Eating Penis.

I have thought about gutting a man – pushing him down onto a filthy linoleum floor with my strong left arm, which wrapped around his throat like a vice, both stopping him from moving and breathing. Then I thought about showing him the knife that would end his life and watching the panic bewilder him as I lower it to the pit of his stomach and start to carve, dispassionately, through the flesh and gristle and tissue as he flails around in his own evacuated waste, looking for salvation and finding nothing but death’s cold embrace.



I have also thought about being in the middle of a gay orgy – even though I am completely straight – eating human flesh, blowing up a school full of children, being raped by a woman at knifepoint and disposing of body parts without risk of discovery.

I think about these things because I’m writing, or have written, about people who do these things, so I need to know how people like me might behave in such situations. I have mused here before about not having to write about things you know because that is restrictive and reductive, both of which are bad things if you are going to write fiction of any kind, but that doesn’t mean you just wing it. My research into how a human might taste involved reading numerous news articles about cannibalism, tracking down a recipe for seared human flesh and reading the psychological evaluation of Armin Meiwes, who sautéed and ate the penis of a bloke he had met online in a pan with salt, pepper, and garlic. I’m now writing about lunatics, life coaches and actors and am doing the appropriate research – although they all seem worryingly similar.

I have to do this stuff because my own life is so very dull, as I suspect is the daily existence of so many writers. Here you go; I get up, stare at the computer whilst rearranging my underpants, drink some coffee, read some emails – none of which are EVER from the few people I really want to hear from, like my agent, or my producer – have some breakfast, type some stuff, take some calls – none of which are EVER from the few people I really want to hear from, like my agent, or my producer – delete the stuff I wrote earlier, think about having a wank, check the football news, rewrite the bits I didn’t delete, actually have a wank, drink beer at my desk, delete most of the stuff I didn’t delete earlier and then collapse, exhausted in front of the television, hoping that the number of words I have deleted is less than the number of words I started the day with, because that’s then a win. In between the arduous tasks of the day, I check Facebook and smoke cigarettes many, many times.

Pretty dull, right?


This then, is my day. And it is scarily similar to the process that the other writers I know follow as they attempt to make a living from writing stuff down. Now, this is no kind of scientific survey – I don’t know many other writers, because they are generally shallow, lazy, dull, people wholly lacking in social skills or any idea of social etiquette and there is only room for one of those in my life. If you’re reading my nonsense because you think that writing for games, film or television might be a nice way to make a living, then you probably want to reassess. There are moments, of course, when one is interviewed, or there is a premiere, or you actually have something made and it gets a good review (which you can carefully cut out and slip into a clear plastic envelope and pull out of your pocket to read whenever the Cloud of Dread hovers,) but those moments are few and far between. For the most part, the writer's life is one of solitude, lack of social interaction and Not Very Much Money.

But...

...it also allows one to smoke at will, have a wank, check the football news, drink beer at your desk and generally fuck around, whilst reading recipes for seared human flesh and looking at pictures of people having orgies. Where else could you do that for money, even if the rates are low? And there’s more – sometimes, if the number of words you delete is less than the number of words you have written, and you can keep this impressive work-rate up for a number of weeks in one stretch and the words are okay when they are stitched together, well, it is possible that you will get the thing made. And then you have created something from thin air – built a world from nothing at all, populated it with wonderfully interesting people, given them conflicts to resolve in an emotionally satisfying manner and entertained people across the world, people who will carry your creation in their minds until the end of days.

So, on balance, it isn’t too bad, really.