I Did Keep A Travel Diary Once

I Wrote A Whole Novel Before The Beach. Unpublishable. Junk. But, For Some Reason I Stuck At Novels And Wrote A Second. Still Not Sure Why I Didn't Give Up. Stubborn, Maybe.

You Fish, Swim, Eat, Laze Around, And Everyone's So Friendly. It's Such Simple Stuff, But... If I Could Stop The World And Restart Life, Put The Clock Back, I Think I'd Restart It Like This. For Everyone.

My First Attempt At Writing Was Very Unstructured And Formless, With Shifting Points Of View. I Was Trying To Understand How Long Form Might Work, And I Realized I Had Something Shapeless. It Was A Total Car Wreck. But I Still Felt I Could Pull It Off. So I Ditched That Attempt And Started Writing In The Opposite Manner, In First Person, With A Driving Narrative.

Vietnam, Me Love You Long Time. All Day, All Night, Me Love You Long Time. (...) Dropping Acid On The Mekong Delta, Smoking Grass Through A Rifle Barrel, Flying On A Helicopter With Opera Blasting Out Of Loudspeakers, Tracer-fire And Paddy-field Scenery, The Smell Of Napalm In The Morning. Long Time.

The Success That Comes From My Books Is Not Something I Feel Very Comfortable With. Past A Certain Point You Have To Accept The Idea That The Success Is A Lot To Do With The Timing And Luck And That Divorces You From It Massively. There Are Aspects Of It That I Haven't Got Used To At All. But I've Enjoyed Some Parts Of It Massively. It Relates To The Same Reason I Did A Lot Of Backpacking — Partly For The Experience — It's Something To Tell My Grandkids. It's A Weird Chain Of Events To Have In Your Life.