Sunny Weather

IT'S BEEN BLAZING SUMMER for weeks here in good old London Town. My mood matches the weather ~ again. I seem to spend half the time getting very easily wound up and angry. But then I'm awake most of the night through, too excited and full of ideas to sleep. Yes, unfortunately most of the ideas seem to need £100,000s if not £1 millions to put into operation (yes ~ glossy magazine publishing, again). When I was younger (and before the advent of digital TV) I lived a segment of my life through such publications: The Face, i-D, Vanity Fair and the (London) Sunday Times magazines being particular favourites. The first two of these were what you'd call "lifestyle magazines". They looked like music mags, but their insides were festooned with articles on all manner of subjects that interested me. The i-D or Face reader didn't aspire to wealth or social status and wasn't a slavish follower of fashion. Rather, they liked to follow new cultural trends from the cutting edge.

The Face went out of print in 2004, by which point I had long stopped reading it. Which is weird. Only a few years before, I knew not just what day but what time it came out (11am-1pm) and my copies were covered in smudgemarks, from having been pored over while the ink was still wet.. i-D was relaunched as a fash mag and I'm not interested in clothes at all. Vanity Fair I do still read, but only when I'm in the mood for journalism about rich establishment figures who hate each other (love that kind of crap!) Judging by the ads you'd think VF was a women's magazine, but most months 75% or more of the articles are by men. I love their visual style. I'd like to do a course in magazine layout... There's more to it than meets the eye! ...

... when I get these ideas I'm so glad I stayed based in London.

But, being still addicted to methadone, and drained of funds I'm really trying to focus on doing what I can do now ~ and that means writing. After all, you only need a few pens and a lot of paper to write a book. I'm writing for kiddies, so the book is going to be mercifully short. I'm still at the planning stage ~ I need to know vaguely where the story's going before I commit pen to paper, as I hate doing major surgery on the text (eg where a character has to be completely excised or the entire flow of the plot altered). I did learn something from my failed attempts at novel-writing, and that is to keep any book you write as simple as possible. Adding one or two important characters can literally double the length, because you have to give their reasoning, reactions etc etc. Obviously I'm hoping for a 10,000,000 copy bestseller (yeah right ~ but this book really IS for kids. No wizards. And I can't imagine grown-ups reading it on the tube). But hey, if I get it right then Disney, Dreamworks and co are going to piss their pants when they read it... and that could make me a buck or two ~ ha ha!

You know it would be nice to have a job that pays the rent and leaves some cash left over to buy the stuff I actually want ~ rather than what's cheapest (as I've done all my life). If I can't earn a proper living writing, then I have decided to go into publishing. I think I'd make a great editor. Or literary agent, for that matter. Often the business deals behind books (not to mention films, records, TV shows etc) are far more interesting to me than the boring stories inside their covers (or the tunes on the discs, as the case may be...) ~~ know what I mean..??

Hey I've just found out the full moon was eight days ago. No wonder I'm feeling good. I seem to get unusually restless just after full moon has passed, and sometimes that kicks me off into a "high" or sorts... A high from the surging tides of my mysterious brain... the kind of high you don't have to pay for!

As I was telling the duty methadone script giver-outer down the clinic the other day, if everybody who was bipolar left the media and entertainment industries, they would collapse. Drugs are particularly rife in those fields. For some reason, creative people seem particularly prone to addiction. And bipolar people are particularly likely to be unusually creative. If I did get an interview for a decent job (or an internship: obviously I'm thinking of starting with that) then I've decided just to be straight with them. Being a recovering drug addict who's clean is nothing at all to be ashamed of. + it does explain the glaring gap in my CV far better than any lie could do. (Lying about having worked off the record somehow for nearly two decades would make it look like I had a singular lack of ambition ("why is he suddenly so interested in a career in publishing now..?" they'd ask themselves...)

Hmmm... it's getting late and the brand new series of Prisoner Cell Block H (titled "Wentworth Prison") is coming on channel 5 in the hour... must rush! Thank y'all for the comments on Friday 23 August's post... must dash.  

Byeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!

ps all this talk about working in publishing and  I haven't time to read over my own writing before posting... ukh well I hope it's ok... that's what internet cafés do to ya!

pps bloody madonna can't delete her byeeeeeeeee