A Long Way Down's |
All I want to do is make sure that I continue to try to exploit the potential I have. |
And we hardly need ever go to the stadium to watch every game live, because they're all on TV. |
Books are long. Even mine. You don't want to feel bad about them as you're writing them. |
But Arsenal fans are probably in two minds about it all, because the last decade has been the best of our lifetimes. We've seen fantastic football, and we've seen our team win a lot of trophies. |
But I reserve the right to write the kinds of books I feel like writing. |
But I suspect that all writers come up with premises of some kind, fragments of narrative or scenarios, in the course of a working week. |
English authors are very content to write for a very small audience, and I think that shows. |
Even at the beginning of the 90s people in England stood on the terraces to watch British players who would almost certainly need a job of some kind when they retired. |
Everything's complicated, even those things that seem flat in their bleakness or sadness. |
Fever Pitch was obviously and entirely autobiographical. |
Funny + sad is what I'm pitching for, every time. |
Have you got any soul?" a woman asks the next afternoon. That depends, I feel like saying; some days yes, some days no. A few days ago I was right out; now I've got loads, too much, more than I can handle. I wish I could spread it a bit more evenly, I want to tell her, get a better balance, but I can't seem to get it sorted. I can see she wouldn't be interested in my internal stock control problems though, so I simply point to where I keep the soul I have, right by the exit, just next to the blues. |
I am 45, and I am not ready for carpet slippers and 10:30 bedtimes, but I am middle-aged. |
I came away with the idea that I'd like to write books the way people write screenplays. I think I'm not going to let another line go through unexamined. |