What to do with my time...

I just stumbled over a wonderful online resource - The Paris Review. Well, I knew about The Paris Review, of course, because of some excellent compilations of interviews with writers that got published decades ago - as Writers At Work (ed. George Plimpton).

And now it turns out that the interviews appear online in the archives. If you want hard copy they cost quite a bit, but what a joy to have free access to these interviews! I'll start with Blaise Cendrars, I reckon (you have to start somewhere). I came across him through Henry Miller's recommendation, and only ever read him in translation (My French, in spite of those years spent at school, simply doesn't suffice).

3:AM Cult Hero: Blaise Cendrars

The hazy world of Blaise Cendrars      Lee Rourke on Cendrars

I love the deadpan style:

"My dear sir, it's a matter of language. For several years, each time that I prepare to write a book, I first arrange the vocabulary I am going to employ. Thus, for L'Homme foudroyé, I had a list of three thousand words arranged in advance, and I used all of them. That saved me a lot of time and gave a certain lightness to my work. It was the first time I used that system. I don't know how I happened onto it . . . It's a question of language."

*****

Sadly, I find myself not writing at all - at least not contributing to anything more than the ephemera of the internet.  I really did set out with good intentions to tackle the autobiography this time, but even with the wonderful Scrivener for Windows to play with I just can't motivate myself.

So much so, that I think I might have to publish the work-in-progress under the title of Mockup (an unused title I quite like, but what the hell, you can't keep everything secret) and be done with it until I feel dissatisfied and go back to polish up edition two (these joys and temptations arise from the nature of modern, Print-On-Demand self-publishing).