By Mat | Published:
May 5, 2007
We’ve ordered Thai food. ‘They say we can pick it up in twenty minutes,’ says the Evil Sulphura.
‘We should leave here in twenty minutes,’ I say. ‘It always takes at least half an hour, and I always end up sitting in that crowded bit at the front, waiting with all the other gullible losers who […]
By Mat | Published:
June 29, 2006
People are asking me questions.
“Yes,” they say, “it’s all very well, all this business with burgling and urine portage and the lesser-known works of Danny DeVito, but didn’t you used to be an unrequited novelist?”
“Well – ” I say, but they interrupt me.
By Mat | Published:
March 1, 2006
When a continent is millimetring its way gradually across the face of the earth, occasionally subducting or letting out an embarrassing little slip-strike, there’s a lot of time for it to reflect, ponder and submit silly stories to its blog.
After a few hundred millions of years of this, however, the continent looks up lazily from a half-finished story about pigeons, of which it very much likes the look, to find India carving mountains out of its southern flanks.
Also posted in The Last Monk |
By Mat | Published:
January 12, 2006
With The Last Monk still in dry dock with the Mysterious Assessors, I’ve been casting about for work to stave off the necessity to sell my body for tiny morsels of food and suddenly, two days ago, it came. The opportunity to write cricket articles for crikey.com.au.
By Mat | Published:
December 13, 2005
Suddenly I’m at an imaginary party.
“Nice party,†I say to a passing poet, rather lamely. She nods politely. I look around, a bit lost.
“Listen,†I say, “do you know why I’m here?â€
“I don’t even know why I’m here,†she says crankily. “Why am I a poet? You’re making me up, you tell me.â€
Also posted in drinking |
By Mat | Published:
June 30, 2005
Due to recent advances, I can now reveal the first and last line of The Last Monk. It begins with ‘The house is suddenly filled with music’, and ends with the words ‘small, green plastic frogs’.
It’s a philosophical piece, obviously.
By Mat | Published:
June 28, 2005
There isn’t really an effective way to describe it: I woke up Monday morning feeling positive, went through my normal Monday morning ablutions and habits in a perfectly normal Monday morning kind of way, sat down at the computer, turned it on, opened the correct file, and seized like an oilless motor.
By Mat | Published:
June 24, 2005
Milestones are a strange business. I’ve never had a problem with motivation writing this novel, except when driven to soulless despair by some of the insaner moments of a listless career in university administration, yet I do tend to go a bit wild when my word-odometer passes a number with four zeroes in it.
By Mat | Published:
June 22, 2005
Halfway through the week, I’ve added a few thousand words and laid down the bedrock for about half of the climax.
These intense typing sessions are very unusual: I normally sit down to the blank cursor feeling as though I’m leaning out over a cliff and the wind is turning. I know what plot is required, but how am I supposed to make it exciting and interesting? What will people say?
By Mat | Published:
June 19, 2005
I’ve spent much of the last three weeks informing the reader (also the spouse, the neighbour and the teen-aged sales assistant at J.B. HiFi) of my revelation that before I could type a single word of the grand climax of The Last Monk, time would be required to percolate, to mull, and generally to walk around parks scowling at ducks in the vain hope that someone would ask me what I was looking so thoughtful about.
Quite a bit of time, I thought. About a fortnight.
As it happens, it took about six hours.
