The Dirty Works of Shane Levene

 

In the world of literature, death can often be a great career move. The list of renowned writers who finally made it post-mortem is wide and varied. Sometimes death secures a myth, and at other times it leaves behind a library of work ready to be pillaged. Death also makes someone's work finite. It can be seen as a bookend, finishing off a shelf that is only so long. But, before any writer considers death as a way to fast-track themselves into print, it is advisable that they finish their debut novel first. A dead writer surrounded by a bunch of half-written poems and the first draft of a first half of novel is no good to anyone.

 

So, how do you go about staying alive until you've written that first novel? Well, fresh fruit won't do it. Any writer who pins their hopes on apples and oranges is destined for a very messy end. All fruit can do is brighten up the death in one's complexion. But attention: Looking too healthy in this business is sure to raise a few suspect eyebrows. You can't be holed up in a small smoky room for half your life, masturbating between words, and come out looking very good for it. No. Good health this side of the grave will only make you postpone that novel more, make the writer procrastinate and take away any urgency or fire in the soul. Let death in. Let the fruit rot. Eat it and then write as you vomit your guts up. Now, that's a great tip right there.

 

 

Beauty. Don't trust handsome writers. Writers have an obligation to be ugly, or even better, become ugly. Writers need to embody all the poison and ugliness of their time and learn a handful of beautiful words to frame it in. A handsome writer only ever writes for sex. His life and words are all about conquest. Later, after he has survived past the period where writing can be any good, he'll write about illegitimate children who have gone off the rails and are sucking him dry. A beautiful writer may look good, but he'll never want too much time alone with his typewriter as he may just start thinking about himself. Someone mourning the death of youth and paying to have themself de-wrinkled every month is not someone who will ever choose great words. No, we need our writers looking more worn than that. I say: Burn handsome writers, or even better, turn them over to the government.

 

 

Alcohol. There have been many great drunk writers. Writing while drunk is an art form all of its own. A man who cannot keep his own body standing, yet can type up his state perfectly, without hitting a wrong key, has a shot at immortality. But, drunkenness isn't any way to ensure that debut novel. For just as many drunks who stagger and fall into print, many more live a groundhog day of coming to every morning with their keyboard in pieces on the floor after attacking their own words and then trying to do something about them. Drunks who growl at their words are destined for a long life of it. And they know it. It's why they attack their keyboards in the first place. The writer can be a drunk, but he needs to be a certain kind of drunk. Drink in some folk make them more sober to the horrors of life. Such people can write like the wind in a storm. So, get drunk. Drink for a week and discover who you really are and if you have it or if you don't.

 

O Hunger. O Sweet Starvation. I loved you then and then I loved you again. The starving writer. Knut Hamson. Lacking nutrition is a great state to be in, especially if you've dreams of making it big in the restaurant review genre of fiction. You try writing of a strawberry cheesecake before eating it and then write about one after you are sated. There's no comparison. A desperate yearning in a writer will always sort the words into good order and it will be done with fury and romance. But, don't misunderstand: writers mustn't write to eat; they must write to starve. Once you understand that, your words may just fall into place. The writer must write even when there is no point in carrying on. When you’re about to drop, the road will open up and you'll get yours just a little too late for it to be ruinous. A disappointed writer who realizes that he made it too late will live to make it too late again. It'll feel more like a defeat than a victory. Satisfaction in any artist is a terrible thing. To sigh a sigh of great relief is the death rattle of the artist and the late birth of a man. You cannot be a man and a writer. It's one or the other. Hemingway tried playing both those camps and look what happened there.

 

Shooting yourself in the head. Must be done with extreme caution. And, if it's done due to another letter of rejection then we know why the words were rejected. A failed writer must never try to blow his own brains out: he'll miss. His answer to his entire life is there. If you've had it and lost it and it's gone for good, you will know it. Life will no longer fill you in the mornings, and summer and freshly scrubbed wooden floorboards will have no effect whatsoever. Suffering can be good, but the wrong type of suffering signifies the end. At that point you can join the Gun Club. At that point your first novel will have been published and ripped to shit by the critics but loved in the streets. You can do no more and have earned an affinity with death and nothingness. At that point there, you can blast yourself into your own legend and people will cry and not understand why.

 

“O God, Spring is here in the sullied air and France prejoices to the distant haze of her Rimbaud summer and I'm 4 days clean and feel so unhappy and vile“

 

 

Don't be scared to quote yourself. All those mocked and unpublished  words need to be put to some use. In this age, quoting yourself can spread fast and wide. But, never tell people that they are your words. Let them find out by themselves. You cannot force people to get your words. And you cannot and must never change your words so as they can be gotten. A first novel will never come from those ashes. First and foremost, your words must soothe yourself. Anything else is a bonus. Never write for money. It is a sure way of never having any. Financial reward must be last on the list. Do NOT write for the dollar and NEVER write for the movies. Struggle on and write as you can. Great writing is made in that struggle to get safely into tomorrow. Never take tomorrow for granted. Many have come unstuck like that. Tomorrow is just a continuation of today's hell. That's how the writer must think.

 

Do go off track. Have no restraint. Eat strange berries which could be poisonous or not. Never take the safe road. You will never find yourself there. Go off track and let the words flow and sort them out later. Write words you don't mean and other words you mean so much. Don't lose yourself in words; lose yourself in life. That's a better way to understand the mess before the edit.

 

 

Writing is not living; it's merely the receipt of it. Do not postpone your life for the typewriter. Great words never come while staring at one of those things. They come in the living and even more in the dying. Do not waste your precious days and beautiful youth trying to write. Live and live and live, and inbetween living write if you have no other choice. If writing comes by choice then it bodes very badly. A palmist looking at that hand would turn white with horror. When you've nothing to write it means you are not living. Writer's block is a myth. I don't know of any man who lives and has nothing to write. On the contrary, there are not enough hours in the day to get it out.

 

Do not start writing your novel until it begins to write itself. If you are writing a novel and it seems uncomprehendingly long, then you are forcing it. If there doesn't seem to be enough pages, or you are thinking of trilogies, then you may be OK. I say may, because anyone I know who ever started on a trilogy of books either died or lost their mind. It still didn't help. Do not go insane before you are published. Hold it back and crack up at your award ceremony. It will sell more books.

 

Don't appropriate your handicap. Don't become the paraplegic poster boy of Debut Novels in the Making. Hide your lazy eye and hook nose and big ears: you will be unfairly judged by them. Lose the idea that your words will get your debut novel published. The very last thing you will be judged on is your words. It's a tragedy and it's our tragedy. Lie about your limp and never admit you've suffered a stroke. They will treat you like a mental retard and very soon after you'll  be paying them to publish your book. There are crooks everywhere and never forget it. A heart attack will not get you an extra day on your deadline. It will lose you everything. Always be in good health. You can be moody and anti-social, just don't be dying.

 

Drugs. Do not ever blame your writing, great or poor, good or bad, on drugs. Creativity must not be conditional on drugs. If it is, then shame on you. And, what would that make you when you're sober? The artist must be the one constant through everything. Drugs will not lead to the finish of your first novel, but the finish of your first novel may very well lead to drugs. I've seen writers tail-gated on the San Francisco suicide bridge, unable to jump fast enough with a bag of unsold books tied around their ankles. Do not let writing lead you there. That's where you must begin. Don't jump. Wipe your tears and go home and write. Such cowardice and weakness never helps men of novels.

 

Lie and cheat and steal and rape. It's the only way to be honest. The poet's job is not always to write the poetry but to point it out wherever they find it. There's poetry everywhere, it's all done for us. Deliver it up and show us your neighbourhoods and your streets and your people. We will love them, and we may even love you. Flush your toilet in the street and tell us how it smells. Do not be scared to hurt your mother's sensibilities. Men constrained like that are relieved when their mother dies. They become free men with a terrible burden that makes it still impossible to write. Say it as it is. The world will forgive you.

 

 

Read everything except for books. Read the back of cereal packets, the death warning on cigarettes, the labels inside your clothing. Watch people and watch yourself. You are very alike no matter what you think. You are no creative genius and you are as petty as the next man. Do not start thinking you are something. Most people don’t read and even less people read you. Stay humble in public. In private walk around reciting your own words  while marvelling at how great they are. Declare your self a genius and wear a paper crown while you eat alone and the electricity cuts out. Don't be sad. It's dark but the whole universe is right outside.

 

Always remember that your words are shit and nothing so terrible has ever been written before. Drill this into yourself early so as the insult doesn't sting when others knock at your door just to tell you the same. Disappointment will keep you alive. Disappointment will fuel your fire. And never forget: It’s OK. It's all gonna be OK. Your novel will be just fine, as long as you don’t write it. Have a dream and dream that dream and don't rely on reality to fulfill it. Print your unwritten novel off yourself and guard those blank pages like it's all you have. Organise readings, then stand there for 45 minutes and say nothing. The one person who will have paid to see you will still clap. That's your applause and it's all you'll ever get. You've made it.You’re a published author and the world doesn't care a damn. The sun still rises and the sun still sets and the moon is still so fucking lonely. And, as long as you get all that, then maybe, somehow, your novel might just make it.