Everyone hates Comic-Sans MS

Split personality

I write like

Chuck Palahniuk

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

A small sample of my current writing is like that of Chuck Palahniuk. Mmmm.

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

But the whole first chapter is more like David Foster Wallace. Blimey.

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

More bizzaro - my short story in Sushirexia is like...Stephen King? That doesn't seem possible. I like how he writes about writing, but, um. Really?

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Is my short story in New Writing Scotland in somewhat in the style of Lovecraft? Beats me.

But the two short stories I've edited over the last month?

I write like
William Shakespeare

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

HOLY SHIT! I knew it. Finally, some confirmation. The other story?..

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Oh balls.

Yes, it's time for time-wasting tool of dubious value of the day - I Write Like -

Check what famous writer you write like with this statistical analysis tool, which analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them to those of the famous writers.

Any text in English will do: your latest blog post, journal entry, comment, chapter of your unfinished book, etc. For reliable results paste at least a few paragraphs (not tweets).

First Impressions

I got some book-cover colour-coordinated flowers! And they were bejewelled with sparkling butterflies!

I had a very nice quick trip up North to see Sushirexia launched last week. It was lovely to have a chat with Elizabeth and Zoe, who teach the MLitt course at Glasgow University, as well as to hear people far more erudite than myself read their works aloud. I charmed the crowd in my usual manner by speaking to no-one and scuttling off to get a curry before I was forced to do anything involving networking.

Now.

A small confession: I haven't read the book yet.

I started the book, I did - within seconds of ripping open the delivery from thebookdepsitory. When the book truck rolls up I'm like a compulsive eater with a new sack of donuts (especially as I can't - without a super valid excuse - buy any books at all until I have a new job. Crappy but necessary rule of new life in Manchester No1.). The reason for my avoidance? The Preface, which includes such manic depressive gems as 'So this is the preface' and 'Unfortunately for you, dear reader, nothing particularly amusing occurred'. Blimey. I was also taken to a dark place by such miserable asides as 'we racked our brains for an inspiring theme (not as much fun as it sounds...)' and 'Presumably all the fun will come later'.

And all this on the first page. Bloody hell. I was so depressed after reading the Preface I haven't been capable of forcing myself to face the rest of the tome, even though I've got a story in there myself somewhere. Particularly because I've got a story in their somewhere - it's strange to think something written when I was a different person (a complex medical procedure ensued) a year and half ago, is now in print.

If I get past the Preface, I am sure it will be a good book! I am really sorry the editors had such a tough time making it, but they seem to have done a great job. It must have been seriously hard work.

I have an excellent non Preface related excuse for my non-reading, too - I am totally distracted by a new writing project. I'm off to Oxford tomorrow morning, for two whole days of research in the dreaming spires!

I've paused writing short stories for a while, and I'm loving it. I'm doing things differently. I think this move to Manchester has changed my writing patterns and goals.

I still love short stories though.

This blog about the Daily Routines of writers is distracting me from life. Is it possible to read the below about Flaubert and not titter (while simultaneously quietly wishing that you too had a whispering man servant named Narcisse)?:

Gustave Flaubert

Days were as unvaried as the notes of the cuckoo. Flaubert, a man of nocturnal habits, usually awoke at 10 a.m. and announced the event with his bell cord. Only then did people dare speak above a whisper. His valet, Narcisse, straightaway brought him water, filled his pipe, drew the curtains, and delivered the morning mail. Conversation with Mother, which took place in clouds of tobacco smoke particularly noxious to the migraine sufferer, preceded a very hot bath and a long, careful toilette involving the regular application of a tonic reputed to arrest hair loss. At 11 a.m. he entered the dining room, where Mme Flaubert; Liline; her English governess, Isabel Hutton; and very often Uncle Parain would have gathered. Unable to work well on a full stomach, he ate lightly, or what passed for such in the Flaubert household, meaning that his first meal consisted of eggs, vegetables, cheese or fruit, and a cup of cold chocolate. The family then lounged on the terrace, unless foul weather kept them indoors, or climbed a steep path through woods behind their espaliered kitchen garden to a glade dubbed La Mercure after the statue of Mercury that once stood there. Shaded by chestnut trees, near their hillside orchard, they would argue, joke, gossip, and watch vessels sail up and down the river. Another site of open-air refreshment was the eighteenth-century pavilion. After dinner, which generally lasted from seven to nine, dusk often found them there, looking out at moonlight flecking the water and fisherman casting their hoop nets for eel.

In June 1852, Flaubert told Louise Colet that he worked from 1 p.m. to 1 a.m.. A year later, when he assumed partial responsibility for Liline's education and gave her an hour or more of his time each day, he may not have put pen to paper at his large round writing table until two o'clock or later.

Frederick Brown, Flaubert: A Biography

My days will never be as unvaried as the notes of the cuckoo, no matter how hard I try.

I'm also in love with this article from the New Yorker in 1934, on Gertrude Stein:

Miss Stein has an outsize bathtub that was especially made for her. A staircase had to be taken out to install it. After her bath she puts on a huge wool bathrobe and writes for a while, but she prefers to write outdoors, after she gets dressed. Especially in the Ain country, because there are rocks and cows there. Miss Stein likes to look at rocks and cows in the intervals of her writing. The two ladies drive around in their Ford till they come to a good spot. Then Miss Stein gets out and sits on a campstool with pencil and pad, and Miss Toklas fearlessly switches a cow into her line of vision. If the cow doesn't seem to fit in with Miss Stein's mood, the ladies get into the car and drive on to another cow. When the great lady has an inspiration, she writes quickly, for about fifteen minutes. But often she just sits there, looking at cows and not turning a wheel.

'nothing particularly amusing occurred'

'not as much fun as it sounds'

'Presumably, all the fun stuff will come later'

I want this

That's all.

Sushirexia

I have moved to Manchester. I'm here, right now, so it must be true!

I am going to Glasgow because of this event next week:

Also, it's good that John Jennet won the £1500 Sceptre Prize for novelists, for an extract from Manadh - gret news! And hearty congratulations to the brilliant Ulrich, who snatched the Curtis Brown Prize from my greasy palms, damn him. He has writing in the soon to be launched 'Sushirexia: 32 stories about hunger', and so do I. So - soon we will meet again Ulrich, and I will punish you roundly, and squarely, and to the death.

Waterstone's, Glasgow, 24th June, 2010.