Stitch This
I've known Guillermo Stitch for most of my life. I was at school with him. We swapped tapes. No, we didn't swap tapes, in fact - he bought records and taped them for me. My entire musical education was through a Stitchian prism, and no doubt his prejudices account for the alarming gaps in my musical knowledge. Though I was never able to share his enthusiasm for Bob Dylan.
After school I didn't see him again for many, many years. Decades. We caught up again through the once fashionable medium of Facebook. He was then living in a part of Spain that is chiefly known for wind and he, like me, had turned to writing in his mid-thirties. Writing really is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Annoyingly he's astonishingly good at it. His first book Literature is the best hard-boiled, neo-noir, sci-fi novel about books you'll ever read. You should probably buy it. His new book Lake of Urine: A Love Story, is better still. It even manages to live up to that title. Stitch is one of those world-making writers: he drops you into a place and swiftly and deftly builds it around you. It feels like a bespoke service but it isn't - he does this to everyone. You're not special, but he is. The book is being published by Sagging Meniscus Press next year and they are fine people who do good work. This is all well and good.
Faded cow impressionist Morrissey may once have feted the notion that We Hate it when our Friends Become Successful, but not being a bitter, twisted, alienated monster who views the world as an ever-impending series of assaults, I don't see it that way. I'm proud of him. I'm proud of the way he has worried the text like a dog with a toy until he has chewed it up just right, but equally I am proud of his perseverance: he does this properly. I sit around the house titting about with comma placements and occasional sending off a manuscript and then lying on a chaise lounge for a week, damping my fevered brow with a hankie full of my own tears when I receive a rejection. In another six months I might be able to go through the ordeal again. To Stitch its a numbers game: he sets up spread-sheets, he targets appropriate publishers, book shops, agents anyone who might be of use to him, and he powers his way through them. He treats writing as a proper job, in fact. Because it is a proper job. I have treated writing as if I were confined to a sanitarium after an attack of the vapours, only able to contact the outside world by writing "There's been a terrible mistake" on a paper a napkin and flinging it out of the high, barred window.
Well no more. I shall do as Stitch does. I'm making a list. I'm checking it twice. I'm going to start bothering people. Its a war of a attrition, baby, and I've got all night.
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| Apologies for the violent imagery but in this scenario I am Judge Dredd and Judge Fear, there on the right, is the publishing industry. Sort of. I won't be punching anyone. I don't think so, anyway. |
After school I didn't see him again for many, many years. Decades. We caught up again through the once fashionable medium of Facebook. He was then living in a part of Spain that is chiefly known for wind and he, like me, had turned to writing in his mid-thirties. Writing really is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Annoyingly he's astonishingly good at it. His first book Literature is the best hard-boiled, neo-noir, sci-fi novel about books you'll ever read. You should probably buy it. His new book Lake of Urine: A Love Story, is better still. It even manages to live up to that title. Stitch is one of those world-making writers: he drops you into a place and swiftly and deftly builds it around you. It feels like a bespoke service but it isn't - he does this to everyone. You're not special, but he is. The book is being published by Sagging Meniscus Press next year and they are fine people who do good work. This is all well and good.
Faded cow impressionist Morrissey may once have feted the notion that We Hate it when our Friends Become Successful, but not being a bitter, twisted, alienated monster who views the world as an ever-impending series of assaults, I don't see it that way. I'm proud of him. I'm proud of the way he has worried the text like a dog with a toy until he has chewed it up just right, but equally I am proud of his perseverance: he does this properly. I sit around the house titting about with comma placements and occasional sending off a manuscript and then lying on a chaise lounge for a week, damping my fevered brow with a hankie full of my own tears when I receive a rejection. In another six months I might be able to go through the ordeal again. To Stitch its a numbers game: he sets up spread-sheets, he targets appropriate publishers, book shops, agents anyone who might be of use to him, and he powers his way through them. He treats writing as a proper job, in fact. Because it is a proper job. I have treated writing as if I were confined to a sanitarium after an attack of the vapours, only able to contact the outside world by writing "There's been a terrible mistake" on a paper a napkin and flinging it out of the high, barred window.
Well no more. I shall do as Stitch does. I'm making a list. I'm checking it twice. I'm going to start bothering people. Its a war of a attrition, baby, and I've got all night.
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