I’m having a bit of difficulty.
I liken writing this book to being in a farce...something like Charlie’s Aunt. To begin with a little lie is told, just to make life easier. Then it has to be followed up with a bigger one in order to make everything seem that much more believable, things start to get out of control and before you know it you’re pretending to be your own twin, dressing up in drag and discussing where the nuts come from.
If anyone reading this ever told fibs to their friends or their parents...(I would imagine that this includes just about everyone, but you never know, Big Brother UK winner Cameron might read this...) then you’ll know that it’s a tricky thing keeping track of a lie. You have to constantly think about what the person you’re with thinks they know, and you have to act and speak accordingly.
I have created the most complex and enormous lie, 120,000 words long, and I’m constantly tested by someone who is trying to catch me out (by the way, that person is also me...this analogy is complex enough without having to introduce the schizophrenic complexities of the writer vs. writer’s ‘imaginary reader’ relationship).
It feels weirder than that feeling when you come out of the exam and you realise that all the information that you revised but weren’t tested on is still in your head.
With the slightest thought you can recall the entire ‘Is this a dagger I see before me?’ speech from Macbeth ( ...along with all its implications, the historical aspect of the phrasing, how they got a knife hovering across the stage in 1572, etc...etc) even though the questions ended up being on Hamlet.
There’s just so much information in my head. I created all of it, and it all has to make sense! It can’t contradict itself, be unrealistic, it can’t say one thing and then another...and at the moment, the only link between this enormous wodge of information, attempted jokes, sinuous plot lines, the odd moral and the real world is my own strained judgement on what other people will make of it all.
I’m not sure I’ve made it clear yet – I love this book and I hate it. It feels like a Frankenstein’s monster that is rising up to throttle its creator with green hands.
Igor is fetching another glass of cheap white wine from the ice box, and stops on his way across the stone slabs to remind me that Dr. Atkins says that this is the last one I can have this week.
Or rather, because there are some literary impressions that are hard to shake even when you’re trying to be original, he says, “Marther, thith ith the latht glarth you can have thith week, according to Doctor Atkin’th New Diet Revolution!”
“Thank you Igor. Crank up the lightning rods please. I think it’s about time we brought this bastard to life, don’t you?"
*dramatic pause*
"Mua ha ha ha ha ha HA HA AHA HA HAHAHAHAHHHAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!"
...and so on.
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