Newsflashes

Gosh, what a busy time it's been, hence teh humungous apologies for the lack of posting. I hope to make up for it now, with some meaty posts coming up on subjects like censorship and confessional literature. But first some updates!

BUYING MY BOOKS!
Has never been easier! I've compiledd a handy guide to where you can buy the physical copies of my two books - either online or from bookshops

SONGS FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL
bookstores:
The Albion Beatnik, Walton St,Oxford, UK
Rough Trade East, 91 Brick Lane, London, E1 UK
Camden Lock Books, Old Street Station, London, UK
Jaffe & Neale, Chipping Norton, UK

online:
Lulu
Rough Trade

SKIN BOOK
bookstores:
Rough Trade East, 91 Brick Lane, London, E1 UK

online:
Rough Trade

Not forgetting FREE DOWNLOADS
Songs From the Other Side of the Wall
SKIN BOOK

And from next week To Hell With Books at 10 Woburn Walk in Bloomsbury will be added to that list.

GIGS!
On Feb 4th Year Zero had an amazing gig at Rough Trade East on Brick Lane, with music from the fab InLight, Jessie Grace and To The Moon

And on 23rd Feb YEAR ZERO UNPLUGGED AT TO HELL WITH BOOKS will be our most daring gig yet

To Hell With Books is the bookstore part of To Hell With Publishing, one of the most exciting outfits in literature. Specialising in special editions, poetry, art, zines, and the uber-literary, they are a publishing press we actually love – and that’s like being a beloved carpaccio at a vegan dinner.I even blogged about them.

It’s an intimate setting, and a timetable without constraints, so to do our hosts justice, we’ve put together the following feast of unplugged delights for you. Come, listen, buy:

Dan and Daisy dueting Daisy Anne Gree’s Conversation in a Basement on 17th and Mission, in 1998
Penny Goring reading Bone Dust Disco
Daisy Anne Gree
Dan Holloway performing a world premiere of FREAKSHOW
Marc Nash performing “Non-Smoker” & “Meathook Carousel” from “A,B&E” plus “Mother-Daughter Coagulate”
Larry Harrison
Readings from Ali Cooper’s forthcoming The Girl on the Swing
PLUS: An acoustic set from the brilliant blues singer-songwriter Jessie Grace

MAILING LIST!
Year Zero has a mailing list!

We have no desire to spam you. On the other hand, we realise things can get lost in the blog, and we do like to give you freebies. So, from April 2nd, we will be sending out a monthly newsletter that will contain:

- what we’re up to in the following month – readings, publications, all sorts
- what was posted the previous month, with excerpts
- what we’ve been up to – reviews, write-ups of events, links to videos etc. - where to get hold of our books – in the real world, online, and as free downloads
highlights from our personal blogs

We will probably run a full e-newsletter every other month, with a digest one in the intervening months, depending upon our time – and yours. We may even run some writing comps.
To subscribe, simply e-mail yearzeromaillist@googlemail.com and put “subscribe” in the subject line

We will ONLY send you the monthly newsletter unless you initiate correspondence. We will NEVER divulge or shgare your e-mail address (even with ourselves, as it were – so if you sign up for newsletters from Year Zero you won’t suddenly find yourself on Marc or Dan’s private mailing list). All information will be handled in accordance with the 1998 UK Data Protection Act. You may unsubscribe at any time simply by e-mailing the above address with “unsubscribe” in the subject line.

Some writing by Year Zero Writers may be unsuitable for minors – by subscribing to our newsletter you are affirming that you are of a suitable age to access such material. Year Zero Writers will not be responsible, jointly or severally, if this is not the case.

Countdown: 2 weeks till SKIN BOOK goes on sale

You may have been following my latest project, SKIN BOOK, over at Year Zero. Probably you haven't been :) Anyway, you can read it all for free over there, but if you want a little something in your hands, complete with artwork and design by the amazing Sarah E Melville, there's only two weeks to wait.

The hard copy of SKIN BOOK will not be a standard paperback - that just wouldn't fit the book. It will consist of 8 double-sided high quality cards, of A6 (5.5" x 4.5") size, punched and threaded on a bootlace - like a lanyard programme you'd get at a festival - only bootlaces go with the feel better than lanyards. Price will be under £5 + postage if you order online, or less postage if you buy direct from our live gigs - such as the event at Rough Trade Records, Brick Lane on Feb 4th at 6pm.

SKIN BOOK is a prose poem, first performed in full at Free-e-day live on December 1st. It tells the story of a woman, never touched by another living human, who writes her lonely memories in her SKIN BOOK, her diary made of human skin. And her love for a man who spends his days stalking strangers on the subway, women he can never touch.

Above, you can see Sarah's amazing cover. Which you can have hand tinted in red or not according to taste (but no extra expense). Below you'll see chapter 1. There are also three exclusive, full-page art pieces by Sarah. I hope it's the kind of collectors' edition that you'll consider worth spenidng a fiver on.

Free-e-day live

Free-e-day live was the real-life gig to tie in with Free-e-day, the global online celebraion of internet culture that I dreamt up on the bus one afternoon and ended up attracting 100 participants all offering amazing creative things for free, and giving us workshops and webchats with invaluable resources for anyone outside the mainstream. It has been all a bit of a wonderful haze.

Free-e-day live was put together by local singer-songwriter Nikki Loy (pictured) who, being an illustrator as well as musician, embraced the multi-arts idea behind the festival. Held at Oxford's Cafe Tarifa, the night featured an art ecxhibition, belly dancers dressed as skeletons, music and reading. It was a fantastic night with a fantastic crowd. Let me bore you with a LITTLE about what makes a live, indie occasion like this great.

First off there's the hyper-contrived shot for the local rag (who thought, for some reason, that we were giving away electronic gadgets and wanted Nikki and I to hold up some mobile phobnes for the photoshoot!). next there's the inevitable when you invite people from London. As the 8 o'clock kick-off approached, 2 writers and the headline band remained, as so many before them, and so many, I dare say, to come, stranded on the M40. Never have I been so pleased (I'm always pleased to see him, but I can't remember physically bear-hugging him before) to see Roland (pictured left), who gave us a brilliant rendition of Chapter 17 of The Beach Beneath the Pavement. Hearing his words somehow made them even funnier than they had been on the page, a reminder that stories - whatever your age and their genre - are best read aloud.

Setting the reader-musician rhythm we were next treated to a rather endearing keyboard and vocals set from the big-voiced Mol Hodge. "Most of my songs are a bit morbid" she told us nervously. "Bloody hell, if you think that's morbid just wait for SKIN BOOK" I thought. Mol has a great voice, and plenty of time on her side, and as she explores the melodic range of her music over the years to come is sure to be someone we see more of.

Nikesh Shukla is someone the world has already seen plenty of. With a string of TV and radio credits, festival appearances, awards and the like, he is far the most advanced and successful of any of ourt artists on the night, and we were hideous lucky to snag him - not only that he doled out copies of his kidologies CD to grateful audience members. Having introduced Nikesh as a poet he proceeded to read us a short story, but the performance element of Rap Tracks - a hilarious tale of pre-teen rap, Asian grandmothers and Gujurati dialect - was the match of anything slam poetry can offer. More confirmation that anyone who says writers can't engage an audience with prose is talking nonsense.

I met Nikki Loy, who came on as Nikesh departed back for the next of 20 gigs in 32 days, when she was busking on Oxford's St Giles. I was so taken with her guitar and vocals I snaffled a card and dropped her an e-mail, and I've been impressed with her ebergy, verve, and all-round artistic enthusiasm ever since. This was the first time I've seen her live, and I was impressed by the way she handles a crowd and the way she handles a guitar. She too had freebie CDs that were gobbled up gladly.

In the interval, Nikki came up to me and said "can you hold this?" pointing to a UV tube. "Er, OK" I said rather confusedly, until I saw what was coming next, a train of skeletons snaking to the stage who proceeded to shake their fluorescent booty to music I was too gobsmacked to notice much but think may have been some scuzzy Goldfrapp.

The Scary Skele-belly Dancers gave me the perfect segue into the world premiere of the whole of SKIN BOOK - you know "those were th bones, now for some skin" - ah the joys of improv! Won't say much about me (below). That would be rude. Suffice to say my opinion remains unchanged - performing to a live audience is THE best thing a writer can do - feeling attentive eyes, listening to the gasps the sighs - that kind of engagement is what writing is all about. I THINK people enjoyed it - if enjoy is the right word for a story about a woman whose diary is made from skin she harvested from her twin bro.

The headline act seemed to enjoy it, though, which was nice. The Joker and The Thief describe themselves as a folk blues combo which had me worried before the show. I dislike folk so much I wouldn't hand a picture of Fleet Foxes to my dartboard because it would be unfair to the bristles. But The Joker and the Thief were an unexpected delight. Full of energy (proper energy - the kind you actually believe might just come from some kind of dark passionate place rather than the gurning wurzelly cheeriness of much folk), they delivered a set that was variegated and exciting. They have a penchant for playing around with different instruments, whcih added colour to the set - from frontman Dan (sounds like an epithet from Total Wipeouut) banging the cymbals with an assortment of bells and sticks, to Josh's alternation of ukelele, sax and accordian (far my favourite - I could almost feel myself on the set of Amelie).

A pretty much perfect night was rounded off when two of the skele-bellies came back dressed in burlesque and the crowd dispersed happily into the night.

There seem to be some obvious lessons from a night like this. Everyone would do well to bear them in mind:

1. There is a ridiculous wealth of talent outside the mainstream.

2. The creative world is full of almost boundless energy, enthusiasm, and can-do attitude.

3. Writers are every bit as engaging as musicians.

Here's hoping this is the first of very many such nights I get the pleasure of being involved in. A HUGE thanks to all who contributed, to Cafe Tarifa for being such great hosts, and most of all to Nikki for making it happen.

A full list of artists who contributed to the exhibition:

Cheryl Pearce – Poet
cherylpearce@yahoo.com

Will Mankelow – Photographer
RocketoPhotography@yahoo.com

Sandra Farrow – Photographer
http://www.farrowphotography.co.uk/

Nikki Loy – Illustrator
nikkiloy@yahoo.co.uk

James Whayman
– Photographer
http://www.unformedmind.com/

Sarah Kennedy – Artist
email: acrylicartist@gmail.com
http://www.sarahkennedyart.com/

Year Zero Writers and Rob Lennox - artist: http://www.yearzerowriters.wordpress.com/

Dealing with the Dark Places: Writing and Self-Doubt

This post is a culmination of several things that have happened in the last couple of days. First, I read an amazing post by my friend Eric Robertson over at The Indie Handbook about his battle for his identity. Then Larry put me onto a thought-provoking piece by Jeanette Winterson on how creative people take the wounded substance of their souls and try and remake it into something alive. Finally, yesterday Sabina England, whom many of you will remember from my interview with her, removed her coruscating masterpiece Brown Trash from Authonomy again. All that, and I've just uploaded the first two portions of SKIN BOOK, a piece of writing that's left me almost hollow.

A year or so ago I made a comment on a writing forum that every author at some point, if not all the time, believes, deep down, their work is worthless. I was told by a writer I still respect a huge amount not to be so ridiculous. No real writers thought like that. This post is about why he's both utterly wrong, yet somehow right. It's about the dark places. It's about Self-doubt with a capital "S", the kind of dount that penetrates us in the night, latches itself to every part of our soul we ever values, and sucks the colour and the worth from us until all that's left is the dank, grey nothing of shame - shame that we could ever have considered ourselves anything but worthless; shame that we could have imagined someone would have wanted to read our work; shame that we stuck our head so stupidly above the parapet; shame, and embarrassment, and fear at hat the world will say when the darkness recedes and dawn brings into sight the chorus of laughing, mocking faces that surround our bed.

Being bipolar, I am aware I have a strange relationship with doubt. Some of the time, in my hypomanic highs, I am convinced within a week I will be feted the world over. Some of the time, in the black dog lows, I know the whole world sees my worthlessness.

It's that second feeling that stays with me in the "well" phases, when the rest of my life is balanced. Like many in the arts, I am great at hiding it, even from myself. I guess I could teach others to do the same, call it NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) and charge a fortune for the privilege.

But I don't want to. When I'm blogging, and when I'm mingling, or networking or whatever you want to call it, that kind of learned self-deception is actually rather useful. But when I'm writing - even when I'm speaking, or reading, things I genuinely love doing, it's not. Winterson made a wonderful point, about the way art doesn't come from the surface. It wells up out of our wounds (her phrase), it's a pressure that bursts through our fragile surface like magma (mine).

And that's the point with writing. It HAS to come from the dark places of doubt. It has to come from hurt and pain and unconfidence. Because writing for readers is like being with a wild animal - if you act it, they'll sniff you out and kill you.

[A philosophical aside - why am I equating pain, hurt, and self-doubt? Because, at a fundamental level, they are the same. Existential pain is the consequence of recognising that one is not self-sufficient. It's about coming face to face with your brokenness - and THAT means acknowledging how far short of perfection we fall. And how can we meet that recognition with anything but the most crippling self-doubt?]

So, all real writers experience self-doubt in a base, tautological sense (because if they don't their writing is of little value). I tend to think they also FEEL it, much of the time. And it is, like I said, crippling. Literally.

The key moment comes when we realise that our imperfection is the result of nothing other than being human. It is our common bond with every other person. And what's more, it is our acknowledgement of that imperfection - it is the fact of self-doubt - that means we, more than the 90% of "I'm all right Jack"s out there, have the possibility, however remote, of creating something of value.

IT IS THE SELF-DOUBT WE EXPERIENCE AS CRIPLPING US WITH SHAME AND FEAR THAT ACTUALLY, WHEN WE ACKNOWLEDGE IT, IS THE IMPETUS THAT DRIVES FORWARD OUR CREATIVITY. And if we can bring ourselves to make that result public, then we MAY, just, create art.

So my good friend the well-respected writer was, in a way, correct. Real writers don't - at a level deeper than the existential - at the level, Heidegger would say, of being itself - have doubt. But only because real writers know that it is only their doubt that gives their writing value.

Rita Hayworth famously said that she could always failed at relationships because they went to bed with Gilda, and woke up with Rita Hayworth. What she failed to realise, of course, was that it was only Rita Hayworth who made Gilda Gilda. And failing to realise it destroyed her.

And that's the trouble with being an artist or a writer or a musician, or anyone in the arts. The very thing that has the potential to set your work above the mass is something that could, literally, kill you. It did for Rita Hayworth; it did for Kurt Cobain; it has the potential to do for any of us who take that step and admit we want to be more than average. Because the one thing that keeps 90% of people safe is that practised self-deception. And when you're an artist, you make a pact to practice that as little as possible. It's why many creative people with mental health problems refuse to take medication to take the edge off their lows. It's a pact with the devil.

But the devil has the best tunes. And the best books. That's why.