01a News/Journal

October 27^th 2010

I have this morning received an unintelligible letter from the mother of ‘H. Weuhl’, who I presume is also the mother of his elder brother, ‘Willie Weuhl’. For obvious legal reasons I am unable to state her ‘real’ name, but I have decided to call her Wilhemina.

     Here is her message:

     ‘Grettloiders, gad Wonker,

     Helby ontork lebsterdinghaffen! Drust ingurblerts! Eggurt botto Modre!

     Gerteob ferbalsten onder klammerpartin? Juxderz?

     Plabber westenlob, endens glabbo – perspendinglor wub randsit. Copplifer?

     Gerblondsit!

     Mosten bratsnickers lobben hurden umber langen – dosnit yobbo pensert?

     Flammerbits!!

     Shlozzy goodlits yogen masterdebaster – sibiden yoblo defamarkinshclot mibbenbabbinkens onsymorken, Sha golby rippendertlik okkfly bottri nakkerloidbittens.

     Caporshiten??

     Cheerio.’

I am unfamiliar with the language used by Mrs Weuhl. Several learned friends have been unable to identify the tongue used. However, all are agreed that the general rhythm and tone of the piece suggests that Mrs Weuhl is not inviting me around for afternoon tea. If, as I suspect, the above is a threat to my person, I invite readers of this obscure blog to translate it and inform me of their findings as soon as possible. I am particularly keen to establish precisely what ‘nakkerloidbittens’ are, although, truth be told, I feel that (at some profoundly subconscious level) I probably know already.

October 25^th 2010

Following my appeal to readers of this obscure blog to forward ‘H. Weuhl’-related anecdotes, I have been inundated with no fewer than five handwritten letters singing the man’s praises and describing outlandish literary feats he is alleged to have performed in the past quarter-century. However, it should be noted that all of the letters, whilst containing minor variations in the size and slope of the characters, show consistent errors with the use of past-participles, bear no addresses or legible signatures, were executed with a tired black biro, and were all processed by the same sorting-office.

     An item of interest did arrive yesterday morning. It was a blurry Polaroid of early-80’s vintage and appears to show a heavily-bearded ‘H. Weuhl’ in a state of undress in the store-room of a fruit and veg shop. I immediately forwarded the offensive image to my lawyer. Unfortunately, in my haste, I forgot to append relevant details regarding the origin of the image, so I have just received an angry telephone call from Mrs Philomena Barcode’s husband ( Sir Philip Barcode QC, DFC, Ph.D) who is now considering legal action against me.

     I must implore readers not to send me obscene images of ‘H Weuhl’, or anyone else for that matter. There are (I, er, suppose?) other blogs which specialise in that type of thing.

October 22^nd 2010

‘H. Weuhl’ has forwarded a poem, which I am happy to pass on to readers of this obscure blog:

‘There was a time, so long ago,

When rain was rain, and snow was snow,

When sweets were sweet and green meant go,

And monsters in the dark did glow

On bedroom walls – we scared ourselves,

Hoping that Mammy would come in

To save us from the gap-toothed thing,

But we kept taking turns waving the torch

Until the batteries ran out.’

Note to ‘H. Weuhl’: I like that ‘H’. Seriously. I do. I think it’s the best thing of yours that I’ve seen. I welcome more.

      Could you please assure your (very big) brother that I wasn’t calling him ‘Willie’ for any particular reason – it was the first name to pop into my head. Cheers.

October 20^th 2010

Willie Weuhl is, of course, nothing more than a bully. He is, it must be conceded, still extremely intimidating, standing six-three in his socks. He will be sixty-four next Wednesday. He was, in his youth, an accomplished pig-hurler, and holds several (some say, unbeatable) records for molehole-piling.

     I have no desire to engage with Weuhl in physical combat, but he should be made aware that I have consulted several contacts in Glasgow’s netherworld, all of whom must and will remain anonymous, if for no other reason than I myself have no idea who they are. That being as it may, I have gleaned important information which will, I have been stoutly guaranteed, lead to certain victory should a confrontation with Weuhl become unavoidable.

    I have already alluded to Weuhl’s formidable physicality. He has, it is true, grown in girth over the decades, but the essential power of the man remains undiminished. He has, however, two Achilles heels – he is unable to move backwards, and cannot turn through 180 degrees in anything less than 5.2 seconds. Accordingly, the key to defeating the mighty Weuhl is a great deal simpler than many might suppose. To quote one of my unnamed contacts – ‘Just get behind him, take a runny, and give him a right good kick up the arse. He’ll make a noise and start shifting round. Side-step so you’re still behind him, then give him another one, hard as you can. Just keep doing it. It might take four, five minutes, say thirty, forty good kicks. Remember to pace yourself. Eventually, if you catch him one on the jarlers, or hit his hole, he’ll get fed-up and shuffle away.’

     So there we have it. Weuhl may name the time and place. I’ll be there, right behind him, wearing my much-missed Uncle Stanley’s steel-tipped winklepickers.

October 18^th 2010

I have, this morning, received a threatening message from ‘H Weuhl’’s big brother, who must, for now, remain anonymous – I have decided to call him Willie.

     ‘Willie Weuhl’ assures me, in a letter which was clearly typed on his wee brother’s ancient Olivetti, that the next time he sees me he’s ‘going to ?rash my fu?king ?unt right in’.

     Charming.

     I have retained a copy of the letter, placing it along with the other unsavoury material sent by his brother. The original is now in the possession of my lawyer, Mrs Philomena Barcode.

     Willie Weuhl is, of course, a well-kent character in the pubs of Glasgow’s west-end, where he has been pestering the honest topers of Partick and Maryhill since the late seventies. His infamous modus operandi was to enter a pub by an unusual route e.g. via the lounge (or ‘Snug’ as it was then called) or, in extremis, a window – the first unfortunate to make eye-contact would find himself being subjected to rambling hour-long yarns concerning Willie Weuhl’s experience as a Royal Marine/SAS Instructor/Munro-bagger/professional football player/deep-sea diver etc etc.

     This was, of course, nothing more than a ruse to extract free drink, and he got away with it for many years. Eventually, in the September of 1981, an un-minuted extraordinary meeting of The Strathclyde Licensed Trades Association agreed that something had to be done about Weuhl – the plummeting numbers of punters prepared to run the risk of encountering the infamous bore had significantly bolstered attendance at temperance meetings all across the west of the city. Thus was instituted the forerunner of an early-warning scheme which was to take-off across the nation.

     Whenever Weuhl was spotted, be it on the Dumbarton, Byres or Great Western roads, the cry would be raised – ‘Here comes that baistert!’. The regulars in Weuhl’s apparent destination would then evacuate the premises en masse: most via the rear exit; the infirm, helped by bar-staff, concealing themselves in the cellar. Weuhl would find himself walking into an empty pub, decline to order a drink, then move on. The chargehand or landlord would then determine what direction Weuhl was headed and call the closest pub immediately, thus alerting the next batch of potential victims.

     And so it happened, in the Winter of 81/82, that Willie Weuhl wandered daily from pub to pub, seven days a week, wondering why they were all empty, and why he saw so many bustling crowds – appearing and vanishing hither and yon – with no obvious intelligent design to their movement. It wasn’t until the late April of 82 that ‘H. Weuhl’ rumbled the scheme and told his big brother what was going on. Willie then went to ground for seven weeks during which he drastically reduced his weight, grew a surprisingly luxuriant strawberry-blonde beard and invested in a completely new wardrobe consisting of: four three-piece suits purchased as a job-lot in The Briggait; a pair of Cuban-heeled ‘genwinne’ crocodile ankle-boots one of his cousins had been given as a late wedding present; several florid cravats and a fob-watch. Thus was he able to slip, unrecognised, back into the society he had so long exploited. For several weeks he managed to keep his mouth shut and pay for his own drink, but old habits do die hard, and it wasn’t long before he was back to his old ways.

     But Weuhl had the good sense to shift his cynical business to fresh pastures, much to the dismay of those unwitting communities lying to the north, east and somewhat south of the city. Even now, if one is enjoying a drink anywhere within the compass of Glasgow’s Underground system, one may occasionally hear an urgent whisper ripple around the bar – ‘It’s that baistert coming!’ – whereupon the initiated exchange winks, drink-up, then head for the back door, leaving tourists and the young to their fate.

October 13^th 2010

Had a smashing lunch (in Crail, Kingdom of Fife) with a wonderful independent publisher who, for legal reasons, must remain nameless. (I don’t mean ‘anonymous’ – she took some time to explain, and it took me even longer to understand that, as the result of a complex paternity situation, she doesn’t have a name.) Anyway, I mentioned en passant that I have been receiving gratuitously malicious messages from ‘H. Weuhl’, whereupon her eyes narrowed – she drew her shawl a little tighter about her as a shadow of fear flitted across her comely features. She remembers him well. Rather – to paraphrase her – she has never been able to forget him as completely as she would prefer.

     It seems that, in readiness for Glasgow’s glorious tenure as ‘City of Culture, 1990’, ‘H. Weuhl’ had, from June 1986 to autumn ’88, bombarded publishers, agents, news outlets and broadcasters, here and abroad, with an elaborate ‘Press Pack’ in which he described himself as ‘Glasgow’s Final Hope’. The Press Pack consisted of: a monochrome oft-photocopied portrait of the man himself, clearly the worse for drink, eyes akimbo beneath a stained fedora; a typewritten CV in which the lower-case ‘c’ was represented throughout by a question-mark; a collection of twenty-three handwritten obscene limericks (badly Xeroxed) which had been lifted, typos and all, from an out-of-print American publication; three short stories introduced collectively as ‘Real Snippets of Reality’, presented in type so faint as to make all but the titles illegible. The ‘Press Pack’ was rolled into a tubular form, with no outer wrapping, and secured with clear tape, the removal of which rendered the final page of the climactic ‘You Asked for That’ nothing more than a pile of sticky shreds.

     ‘H. Weuhl’ – he’s a class act, non?

October 8h 2010

Note to ‘H Weuhl’ : I am not, and never have been, associated with a small publication called ‘The Mighty Wings of Hope.’ As you know, I used that title in Kin Right, but it was made-up. No such magazine exists, or ever has – it was the imagined title of a book by an imagined character (Hester Oonblik), published by unreferenced/unknowable persons in the late sixties.

     It didn’t exist ‘H.’.

     Seriously.

     In short, you definitely aren’t due any royalties.

October 4th 2010

Note to ‘H.Weuhl’: yes, I know you wrote a screenplay about a slave who organised a revolt, and that you’d completed the first full draft three weeks before Kubrick’s Spartacus was released. I know all that. Unfortunately, your script was not about Spartacus. It was about some dude called ‘Ob’ and he was a Pict. There is a basic story-line discrepancy which suggests that any plagiarism suit was always doomed – if memory serves, you have ‘Ob’ overrunning the Roman Empire and marrying the Queen of Egypt. For that reason alone, I believe that you should now let the matter lie.

September 29th 2010

I have today received a typewritten letter, purporting to be from a legal firm named ‘Catchpole, Leggup & Gormley’. The letter bears no address, telephone number, nor any other helpful data. The firm is not listed in the Yellow Pages and a Google search yields nothing.

     I am accused of plagiarism – specifically, the wholesale theft of storylines and characters created by their unnamed client. I am advised that an out-of-court settlement may be possible, and that said client has instructed Mr. Garnsworthington of CL&G to pursue, with extreme prejudice, a cash sum of at least thirty-five pounds.

     This letter has ‘H. Weuhl’’s fingerprints all over it. Literally. He must’ve had to change the ribbon and didn’t bother wiping his fingers afterwards.  I have secured the letter within a small polythene bag and deposited it in a neighbour’s freezer, where, I have been assured, it will remain untouched – I suspect it may prove to be crucial evidence in due course.

     I intend to contest this mischievous suit strenuously- with all the resources at my disposal – and look forward to discussing the matter with Mr. Garnsworthington as soon as ‘H. Weuhl’ provides me with some means of contact.

September 25^th 2010

‘H. Weuhl’ is, evidently, still experiencing difficulty mastering e-mail.

     I have this morning, received three messages from him which were clearly intended for the attention of others. The first, sent at 5.47 a.m., asks me to ‘kindly, and at your earliest convenience, furnish me with any relevant brochures relating to your current pet-insurance schemes.’ The second, dispatched at 8.14 a.m., appears to be a complaint : ‘I’ve told you before – the blue bin is just for bottles and jars!’ The third, and most worrying, suggests that ‘H. Weuhl’, god love him, is human after all, and needs a hug just like the rest of us – ‘usual place. 3.15 but the busses (sic) have been a bit funny so I might be late xxx.’  

     Perhaps ‘H. Weuhl’ believes that using an extraordinarily tiny font will keep his furtivities secret? So be it, but he should be aware that sending each message he composes to everyone in his address book is not advisable.

     Having said that, I am quite prepared to ‘furnish’ him with a pet-insurance quote which avoids the burdensome completion of lengthy questionnaires of the type issued to prospective clients by the larger commercial outfits – I only need to know: how much does the creature weigh?; how many limbs does it have?; is it capable of mimicking human speech?; can it (without the owner’s encouragement) negotiate a three-foot brick wall? On the basis of truthful answers to these four questions I can provide a detailed no-obligation quote – the offer is open, not only to ‘H. Weuhl’, but all readers of this obscure blog. Please apply, before the end of next year, to qualify for a 90% discount*, stating where, when and why you read this.

     (* Introductory time-limited special packages, covering all sentient beings weighing no more than seventy-five kilos, start at a mere £99.99 per week.)  

September 22^nd 2010

The results are finally in, and I’m happy to report to readers of this obscure blog that your trusty scribe has graduated the Creative Writing MLitt (with Distinction) at Glasgow Uni. I thank you, I thank you…please be seated. It was a braw year, and I met some great people.

Some readers may be interested to know that George Galloway’s TalkSport show has been reinstated after a gap of several months. If memory serves, Galloway parted company with the station on cordial terms and he accepted the decision gracefully, but no explanation was given for the ditching of what was surely TalkSport’s most popular show, or, at any rate, the most popular show they broadcast between 10p.m. and 1a.m. on week-end nights. For whatever reason, The Gorgeous One is back, but only on Fridays (for now). The ‘new’ show takes the form of a review of the week, but follows pretty much the same as the old format, just less musical interludes. On Friday 17^th Sept I submitted an e-mail which he hailed as ‘the best of the night’ but it’s all in ‘the way you tell them’, so it’s best listened-to, and George does possess a uniquely splendid delivery-system, so if you want to hear it, check Galloway’s own site, where all his shows are archived. If it helps, my own wee contribution comes about ten minutes before  the end of the show:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=awc4yq5clcU

George’s show, Friday 17 September 2010 – full show

‘H. Weuhl’ has sent me an apocalyptic demand, with grave assurances that he has copied the same to all major newspapers, publishers, magazines, international news agencies, and everyone else he can find in The Writers Handbook (the 1992 edition his Mum bought in Oxfam) -  he insists that I ‘publicly confess to enjoying carnal relations with’ one of his sister’s best friends in the late autumn of 1986.

 I confess to no such thing, on the grounds that I did not enjoy one minute of it.

September 9th 2010:

Over one thousand unfortunates have stumbled across this obscure blog – many thanks to all who lingered.

‘H. Weuhl’ has challenged me to a duel at dawn. I have declined the invitation because I never get up that early. On the other hand, there are occasional week-end nights when I am up that late, so perhaps we can work something out.

August 30th 2010:

I have not posted up Chapters 7-9 of Seb. This is because, so far as I can tell, no-one has read chapters 1-3.  Or chapters 4-6.  It therefore seems unlikely that anyone will be gnashing their teeth over the non-appearance of the promised chunk. I will post chapters 7-9 as soon as I see any evidence that the preceding chapters have been viewed.

Indifference to Seb notwithstanding, the unbelievable surge of interest in this obscure blog is truly phenomenomenomenomenal – over 900 hits now. To faithful readers, I say thanks - not once, twice, but thrice.

I invite anyone who knows ’H. Weuhl’ (not his real name, but if you read previous entries you’ll soon know if you know him or not) to submit their experiences of the man and his ‘work’. Please do so via the ‘comment’ space at the bottom of the page, or contact me via any other methods bar personal visits to my house.

August 26th 2010:

More guff from ‘H. Weuhl’, who has messaged yet again, stridently demanding that I acknowledge his ‘real’ pseudonym.

Huh?

For reasons previously stated (see Aug 15^th) I am not going to disclose who this botton really is, but he’s now demanding that I release the nom-de-plume under which he delivered his daft cri-de-coeur? (And yes, I do have other foreign phrases to hand, so don’t complain or I’ll deploy more of them.)

Okay. Fair enough. His original message was signed ‘B. Elbow’. As he knows fool wool, sorry, full well, Bobby Elbow was a character in a very early (1998) episode of Tales of The Great Unwashed. Bobby Elbow was a fictional pub karaoke man who toured the hostelries of Greater Glasgow with his ‘All-Star Roadshow’. In choosing ‘B. Elbow’ as his pseudonym, ‘H. Weuhl’ was having a dig at me for reasons which will (if he doesn’t eff-off and leave me in peace) be revealed in excruciating detail.

So, I decline to lend this clown the name of a fictional character I created, but reserve the right to apply the name of another character of similar vintage – this has upset him. In any event, I will not reveal the true identity of our mystery correspondent because that is what he craves i.e. to see his name in print, even if it is just on an obscure blog.

Note to H. Weuhl: you seem not to understand (so I’m writing this ver y  v e r  y    s  l  o  w  l  y) that when you send someone a message via a computer, they can see where it’s come from i.e. the address and name of the sender. (It’s a bit like when you sometimes got a letter and you had no idea who it was from – if you squinted at the postmark, you could perhaps discern the name of a sorting-office? That gave you a wee clue as to the identity of the sender.) 

Still with me ‘H.’? Previously, you used a friend’s computer. Today, you used your own, and now I know for sure who you are.  Take a piece of friendly advice – pay a visit to your local library and ask them about introductory computing skills classes. Do it before the cutbacks kick in.

(By the way, there is no ‘e’ in ‘bastard’.)

Cheers.  

August 22nd 2010:

The inexplicable deluge of hits to this obscure blog continues unabated – as of this moment, more than 800 visits have been recorded. (My own do not count.) Many thanks to all of those who have, inadvertently or not, found themselves in this place. I hope you found something to your liking.

‘H. Weuhl’ has been bombarding my Inbox with maudlin rubbish – today it consisted (mostly) of snippets of imagined encounters with movers-and-shakers in the 80′s. I have retained copies, for legal purposes, but removed the originals to the Recycle Bin, which is their proper place. As previously stated, I refuse to give this character the oxygen of ‘publicity’ – if I had any say in it, he would receive no oxygen at all.

August 21st 2010:

Second instalment of Seb is now up, as is a new page (10) - ’Chinglettes’ – the formatting is a bit awry, but it’s readable. All feedback gratefully received.

August 20th 2010:

Have just received this message from the editor of  ‘Quarterly Review’:

‘Thank you for telling me about this. I commend your initiative and energy heartily, and will look at your website as soon as practicable, to see if the novels might be suitable for review. I have to say that we never publish fiction and accordingly do not review much fiction, but we do sometimes make exceptions – such as a review of our columnist Roy Kerridge’s latest novel in our Summer issue. Again, many thanks.

Best wishes,
Derek Turner,

Editor’

 

 

Isn’t that nice? Thanks to Mr Turner for taking the time to reply, although it

should be pointed out that he did so using a normal-sized font, and didn’t

shout. (Must get the hang of this copy/paste palaver…)  Out of approx 500

e-mails sent out to publishers, magazines, agents etc, only Mr Hunter and

three or four others took the time to ‘pen’ a personal reply – some replied

with automated ‘get knotted’ messages, but the vast majority, probably 95%

+, did not respond in any way. So, three cheers for Derek Turner and

Quarterly Review, a splendid publication which we should all subscribe to

immediately – www.quarterly-review.org

Chapters 4-6 of Seb have been proofed yet again and will be posted over the

week-end. There will also be a new page entitled ‘Chinglettes’ – what is a

Chinglette? Please come back over the next few days to find out – if you like

word-games, riddles and/or sudoku then you may find them of interest.

I have also received an offensive message from ‘H. Weuhl’ in response to myAug 15th entry (see below) but will not be replying to it here. (Note to ‘H.Weuhl’  and proxies – all comments, offensive or otherwise, should be addressed to this blog in the relevant ‘Comments’ boxes which appear at the foot of every page. Thank you…aye, and the same to you too.)

August 16^th 2010:

The first chunk of Seb (Chapters 1-3) is now on Page 01b. Further instalments will appear on a more or less weekly basis until it’s all there.

August 15^th 2010:

This blog has received more than 700 hits in three weeks. I’ve no idea whether that is something worth noting, celebrating, or analysing, but it’s a fact nonetheless.

Many messages of support (well, about ten) have come from friends, and a fair amount of spam has been successfully filtered, but today saw the arrival of the first hostile message.

In my ‘welcome’ I invited constructive criticism, but it’s difficult to find anything constructive in the message. Rather, it’s a pretty straightforward ad hominem rant masquerading as an ethics sermon, and fails to be effective as either. The writer accuses me of self-aggrandizement, myopia and shamelessness, in that order, but without using those terms. Here’s the original message, which (tellingly) was sent to my own e-mail, not this blog:

 ‘Dear Mr Brotherhood,

I was linked to your website by a friend who thought I might enjoy your Tales of the Great Unwashed. I have been developing a series of flash-fiction, poems and nano-novels which are mostly based in a hotel in the mid-eighties, and I was already familiar with some of the work you had produced by Resonance FM in London which, I believe, was based directly on some of the Great Unwashed stories.

While I enjoy some of your stories and the various treatments you employ in their telling, I feel it is my duty as a fellow writer to point out several areas of concern raised by the appearance of your and other blog-style websites which promote so-called ‘new’ fiction & literature.

Firstly, while I am aware that the internet is a wonderful tool for dissemination of new knowledge and ideas, I am just one of many who are increasingly worried that quantity is no gaurantee (sic) of quality. There is simply too much out there which has not been vetted in any way, so much that it becomes impossible for any discerning reader to sort the ‘wheat’ from the ‘chaff’. While I can appreciate that you have had some of your work published, I feel that you should be clearly indicating to your visitors that most of the work appearing at your website has never even been seen by any industry professionals at all, and that the release of such a volume of work ‘for free’ seems reckless and inconsiderate to the efforts of many thousands of writers such as myself who have some sense of self-worth as well as the worth of our work, and are determined to achieve publication by conventional means which are respectful of the fact that a centuries old tradition of publishing-related procedural etiquette has been developed which effectively (allbeit (sic) sometimes very very slowly!) identifies the works and writers which are most deserving of the public attention. I agree with anyone’s right to free speech, and to exhibiting their works and thoughts, but I believe that presenting those ideas in such a way as to suggest that they are, in being so presented, ‘published’, does nothing to alleviate the huge concerns surrounding the development of literary-based activities at this perilous time.

What will happen in the long term? Will everyone be able to send their musings into space and declare that they are published authors?  How will it be possible to determine what work is worth even the most fleeting attention when everyone is a poet or novelist or playwright or some other kind of artist?

Finally, I do realise there are arguments in favour of posting (not ‘publishing’) completed works if, perhaps, the artist has a moral objection to having their work subjected to the attentions of editors and publishers. However, I know of no reputable editor/publisher who would allow incomplete pieces to be published. It is a matter of professional standards being upheld, so the notion that an ‘unfinished’ novel can be responsibly released upon an unsuspecting public is, to my thinking, as well as many others, a shameful dereliction of basic manners and demonstrates a certain arrogance which is not becoming of any true artist.

I hope you will consider my points and accept them in a genuine effort to provoke a heartfelt reconsideration of what you have done here.

With best wishes,

H. Weuhl’

 

First things first – H Weuhl is a pseudonym I inserted, to protect the identity of whoever’s name was used on the message (which did not tally with the sender’s address). I must assume that the author was using a friend’s e-mail, or posing as someone else in order to make a subtle point which I am not going to explain here – let’s just say that I’m pretty sure who the author is, and s/he knows who s/he is, and it should be left at that. For now.

The motivation (and identity) of the author aside, several serious points are made which deserve attention.

I object to being referred to by anyone as ‘a fellow writer’. Such absurd labeling and feigned camaraderie is as pointless as it is loaded, suggesting that ‘we’ are kindred spirits who share expertise in a specific art-form and are therefore bound together by tacit codes, shared understandings. I am good at making omelettes, walking the dog, and growing potatoes, but I do not parade around with a sandwich-board declaring those abilities, and feel no sense of ‘togetherness’ with other humans capable of similar feats. The idea that ‘writers’ are an identifiable sect is pure pish.

Why anyone should be concerned about overloading ‘discerning’ readers is another nonsense – whose place is it to judge what is worthy of attention? Certainly, it is not the artist’s – the originator of work, in whatever medium, can do no more than create the thing. Whether it is worthy of attention, exhibition, publication etc is the responsibility of others. If those ‘others’ happen to find themselves in a situation where they are deluged with work to ‘criticise’, they should perhaps think themselves lucky to be involved in a thriving industry where their expertise is required. In any event, most readers are capable of ‘discerning’ what they’re reading, and do it swiftly – the reader who feels in the mood for a dose of Herman Melville but accidentally opens a Jeffrey Archer (or vice-versa) won’t be long realising his mistake. In the case of this blog, almost 500 visitors have found their way to the ‘Welcome’, but relatively few have gone on to click other pages – fair play to them: they ‘discern’ that my stuff’s not for them, vote with their cursors, shift elsewhere.

The sentence beginning ‘While I can appreciate…’ is 187 words long. While I can appreciate that the writer has a lot to say, there really is no need to abuse punctuation in this manner. The substantive points raised centre on the nebulous belief that ‘writers’ are somehow responsible for helping one another, that ‘we’ are all rightly subjected to the attentions of a literary establishment which can be relied-upon to find nuggets in the slush-pile – to that end, we should accept the status quo, presumably in the hope that one of us, from time-to-time, will be ‘discovered’.

The implication that anyone who does not assent to this ‘centuries old tradition’ is somehow treacherous, or not ‘playing-the-game’, is sloppy cant, and the precursor for the most personal attack in the message i.e. that I have, on this blog, misrepresented my publication ‘history’.

I made it very clear (in what I thought was a friendly ‘welcome’) that most of the work on this blog remains ‘unpublished’. I did not state that it had or hadn’t been seen by any ‘industry professionals’ because the extent to which my work has been scrutinised by such people is something I cannot and do not know. Yes, much of the material (especially the novels) has been submitted to the merry-go-round of publishers and agents, but a standard ‘Thanks for your submission, but…’ letter or e-mail indicates nothing more than the common decency of whoever found the time to send the thing (an increasingly rare occurrence). Having re-read the ‘Welcome’ page, and the brief descriptions of works which have so-far been posted, I don’t feel that I have in any way misrepresented anything, and certainly not on purpose – if it has been published, it’s been made clear. Perhaps it needs to be made clearer – if so, I’ll do it.

Then this piece of verbal rubbish:

‘How will it be possible to determine what work is worthy of even the most fleeting attention when everyone is a poet or novelist or playwright or some other kind of artist?’

That’s what the writer really fears – the notion that ‘everyone’ can create, ‘be an artist’, is what motivates that nasty little message. ‘H Weuhl’ thinks him/herself one of those-and-such-as-those who should be permitted to create ‘art’ of any kind, and so long as structures are in place to ensure that ‘creativity’ is the preserve of that anointed few, all will be well, the world will keep turning as it always has. Any psychoanalyst could spend ten minutes performing cursory textual analysis and come up with a daunting list of bubbling neuroses, but that’s not my area, so I’ll leave it to any ‘expert’ who feels like commenting.

As to the penultimate sentence (beginning ‘Finally…’), I will ignore the baiting references to ‘basic manners’ and ‘arrogance’, but take issue with this astonishingly ignorant statement:

‘I know of no reputable editor/publisher who would allow incomplete pieces to be published. It is a matter of professional standards being upheld…’

The writer has, inadvertently, raised a question of significant importance – when is any work of art ‘finished’? Presumably, the ‘professional standards’ referred to would have prevented publication of Ulysses (still riddled with typos), most of Hubert Selby’s work (full of deliberate (?) typos) and the early, tentative efforts of many thousands of honest writers (be they novelists, poets, journalists, lyricists etc etc) who allowed their work to be marketed in the knowledge that ‘the piece’ wasn’t perfect, not truly complete (whether the publisher knew that or not).

I expect to receive more messages of this kind, but I won’t be replying to them at such length – it may clarify matters to state that this blog exists for three main reasons:

1. To get two decades’ worth of work (published/unpublished, finished/unfinished) read by people who may enjoy it and/or pass it to others.

2. To gather all my work in one place so that, if I fall off the perch tomorrow, my family will know where it is (not have to collate disparate segments from scattered hard-discs/floppies, spider-webbed hard-copies etc) and have a better chance of flogging it for whatever it’s worth.

3. Because I want to do it, have the ‘right’ to do it, the means to do it, and have no other way of raising my ‘voice’.

Finally, I welcome the message from you, ‘H Weuhl’ (I hope you like that choice of pseudonym!) and look forward to more. Please reply, if you feel you have anything to add, and if you would like me to link to any of your recent work (is there any?) I’d be more than happy to do so.

August 10th 2010

If you’ve previously visited this blog, many thanks – it’s got off to a flyer, with over six hundred hits since the magnificent John Ferry helped me get it off the ground a couple of weeks ago.

The Creative Writing Masters at Glasgow University is coming to a close, and our final portfolio submissions are due in. As and when we’ve been graded and recieve our results, I’ll be posting my final submission on this blog – it’s a heavy, controversial piece, and I’m hoping it will cause a bit of a stir (or, as we call it here in Scotland, a ‘stushie’) – why? You’ll have to come back and find out.  Please bookmark this blog and refer it to friends.

Another complete novel will also be posted, in instalments, starting this week. It’s called Seb, and was a rare foray into ‘suspense thriller’ territory – if you like John Connolly, the so-called ‘Tartan Noir’ writers etc, it’ll be right up your alley. It’s a big one (116k) so it’ll be divided into printer-friendly chunks. Along with the novel I’ll be posting a full account of how and why Seb was never published, despite being provisionally accepted, then written to the detailed specifications of a prominent UK publisher - it’s a sad tale, but one which may hold pertinent and practical hints for some. Right now I’m having to proof it for the umpteenth time, because I didn’t discover, until very recently, that you don’t leave a space before exclamation & question marks. How sad is that  ?

Please let me know your thoughts about this blog - the whole idea of presenting complete works in this way, the design of the site, anything at all. I would love to know who’s reading my stuff, and why, and what you feel about it. It would be great to get some discussions going.