Writing banality
Sometimes, when on my deck, I imagine seeing so much when really there is just a huge expanse of ocean, nothing but calm waves and rising birds.
Everything is tidy in the house. So I’m about to sit down and write.
All I have in front of me is a screen and on the screen a blank page of a ‘word’ document. At some point, I have to make up my mind to begin.
Isn’t it the damndest thing to think about writing, to see it all going down in a white heat, flaming the page at the corner with the sheer speed of thought, only to come here and say what?
A big fat zilch, that’s what.
How do professionals cope with such things? Perhaps they don’t. Maybe they see it as a job and don’t wait around for inspiration, which makes sense, as waiting probably means not getting anything done, ever!
So, all this being true, what is wrong? Why can’t I think of a sentence to place here that gives me half a chance of continuing?
I heard a lot about that ‘writer’s block’ thing and always wondered what, if there is such a thing, it feels like? I don’t think this is writer’s block, I think this is inadequacy, fear, trepidation at the prospect of wanting to say something that other’s will find boring, or worse, indifferent.
The answer is to write and not let anyone see it. Millions do and live very happily, so why not me? Ego, that’s the thing. My bloody big ego gets in the way of that idea. I want to write and have someone say, “…yeh, that’s it for me, too,” or, “…that was a great story, made me feel I was right there in the thick of it.” Best of all would be someone writing and saying, “…you made me feel better.” But then I’m faced with the very real prospect of people writing to say, “…and I thought I was bad, hell, I’m going to keep going!”
This writing thing is an animal, isn’t it? I mean let’s just say one person wrote me after this, and said, “…you know what, I understood and it kind of made me feel good that I’m not the only one struggling.”
That would be worth risking ridicule for. But what if NO- ONE wrote that. What if the only response was that my writing reached such heights of banality and unending dullness, they couldn’t get passed the first page?
Wow, that’s a way to get frost bitten and no joke!
I’ve been thinking what it would like to write my very last letter on the brink of death. You know, to sit here now and share with you my last thoughts, all the risks taken, the whole force of my vitality shared on the page, and to have that voice dismissed as pathetic or a joke because I never quite said it the way I had envisaged saying it. Like it or not I must accept the reality of that.
It’s okay, I ain’t goin’ anywhere. I gots to get my grammar right first, and says what I intend to say come the time.
There’s a place in writing that offers ambition, free of fear. I’m searching for it. Where the passing of stranger’s, rare and unperceived, join with me for a fleeting moment and find here some common ground. That’s the dream, right?
More often than not I find myself staring across No-Man’s land, confronting all my doubts. It’s pretty scary because ‘self belief’ takes some working at.
There’s any number of places to start, it only takes a look out to somewhere.
The woods grow steep above the cliffs; they reach sometimes the very summit of heights, or, when they cannot attain them, fill in the suns light, shading me from a world of shame.
But where to then? That’s the thing, see, I’ve got to keep going. Write utter crap but keep going, and hope I get a chance to come back, start over, or hurl it in the bin.
Well, you know, who the heck am I to insist anyone else should keep going. I never completed a good literary work in my life! I ain’t just ready yet but it’s in my destiny. I saw it written on a cloud, or maybe I heard my daughter tell me — ‘You can do it, just believe in yourself.’
The voice didn’t say anything about the ‘Frost-Bite’ scenario.
The page has a way of revealing more than I want to say. It’s a strange and exciting place to be. Exciting because I just got an idea…which means you don’t have to read anymore of my banality.
I’m off to thaw out my heart in a pan of hot water.
