera in here? And decide it’s time to stop drinking in this particular watering hole.

Good. That was fun. You know, as these blog posts get further down the page the empty beer can count on my desk gets greater. It’s no wonder I lose focus.

Andrew Chapman An Authors Life, Poetry, Words and Writers

The Drinker’s Fallacy

Pub where Poet John Berryman (C) is talking to other customers. (Photo by Terrence Spencer/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

I might need to apologise in the morning, but…

 

Is this a poem? –

 

I stood in my kitchen staring at the floor,

so many gatherings happened here,

and now I am hungry

and the kitchen is empty.

 

Or just a sentence that has fallen down a stair case? Splitting a sentence up over several lines does not make a poem.

The above is original but it is an example of a lot of stuff that is out there at the moment. It is why I have failed to enjoy poetry when I have tried. I have, for some unknown reason to myself (as I am a novelist at heart), started writing the stuff. I don’t think poetry needs to sit in the romantic teenage angst corner of the literary world, but it is hard for the stoic amongst us to find our way in. I love words, and I think poetry is well suited to them, but the above is just a pointless cop-out.

There is a satisfying cadence to the English language that can be showcased with poetry. Breaking up sentences and pretending it is art is an insult to that. Write better.

 

 

 

Andrew Chapman An Authors Life, The Other Stuff, Words and Writers

The Obscene and Criminal Malice Inflicted by Time

End

You know when you lose your TV remote and it drives you crazy. You look everywhere. You search frantically, chucking the pillows off the couch and lifting it up to look underneath. You check under newspapers and lift up the rug. How can it have disappeared? It’s a TV remote! After looking everywhere you finally give up and sit down, defeated and dejected. After your internal tantrum has abated, after you’ve mentally blamed everyone and everything that could have caused it to vanish, including the cat, you finally calm down and look up at the TV. And there it is. Right in front of you, on the TV stand. Of course it is. It’s obvious now. The thing you were looking for was right there in front of you the whole time. For fuck sake.

I have that feeling. I have it all the time. The problem is, that moment of sitting back and finally finding it hasn’t come. I don’t even know what is missing.

It is that feeling that makes you want to travel. The urge to explore. You don’t know what it is you expect to find but you’ll be damned if you’re going to stop looking before you find it. But it’s not just that. And it’s not just travel. It’s everything. You don’t just want to explore new lands, you want to learn everything. You want to try everything. All the food. All the music. All the booze. All the knowledge. Time is being pulled from our veins with each passing minute. Aging us. Every day that passes, every second that tics, every Christmas that zooms past; we are being killed by the calendar, one day at a time. Fill those days before they are rudely taken from you.

You don’t have to pack up all your shit and spend the rest of your life travelling. That would be a form of hell for some. It is a feeling that surrounds everything. You wish you had learned how to play the piano when you were younger. You can buy a second-hand piano or keyboard for £20. Get one. Learn how to play it. You will love it. Want to write a book? It costs nothing. Just start typing. It doesn’t matter if you know what you want to write about. That will come. Just start slinging words together and see what happens.

People have no urgency. People don’t seem to want to do anything anymore. They are content dedicating their life to a career. Have a career, why not, I have one, get promoted, do good work, but be ready to put your foot down and leave work early to go to your kid’s school play. Let your job pay for the things you love. Don’t miss out on life so you can get more money. You want that money so you can have a better life so what is the point if you are giving up on life to get it?

I write because I’m going to look back tomorrow and release that yesterday was thirty years ago and I have left nothing solid to justify the wasted years. I write so I can trap time and keep it there.

Andrew Chapman An Authors Life, Poetry, The Other Stuff

The Vainglorious Abyss

The Hipsters are here. There’s no stopping them.

They are throw backs to beat poets who hate them.

The copycat brethren of false intelligence.

Hoodlums dressed like nerdy impersonate.

 

They stroll the poor towns they decorate with old art.

50s pin ups and 60s haircuts, they are the false smart.

“I am a canvas,” they say, “My life is poetry.”

Leave it to the useless to approve their own credulity.

 

Cult and fashion are not the flag of individuality,

You are confusing social grouping with vague sincerity.

Like mice convinced they own the maze of unique,

You are the Dumb that brow beats the meek.

 

You will not find wisdom in stylized polaroids.

Hipsters exist in a narcissists void.

Andrew Chapman An Authors Life, The Other Stuff, Words and Writers

10 Simple Steps to Getting Noticed on Wattpad

10 Simple Steps Cover

Step one

Write a book called, “10 Simple Steps to Getting Noticed on Wattpad.” (Like I did right here – https://www.wattpad.com/story/51458336 )

Step two

Use said book to give helpful information. Slyly mention your main book as an example. Just like I’m about to do in step three.

Step three

Have an excellent cover with a very funny sticker in the top right-hand corner (Here’s a good example of what I mean – https://www.wattpad.com/story/41481274-the-accidental-scoundrel )

Step four

Sell your soul. Here’s a helpful guide to get you started –

1) Put your book in a shoebox along with a lock of your own hair, some toenail clippings, and a picture of Hellen Mirren.

2) Go to the middle of a crossroads and bury the shoe box. (Depending on the type of road surface you may need a pneumatic drill and a fake stop sign, especially if you intend to do this at rush hour.)

3) Say the words, “Unbiwattpadio garnethme readerworms ignitio soulio.”

4) Wait.

5) Apologise to the traffic and go back home.

6) Consult a psychiatrist.

Step five

Consider packing the whole thing in.

Step six

Having consumed quite a lot of whisky remember how brilliant a writer you really are and get straight back on to Wattpad.

Step seven

Endlessly follow other authors and pretend to like their books so they will pretend to like yours in return.

Step eight

Wonder where exactly this staircase is leading to. Do you have an attic? Look back at the previous seven steps and try and remember exactly what it was you came up here for in the first place.

Step nine

Lean against metaphorical banister and call psychiatrist and say you’re having a metaphysical meltdown and could he please recommend alcohol as you think it would do a lot better than any time spent on a chaise longue. Remember that “chaise longue” is French for “long chair” and chuckle at how unsophisticated that particular piece of furniture now seems.

Step ten

Put your finger in your ear and wiggle it up and down. No really, try it. Doing it? It sounds just like Pac-Man doesn’t it?

Step eleven (damn, I’ve miscounted somehow)

I don’t know how to get noticed on Wattpad. It’s really hard, man. I’ve been on here for like 4 months and I’ve only got one vote. You are really asking the wrong person.

Thank you for reading. Now, go and read The Accidental Scoundrel and, if it makes you laugh, do please vote for it.

Oh, and – Step Twelve

Never directly ask for votes.

Andrew Chapman An Authors Life, The Other Stuff, Words and Writers

Comedy: the runt of the genre litter

I think there should be a movement in literature. Humour needs recognition. Movies, television, theatre, music, they all have a legitimate genre section. So why not literature? I went to my local branch of Waterstones to find something to tickle my funny bone. It’s not easy. Where is The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy? In the Sci-Fi section. Terry Pratchett? – Fantasy. P. G. Wodehouse? – general fiction. Dave Wong? – horror.

And the TV and Film version of the above? They are in the comedy section. And nobody frowns upon it. So why not books?

And it’s fine if you know the author you are looking for. But if you want to discover a new comedy writer you can’t do it. You can’t browse and leaf through the comedy on offer because they’ve all been dispersed randomly throughout the shop.

With television and film comedy is put with comedy regardless of the genre. You don’t need to hunt through the horror section to find Shaun of the Dead, or trawl through Sci-Fi to find Red Dwarf. They are all bundled together. “You want something funny to watch? Here it is,” say the nice people in DVD shops. But books? “We’re too proud to have a comedy genre. This is literature darling.”

There is a “humour” section in most book shops but sadly this is full with novelty books and joke collections. I want to go into a store, in the mood for a funny novel, and to be able to browse through authors I’ve never heard of. There are enough of us to warrant it.

Or am I just being a pedant? What do you think?

Andrew Chapman An Authors Life, Short Stories

The Last Days of Flat L, Percy Road (short story)

Last Days CoverThere’s no point in questioning it anymore. Life has got weird, that’s all there is to it. I’m trapped in my flat. I blame Amazon. That damn website. You can buy anything on there. I bought a lock picking kit and I’ve been practising. Now I’m fucked.

What am I supposed to do, phone the estate agent and ask them to free me? What will I say? “I’ve broke into the flat just to see if I could and now I’ve fucked the lock. I can’t open it from the inside.” No. That won’t do. Time will fix things. Time always does. I should have practised sober. There’s always the window if things get desperate. I’m three floors up, in the loft, but I dropped my phone out of the window last week when I was smoking and that survived. If it comes to it I will jump. The phone doesn’t work now, sadly. Soon after the window incident I dropped it in the toilet and it had a fit and died. A lesson learned. I won’t try and escape through the toilet. God damn the world-wide abandonment of house phones! This could be sorted out with one call to my brother.

What would you do? I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m stuck here forever. I heard about a guy who got lost at sea for six months and he survived. I can survive here. If it comes to it I’ll eat the furniture. Maybe I’ll eat the Chinchilla. Luckily my hobby is writing. If my hobby was cycling I’d be screwed. I’d just have to sit here moping around, crying intermittently, and dreaming of the freedom of the bicycle. So this is it. Stuck forever with a cupboard full of dry pasta and a globe shaped bar full of liquor.

In a way it’s freeing. The idea of forced solitude can be daunting. But a writer is used to such things. It’s exciting for us. It gives us a chance to finally snub the procrastination that the outside world brings. If I was the sort of person that held any kind of respect for bills I would still have the internet. Then at least I could watch porn. And videos of goats screaming like men. Have you seen those videos? Goats and sheep. They are heaven and hell. Sheep are like living clouds and goats scream like the souls of tortured men are trapped within them.

Shit. I really am screwed. If it wasn’t for the fact I have a history of havoc I would bang on my front door and shout and wail until one of my neighbours hears me. But those bridges are smouldering at the bottom of a social canyon. If those bastards knew I was stuck in here they would evacuate the building and burn it to the ground. Finally they would be rid of that lunatic that lives in the attic, making their lives hell with his weird antics.

I should have never destroyed my TV. But the fucker had it coming. Have you watched the BBC recently? I rest my case. The Famous Grouse had convinced me that the 52 inches of high definition garbage that spews from the screen was destined for the grave. I had forgotten the fearsome looking gun I keep in my underwear draw was only a starter pistol. It only fires blanks. I stood just a foot away from the screen and blasted it three times but the fucker carried on unaffected by my onslaught. I chucked the gun into the bathroom and it smashed a corner off the sink. Yeah, the bathroom is in throwing distance of the lounge, that’s the kind of place I live in.

I lit a cigarette and paced around in front of my couch. Glaring at the incessant nonsense dancing around the screen trying to think how TVs are normally sent to the grave. How do you kill these things? What would Sarah Connor do? I picked up the TV and dragged it away from the stand. The wires held on momentarily but gave way to my frantic pull. But the fucker wasn’t going to die easily. It whipped up its plug and pulled my record player off its stand with it. It hit the ground and a bootleg Bob Dylan record came down with it and smashed to pieces.

So here I stand. Surrounded by smashed vinyl with only the TV to blame. Will it not stop until all art has been destroyed?

Now the TV is really going to get it. I decide to drown the fucker. I put the TV in the bath and piss on it. I turn on the taps and return to the couch. The wall where the TV used to be seems weirdly vacant. I stare at it. I top up my glass with whisky and roll a cigarette. Shit. How long have I been trapped here? An hour? And things have already gone to shit. There must be a better way.

I figure I better sleep on it. Tomorrow will bring a solution and hopefully sanity.

***

I wake up on the couch. I think I was crying in my sleep. My feet are wet. Nothing brings you to action like waking up with your feet in water. I’m three floors up and my shoes are floating across the lounge. Is this it? Has the world finally ended? I spring from the couch and look out of the window. The street below is dry. Just me then. The Gods have decided my time has come. Bring on the flood.

By the time I realise this isn’t God’s wrath but the revenge of a TV in a wet grave, it’s too late for preventative action. I run through the flat to the bathroom, the bottom of my dressing gown rippling through the lake as I go. I turn off the taps and pull out the plug. Then things really start going bad. The floor starts making a creaking sound. On the street outside the sound of many sirens can be heard screeching to a halt in front of the house. I edge backwards out of the bathroom just as the floor gives way and I watch the bath, full of TV and water, vanish into the flat below. The house shakes with the impact. Now someone is banging on my door.

“Are you alright in there? You need to get out of the house, the ceilings are falling in. What have you done?”

The water is rushing past my feet into the hole where the bath used to be. I quietly walk back into the lounge and considered my options. I open a bottle of whisky and drink a few swigs. Then there is a new sound. Metal on glass. I look over at the window. A ladder has been placed against it. I run over and pull the blind down. A few minutes later someone is knocking.

“Sir, you need to open the window.”

I keep quiet.

The window is smashed inwards and a man in a fireman’s helmet starts climbing in to my flat.

“What do you want from me?!” I shout, frantically searching for my gun.

“Sir, calm down. You need to come with me.”

I run to the bathroom remembering I chucked the gun in there and find it balancing on the edge of the hole. I pick it up. In the flat below an old woman is staring up at me giving me the finger. Bitch. I run back in the lounge and aim at the man. I fire.

“Christ! What the hell are you doing?” shouts the man, covering his head.

“Protecting myself!”

“I’m a fucking fireman! I’m trying to help you.”

I drop the gun and run for the front door. Maybe the lock has fixed itself? I hear his footsteps running up behind me and before I have time to escape I’m slammed into the door and wrestled to the ground.

***

The cells in the local police station smell like hamster cages. God damn my bad luck. None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for Amazon. I’ll be writing a letter of complaint.

The end.

Andrew Chapman An Authors Life, Words and Writers

Hermes, the Forgotten Blog Master

Hermes

Basic things seem unbelievable when I transpose them into prose. How can I possibly be believed when life is so absurd?

All I want to do is recount my life. This is impossible. Even if nothing worthwhile has happened it still seems strange and unusual. I defy you to write about your day without seeming like some white lie is forming the basis of your humour. If you do manage to write about your day and find it mundane and humourless (and so proving me wrong) then you have failed to live a day worth taking note of.

Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe I create a situation knowing my actions can lead to absurdity. I don’t know anymore. I remember hearing a stand-up comedian trying to explain with all seriousness this bizarre thing that had happened to him and he said, “I used to allow things like this to happen, maybe I encouraged it. I knew, no matter how weird things got, after the danger had passed I would have a good story to tell. And if it went bad I could trust on my wit to get me out of it. And if not my wit I could say, ‘Hey, I’m a writer, this will all end up in a book someday. Don’t kill me.’” Or something like that. That’s my version of what I heard anyway. Maybe I made the whole thing up. I think I did. It still holds true.

Weirdness happens naturally. It is up to the writer to capture it for prosperity. Life is weird. Get used to it. Embrace it. Chase it through the normality and wrestle it to the ground. You will learn so much more through your mad moments than you will through your sane ones. Sane ones pass by like a series of red crosses on a fridge calendar.

It is not routine that we really crave. It is the broken routine that excites us. It is the moments when you look back at that calendar and see that a red cross is missing. What happened to that day? You weren’t there to cross it out that’s for sure.

If you’ve managed to get this far through this post then good for you. I’ve had a lot to drink and it is entirely possible that the above will turn out to be a gibberish series of incoherencies. If that is the case I will write another blog post tomorrow explaining how late it was and that it’s a miracle the laptop survived the night. Violence follows inane drunkenality. (Take note! Drunkenality is a new word, write it down and inform the authorities).

Tomorrow I will have had some sleep and some coffee. I will be in control of my intelligence. I will no-doubt mistrust my drunken instincts to write such rambling nonsense. Or maybe truth lies somewhere in the whisky sodden words of the writer trapped in his natural habitat.

See him. The writer. There he is. In his cage. He is drunk. He has a cigarette hanging from his mouth. There is no plot in his mind. There is no character waiting to be created. There is only the page and his incessant nonsense.

Goodnight. Farewell. It is up to Hermes, the Greek god of wit, literature, and poetry, to determine if these words are worthy of an inconsequential blog post.

Andrew Chapman An Authors Life, Writers on Video

The Book Trailer

Book trailers. I hear that’s the new thing. “Make a book trailer,” they say, “People will watch it and then you’ll be famous. Everyone will buy your book because they saw a video of it. It’s all about getting the word out.”

There used to be a time when all a writer had to be able to do is write. That was it. Nothing more was really expected of them. Now your abilities at marketing and promotion outweigh the necessity to write a good book. You must be a writer, an advertiser, a director, and a blog forum socialite. You must be shallow. I’m not very good at self-promotion. I made an advert though. You can watch it in a sec, it’s just below these words. Before you do though, let me apologise for the lack of effort I put in to making the advert. You see, my daughter was making a video for her YouTube channel and when she was done she left the camera out. So I thought, hey, I know, I’ll make a trailer! So I pressed record, sat down, and went for it. There was no real thought or idea behind what I was going to do. But now it is done. Tripping the Night Fantastic has its very own commercial. Yay.