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‘You
hit. You run. But what if you have to go back?’ It’s J.G.
Ballard’s Crash meets Shallow Grave. Set in Edinburgh.
Do you
bear the reader in mind when you're writing? If so, how does that
affect the way you write?
You
have be your own ideal reader, don’t you? Otherwise, what the hell
is the point? I began writing fiction primarily because I didn’t
recognise the world around me in the books I was reading. And that
made me furious. It seemed like my experience wasn’t worthy of
literature, which is bullshit. In the end, I always write something
that I would want to read. The irony of that is, it’s really hard
to read your own work without being hugely critical of it – all you
can see are the mistakes and shit bits.
Provide
a YouTube link to a song you'd like to be the title track to the
movie adaptation of your book.
Boards of Canada: 'Dayvan Cowboy'
Why anyone
would want anyone else to do the soundtrack for their movie is beyond
me. The first time I ever heard them I felt physically sick with
emotion, like they were tapping into something I recognised, but on a
subconscious or purely gut level. Genius.
If you
were able to co-write a novel with any author of your choosing, who
would it be?
Raymond
Carver. Although I get the feeling he was never a writer to
collaborate on anything, very single-minded and driven. Imagine
trying to harness that weird black magic he had, his ability to say
so much with so few words, and work it into a novelistic plot, that
would be something, huh? He claimed he never had the patience for
writing or reading novels. I’d like to have had the chance to
change his mind about that.
Put
these in order of importance: language, character, plot, money.
Does
anyone ever put money anywhere but last when they answer that? If
they do, they’re dicks. For me it’s probably character, plot,
language, money. Having said that, I agree with that thing Stephen
King said, about how no one ever asks him about his use of language.
Just because a book is easy to read and uses simple language, does
NOT mean the writer didn’t sweat over every single word in there.
At the start of his poem ‘The Blue Stones’, Carver quotes
Flaubert: “If I call stones blue it is because blue is the precise
word, believe me.” That quote says it all.
What do
you do when you're not writing?
When
I’m not writing fiction I’m hustling for journalism work or
teaching work, when I’m not doing that I’m being a househusband,
doing the school run, the nursery run, cooking the tea, cleaning the
house, separating the squabbling kids, when I’m not doing that I’m
trying to make music, when I’m not doing that I’m trying to find
time to chill out with my wife, when I’m not doing that I’m
drinking whisky and playing guitar and watching shit films and
tweeting about it to wind down.
What
are your ambitions for the next year?
To
still be alive and writing by the end of it.
Which
author should be much better known?
Willy
Vlautin.
What
question would you most like to be asked in an interview? What's the
answer to it?
Which
author would you most like to bare-knuckle box with? There are too
many to choose from. Doris Lessing, maybe? Not because I don’t like
her writing, I just reckon I’d have a pretty good chance of getting
a result against the 92-year-old Nobel Prize winner. Although I bet
she was a scrapper in her day. The real answer is Martin Amis.
Because I want to punch him.
How do
you feel about reviews?
I
feel like I’m gliding through the fucking Matrix, and all the
lowlife quisling fucks cannae touch me. Not really, but I have got
pretty Zen about them in recent years. I genuinely don’t give a
shit either way. I’m quite surprised at myself about that, I have
to admit. I read each one once, then throw them up on my website for
others to look at. I gave up reading newspapers a few years ago, and
the increase in my mental health was huge. It’s just people’s
opinions, after all, and like my granny used to say: ‘Opinions are
like arseholes, everybody’s got one.’
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