1. Attempt on Life
After a week in the gallery, drafting and illustrating, there was a moment when all the text seemed to slide off the pages of the manuscript in front of me. Box People , the novel I've been living with for 15 years, was erasing itself. Time to give up, split up, bail out. Kill the thing.
2.Manuscript
I had the familiar urge to scrumple the papers into 250 balls, but I refined this into making paper aeroplanes. With the help of invisible tape, the planes became flowers. I folded until my wrist burned, the skin peeled off my left thumb and I got bored.
3.More Manuscript
I put the rest of the manuscript on a chair. Where my bum should be.
4.Disposal Chair
I got a better chair. This may have been a mistake. Now I have two chairs and I have to sit on one. Which means getting back to writing.
5.Hooks
Not enough in my narrative so far, so I added a few.
6. Fishing line
Tension, suspense, threads. And they shine so pleasingly under gallery spotlights.
7.Guests (not pictured)
People visit. They smile at the flowers. I show them what's left of my first novel and they laugh sadly. At first I tell them that they're looking at the death of a novel, but they get upset. Friends and complete strangers lobby for the death penalty to be revoked. I am touched by their concern for a piece of writing that they have never met, and that may in fact be rotten to the core. They suggest a life sentence on a USB in a far away place, rehabilitation in the form of poetry or short stories, or community service as a youth arts project. The jury is still out.
