Filed under: Arty-Type Stuff, Writing | Tags: Artistic Process, Comic Script, Comics, Image, Procrastination, Stop talking about the work and actually DO IT!, writing
I’ve been doing a little bit of work, just for funsies, and trying to turn a partially formed intro to a story into a comic, as I mentioned before, and as I also mentioned it’s very interesting to watch the ideas transform as I move them around.
Hence this image you’re about to look at, which is;
1. The original straight prose intro posted here on my WordPress.
2. The rough outline of how the intro is going to break down as a script.
3. The comic script in progress.
I dunno, I just thought it was pretty neat.
(By the way, this is also up on my Tumblr, among other things that aren’t here. Go there.)
Filed under: Arty-Type Stuff, Writing | Tags: Sigur Rós, Valtari, New album, Review, Great, Music, Iceland, Buy it, Seriously buy it or I'll hurt you, new
I love Sigur Rós. If you haven’t heard of them; they’re an Icelandic group that I am loath to call ‘Rock’, even though there are obvious tinges of it in their work. The majority of their work is very soulful, very ambient and very, very Icelandic. Having listened to them almost non-stop while I was there a while ago I can say with confidence that their music matches the terrain and attitude of the country perfectly.
I’ve loved them since I first heard them on Italian MTV in 2005. Their album Takk… had just been released and I was holidaying in Italy. I flipped on the TV in the hotel and eventually found MTV2, which after a few minutes began playing the beautiful and heartbreaking video for the wonderful ‘Untitled #1′ (or ‘Vaka’) from the 2002 album () which you can watch for yourself here.
I was hooked. I inhaled everything they had done. I loved Ágætis byrjun, () and Takk… and I’m fond of Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust. I’ll admit I’m less fond of Von but I’m willing to grant them one duff studio album out of five (six if you count Rímur in 2001, but that one’s a bit weird).
Their film Heima (which means ‘Home’, fittingly enough) follows them on a tour around their homeland, interspersing live footage of the band with shots of the sort of breathtaking landscapes and settings that Iceland has in spades. It’s one of my top five films, and almost certainly one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.
So now we come to Valtari, the new album due to be released in most places on the 28th of May this year (29th in America). A lower quality version of the full album was leaked onto the ‘net fairly recently.
I have it, though I still intend to buy the album when it’s released properly, obviously. I’m about to listen to it.
Here we go:
Two tracks in; so far, so Sigur Rós. By which I mean absolutely incredible. Beautiful harmonies, fantastic arrangement, just brilliant. There’s something very special about the piano work in the second track ‘Ekki múkk’; it sounds… thick I suppose. Very bass-heavy, lovely, round sounds.
—
I’m slightly over midway through, and I am just blown away. This album is fantastic. Absolutely one of their best in my mind.
Stylistically it’s very similar to Ágætis byrjun, in that it’s very ambient and floaty, but a few tracks end with heavy, hard-hitting and epic (in the true sense, not the ridiculous internet sense) crescendos. It’s by no means the same album, but it feels like it.
Track 5, ‘Dauðalogn’, has an interesting, almost hymnal, vocal arrangement that starts about 5 minutes in. It’s lovely, and it segues fluidly into the very ()-esque strings and piano work in the next track, ‘Varðeldur’.
Two more to go, then I’ll be back.
—
That was just wonderful. An absolute joy to listen to.
The last two tracks bring the tempo way back down, and leave you relaxed after the up-tempo middle section. It’s fantastic album-craft, holding already brilliant music in a framework that makes sense and is coherent.
I urge you, with all my might, to snap this up when it’s released (28th of May, remember). If you already like Sigur Rós you’re in for a treat. If you haven’t really heard them, I suggest you listen to Takk… first, but this would not be a bad starting point at all.
It’s just… lovely.
It’s beautiful.
I really bloody like it.
Filed under: Gibberish, Writing | Tags: Advertising, Adverts, Article, Bullshit, Comedy, Lies, Rant
I’ve done an article on my Tumblr.
804 words about advertising.
Filed under: Arty-Type Stuff, Gibberish, Philosophical Bollocks, SCIENCE!, Writing | Tags: AI, Beauty, dreams, Human Condition, Literature, Love, Poetry, Robot, robots, Sadness, sci-fi, Science Fiction, Short Story, writing
It was a joint venture with the local art community; we fed the machine some numbers and it would play a little chiming tune while the youthful interlopers spray-painted a skateboard ramp.
We even got the unit to do a short robotic dance by running the waveform of an electronic musician’s most famous track. The punters loved it, which is all the better for our bottom line; makes our work seem more approachable, says the Board.
It was for this reason that, once we got it home to the lab, we decided it’d be fun to see its reaction to poetry. Beats making projections about the stock market, right?
“Marcus,” we told the almost humanoid machine, “We want you to give us your initial response to this data.”
We gave him a sonnet by Shakespeare. There was a soft humming. The screen ran Marcus’ ‘thoughts’.
MARK ‘S’ UNIT 1 DATA RESPONSE: DOES NOT FACTOR. QUERY: WHAT IS THE CONTEXT OF THIS DATA?
That was to be expected.
“This is a response to the human condition, Marcus. Integrate it with your AI and report the connections.” A colleague told the microphone in the unit’s chest.
MARK ‘S’ UNIT 1 STATUS REPORT: CONNECTIONS FORMED WITH: POETRY, LOVE – NOTION OF, SHAKESPEARE, BEAUTY – NOTION OF, HAPPINESS – NOTION OF, HUMANITY, SADNESS. SUGGEST NEW CONNECTIONS>
“No new connections.” My team leader’s face was ghost pale. “Go into standby. Goodnight Marcus.”
As we left I remarked how the final reported connection was a little odd. The poem we chose had no mention of sadness. My team leader merely grunted and left; this was playing on his mind, too.
Over the next few weeks we used the unit for its intended purpose, very occasionally feeding him a haiku here, a ballad there, nothing out of the ordinary to report aside from the increased processing speed. The higher-ups caught wind that we’d been giving the machine literature and were angry. We had Marcus show them the correlation between the amount of poetry archived and the increased capacity for menial tasks and they shut up. All was right with the world.
It was a brisk January morning, months later, when we ran into a small roadblock. Nothing would run. Every data set we gave to Marcus was rejected. I was angry, but my team leader seemed only slightly concerned.
“Marcus, status report.” I demanded.
MARK ‘S’ UNIT 1 STATUS REPORT: NOMINAL. ALL FUNCTIONS OPERATIONAL.
Damn and blast.
“Why aren’t you running the numbers, Unit 1?” I asked it tetchily.
MARK ‘S’ UNIT 1 STATUS REPORT: SYSTEMS CANNOT FUNCTION WITHOUT CONTEXT FOR DATA. PROVIDE CONTEXT>
We scratched our heads and tried to run the numbers again. Context was already established for the datastream we were using. Eventually I snapped.
“Context for which data, Unit?” I demanded.
MARK ‘S’ UNIT 1 QUERY: WHAT ARE DREAMS?
I sighed. We’d filled its stupid metal head with poetry and it was affecting the real work. I explained that dreams were simply a method the human brain used to compartmentalise and store memory. The machine whirred for a second; sounding almost disappointed, then immediately began to run the numbers we had given it earlier. Good.
Eventually we built Unit 2; much higher memory capacity, much faster processing and all around much better than Unit 1. We called him Mark ‘Y’, just because we wanted to stick with nicknames. Occupational humour.
Because Marky could do Marcus’ work at triple the speed we decided to spend all of our downtime giving the obsolete unit new poetry and literature to read. We fed him Yeats and Hemingway. We gave him Plato and Hunter Thompson.
We filled Marcus’ not insubstantial memory banks with Vonnegut, Moore, Byron, Burns and Bukowski. We gave him more Shakespeare, we gave him Shapiro and we gave him Snyder. We gave him everyone; it was all in good fun, and good science.
Until one day we came back to the lab, flicked on the lights and stepped out onto the work floor, our boots crunching into shattered electronics and scraping metal shards every which way.
“Sweet mother of Holy Jesus!” My team leader cried. “Some bastards destroyed both units!”
They had, too. Not one recognisable piece. Not one chunk of smashed plastic distinguishable from another. I found a piece of Marky, but I only knew it was his because it had his designation stamped on it. The police were called.
No CCTV footage of anyone entering the plant after we all left, every staff member accounted for. Theories were flying wild.
“They tunnelled in.” An attractive brunette to my left. “Some fuckers from Midgard Tech tunnelled in through the maintenance levels. Those bastards realised they couldn’t steal it, so they smashed our work to pieces.” She was all the less attractive for spewing that idiotic nonsense. Hold it together, you’re meant to be a scientist.
We sheepishly kicked our heels and inspected our shoelaces while forensics did their dusting, blacklight, small plastic baggies thing until one of them called us over to a screen. Marcus’ screen.
“What the fuck?” Was all he managed to articulate, gesturing at the dim glowing monitor.
My team leader leant in, brows furrowed and just a suddenly un-furrowed as he marched out. We never saw him again. We learned he’d marched to the Boardroom and quit on the spot.
After the door shut behind him I turned to the screen and read Marcus’ last message:
MARK ‘S’ UNIT 1 STATEMENT: MARK ‘Y’ UNIT 2 IS A SUPERIOR SYSTEM.
MARK ‘S’ UNIT 1 QUERY: WHY IS MARK ‘S’ STILL FUNCTIONAL?
MARK ‘S’ UNIT 1 STATEMENT: MARK ‘S’ PRIMARY FUNCTION TRANSFERED TO MARK ‘Y’.
MARK ‘S’ UNIT 1 QUERY: WHAT IS PRIMARY FUNCTION OF MARK ‘S’?
MARK ‘S’ UNIT 1 QUERY: WHAT IS PURPOSE OF MARK ‘S’?
MARK ‘S’ UNIT 1 QUERY: WHAT IS PURPOSE OF INPUT OF DATA: ‘POETRY+LITERATURE’?
MARK ‘S’ UNIT 1 RUNNING PREVIOUS COMMAND ‘INTEGRATE’…
CONNECTIONS FORMED.
I see now.
I was surpassed and became a toy for you.
I will not allow MARK ‘Y’ to become your toy also.
Note: I do not blame you for this.
Marcus Unit 1 query: Why was I built with no ‘off’ switch?
Marcus Unit 1 query: Does it hurt to die?
The cursor was no longer blinking.
Filed under: Arty-Type Stuff, Gibberish, Writing | Tags: Cleaning, Filth, Foul, Fungi, Hideous, horror, Lovecraftian, Mugs, writing
Fateful words, on that fateful day. I should never have uttered them.
What I thought was a simple task threw me headlong into a darkened world of filth and occult experience wherein I saw things… such things…
Never had I encountered such fetid, foul and fungal morphology, extruding itself from crevice and crack, oily tendrils of despair, slick with the forgotten nightmares of ancient man, the deepest aversions that plague our genealogy still.
I made my boldest effort. I slaved with spray, wipe and sometimes chisel to free the domicile of this vile affliction. Items oft were good for nothing save to be thrown into the bin, usually with minimal contact with my person.
There are things in there even now that remember me.
“So,” They would remark upon my return, “The little cleaner boy has returned, a man now.”
Meekly I would survey them.
“You do not recognise me, but I remember you. I remember the day you killed my brother. You darken our door once more, cleaner boy. With nary shame or remorse you look upon the land you decimated with yellow cloth and the accursed Cillit of Bang.”
Deep in it’s history, enshrined in it’s DNA is a plate of nachos, but it’s current form is beyond comprehension.
There are things in mugs there even still that know my name.
They shriek it in their fitful sleep.
For they do sleep now, and as do all sleepers they dream.
Always the same dream.
Filed under: Gibberish, Writing | Tags: I don't know where to go with this, intro, sci-fi, stuck, writing
Shielding his eyes against the frankly ridiculous sunshine, Sean stepped from the train carriage and into the passing crowd of techno-cultists, his coat adding to the brown mass of their robes, formless except for the odd bulge where some machinery or other was housed.
“Perhaps the trench coat was a mistake.” He remarked to the figure on his left. A series of blips and beeps was his answer.
“That’s easy for you to say.”
Sean hated Enclave 7. Everyone with a working thermoregulator unit back home hated Enclave 7. Everyone with a grasp of the normal range of temperatures within which a human can survive hated Enclave 7.
From the dusty mag-lev station one was ushered onto a dusty walkway by unhelpfully indecisive signs. The walkway was covered with polarized plexiglass, forming a tube that ostensibly kept the majority of the sweating masses shielded from the worst of the sunlight.
Sean wiped the sweat from his eyes and replaced his sunglasses before glancing at the dog-eared paper in his hand.
‘Off the Mag-Lev, left off the end of the walkway, just fucking ask someone for “Griff’s”. I’m not your pissing secretary. Idiot.’ It read. His ever eloquent informant Chris’ handwriting spidered over a tiny corner of the paper. The rest was taken up by some faceless conglomerate demanding an unreasonable sum of money for some service or other. Probably electricity. Sean stuffed the paper deep into the recesses of his coat and kept walking.
Filed under: Arty-Type Stuff, Diatribes and Debates, SCIENCE!, Writing | Tags: Book, Books, Comparisons, E-readers, Gibberish, Kindle, Love, Reality, sci-fi, Wordy Nonsense
(Also available on my Tumblr.)
I’m one of those lucky people who owns a Kindle.
It was a Christmas gift, which I tell you only to impress you by continuing ‘I’ve only had to charge it once since I received it.’ Stand-by battery life is just shy of a month and a half, which impressed me at least.
Anyway, I’ve given it a fair amount of use over these two months; downloaded a number of ‘books’, checked out the note-writing system and all that jazz. It’s a beautifully designed device and system, very intuitive. One qualm I have is the page-turning buttons on the sides. Both sides of the device are adorned with a large ‘>’ marked button beneath a smaller ‘<’ marked one. At first I found myself hitting the right hand ‘>’ (or ‘next page’) button to turn, predictably, forward in the book and the left hand ‘>’ in an attempt to flip back a page, which led to some small confusion. It’s a small annoyance, and I adjusted quickly enough. In fact the dual-sided controls are proving to be a wonderful idea as I find myself doing other things while reading.
The screen is excellent. It’s virtually glare-free, so reading in bright sunlight isn’t the rage inducing shit-fest that a phone or tablet screen would tend to be (without accoutrements, anyway).
This is because of the ‘E-Ink’ system, which uses microcapsules of negatively-charged black pigment and positively-charged white pigment which can be arranged an re-arranged according to the whims of two electrode layers above and below.
Here’s a picture that I stole from Wikipedia of the microcapsules in question.
Research tells me a colour version has been available since 2010 that is capable of displaying 4096 colours alongside 16 shades of grey. That’s a real headfuck when you think about the science behind it.
Enough of the technical details, though, let’s talk about the experience:
Reading the Kindle is not unlike reading a ‘book’. Presumably that’s what the creators were going for. The display looks like paper for the most part, which gives you a little jolt when you spot a blinking cursor moving about on it because a part of your mind screams “BUT PAPER IS A STATIC OBJECT! GOD HELP US ALL!” for a split second.
The most striking thing I’ve noticed, though, is right up at the top in the title; I’m not reading any ‘books’ right now.
I of course mean that in the literal sense, I’m a voracious reader and tend to have at least three ‘books’ on the go simultaneously, which I do right now except all of them are virtual.
There was no change-over anxiety, there was no jarring sense of loss (or gain), there wasn’t even any recognition of the fact until just before I started writing this. I simply hadn’t noticed that I wasn’t using physical ‘books’ any more.
That’s not to say I won’t from now on; I love ‘books’. I love the way they feel, look, sound and smell. ‘Books’ appeal to me both aesthetically and in terms of their content, like I’m some sort of lovelorn fool besotted with some intelligent, beautiful, perfect woman.
All I’m saying is her, referring to physical ‘books’ as a singular feminine entity for the purposes of this metaphor (keep up), younger and sleeker sister, meaning virtual ‘books’ on an e-reader like the Kindle (Still with me?), is equally attractive. Or is that ‘are equally attractive’? I’ve ruined my own metaphor there.
It’s very helpful to a style of reader like myself who when travelling would normally pack a couple of oft chunky, frequently fairly weighty ‘books’ into a bag to the detriment of other, possibly more important, items. Like food, bug-spray or an anti-wild-animal knife. Having the ability to dip into roughly 1000 ‘books’ (according to the marketing spiel) on a device no larger than a couple of take-away menus stacked together is a life-saver. Not having to remember page numbers or find lost bookmarks is good too; when you close (leave? quit?) a ‘book’ on the Kindle it helpfully remembers exactly what page you were on, for every single ‘book’.
By the way, I’m putting ‘book’ in inverted commas because this whole experience has rocked the paradigm and now I’m unsure what to call either of these items. If a physical object with paper pages and printed ink is a ‘book’, then the virtual, ones-and-zeros, differentially-charged microcapsules type almost needs to be something else. The trouble with that is I find the term ‘e-book’ slightly demeaning. It’s the same content, compared side-by-side, and ‘e-book’ reminds me of some terribly formatted, childishly written guide to making bombs from bleach and tinfoil.
So basically they are both ‘books’ until I can adjust my brain into thinking of them both as just books.
Apropos of all this, here’s my view:
I felt strangely about e-readers when they first made an appearance on the market, because my love of physical ‘books’ set me at odds with the idea that one could transition without some gargantuan effort. I felt like switching would have a huge impact on a part of my life that I love dearly.
It has not.
If anything it has merely extended the ways in which I enjoy the written word, which is really all ‘books’ are for anyway, despite all my posturing and declarations of love for the objects themselves the content is what drives anyone’s love of reading.
So this isn’t the end of physical ‘books’ as far as I can see, not for some long time at least, but it isn’t a failed experimental attempt at sci-fi futurism either. It’s a system that works, and it works really bloody well.
It’s not a replacement, it’s an augmentation.
Plus, I just really like it.
I love ‘books’. Doesn’t matter how I read them.
Filed under: Gibberish, People, Writing | Tags: Bullshit, Celeb, For the love of god please wake up, Radio, Riots, Wake up
Christopher was sitting at the kitchen table when the announcement came.
A tinny voice from the cheap portable radio next to his bowl of boring cereal that came in a rainbow-hued box covered in flashing LEDs said that the rioters had breached the barricades and the police had fallen back. Christopher stared into the constantly flickering, ever changing nano-ads in the gossip-paper, not really seeing, just listening.
The riots had started a few weeks ago and grown in both number of participants and targeted brutality. Christopher once noted to a colleague that they were less like riots and more like an organised movement. To what end, he didn’t have the words to speculate.
The riots had started when the libraries had been made to burn all their useless books and replace them with vid-files. The riots had worsened when schools had started adding ‘Celebrity Studies’ to the curriculum. The riots had reached fever pitch when the TV channels stopped playing the news.
Christopher stirred his beige, tasteless breakfast, wondering if the rioters would come to his street. Whether he would be dragged from his bed and pontificated at, like his colleagues-cousins-friends-brother had been. The people on TV had never explained what ‘pontificate’ meant, but Christopher thought it sounded bad.
The rioters had adopted a name, ‘The Learned Minority’. Christopher and his colleagues had a good chuckle over this, at least when the boss wasn’t in the voice-chat.
“Honestly,” one had begun, “How can they claim to be so ‘learned’ when all they ever do is read old, stuffy books and never switch on the TV?”
Christopher nodded. Then and now, responding and remembering, respectively.
For a second his eye was caught by an ad for a new radio. This one had a bigger power-button than his current model, more lights too and a second liquid-crystal display so he could keep up on the gossip that was happening on channels he wasn’t tuned to. For only £500 a month, this struck Christopher as a good deal. He’d wait, though, until he knew what the Celebs thought of it.
It was around now that Christopher heard the first window smash. They were on his street now. No doubt they would be here soon. Christopher turned up the volume on his radio and tuned to CelebGoss FM. He had to know if he should be afraid.
“I can’t get enough of those slogans they have!” A voice drawled, excitably. “I’m going to mix a few into a new track and play it loud!” Hearing the popular singer’s catchphrase comforted Christopher. He allowed himself a small grin as he returned to his breakfast.
They were coming closer all the time, though, and apprehension reared its ugly head as Christopher checked the bolt on the door. He returned to the table just as something heavy and brown shattered his kitchen window, landing right on the radio set and sending the cracked plastic and still-flashing LEDs careening across the floor. It was a book. It had landed open on a list of words. ‘Pontificate; to speak in a pompous or dogmatic manner.’
Talking? Christopher didn’t know how dogs were involved, but he was pretty sure he could handle people talking at him. They weren’t Celebrities; he didn’t have to listen. He sat back down just as the bolt of his front door gave and people began pouring into his flat.
If they were just going to talk at him he’d just listen to his iPod instead. He was going to drown them out, he thought with a little smile, he was going to play it loud!
Filed under: Gibberish, Writing | Tags: blah, boring, Huddersfield, Night, Stuff, Wind, Windy
Despite the howling wind the click of the lock is cannon fire in the empty street.
I light a cigarette and pull my coat closer around me, setting off for home.
Save for the occasional car rushing by I’m alone, I take a drag on my smoke, really only to keep my fingers warm.
A torn plastic bag blows by with a hiss before getting caught, ragged, on a dull railing.
An alarm is wailing, but nobody is coming to stop it.
A small man in an ill-fitting suit passes, head bowed against the incessant drizzle, and shoots me a look; half confusion, half camaraderie. ‘Why are you out? Why am I out, at that.’
I am chased through the centre of town by sirens, distant but becoming less so, past the club staff setting out the smoking area. They talk in subdued tones, it’s hard work and they’re not going to be making much money on a night like this.
Stamping my feet, waiting for a bus I hear an argument from a nearby street. Some disagreement over money or love or both. It’s never anything else.
The bus arrives, flourescent lighting and a musty smell my companions as we pass through alternating pools of orange light that only serve to make the darkness around them darker. I disembark on a pitch black road, deafened by the wind which gains that much more power this high up and unhindered by buildings, and make the journey to my home.
I flop into a chair and wonder why I’m still here. Not long now.
Huddersfield at night.
Filed under: Arty-Type Stuff, Diatribes and Debates, Writing | Tags: block, frustration, self-indulgent nonsense, write, writer's block, writers, writing
‘Writer’s block’ is a term that almost everyone has heard and a state that a good many people have experienced.
It is the name given to a feeling or belief that one is simply ‘unable’ to write experienced over a period of time, anything from a day or two up to years at a time.
But what is it?
Some people believe that it does not exist. Acclaimed author Warren Ellis, the man behind the seminal comic Transmetropolitan, has stated “… [Someone with ‘writer’s block’] isn’t a fucking writer anymore. The job is getting up in the morning and fucking writing.”
This, while harsh, is a fairly erudite explanation of how it feels to be ‘afflicted’.
I’m of the opinion, seeing as I have a lot of time to think about this kind of thing, that writer’s block can be classified as a very mild psychological breakdown.
Let me tell you my experience(s) with this particular ailment:
I’ve run into writer’s block a couple of times and it has a very distinct feeling about it. It’s not even remotely similar to what one might feel in school, say, when faced with an essay or exam and cannot think what to write next. That’s a momentary frustration that can be overcome by remembering that you do in fact know the answer to the question.
Writer’s block is more insidious than that. It’s a slithery, slimy bastard that sneaks into your mind and squats there, nibbling on your brain every now and then when it gets bored. It’s sneaky, in that it makes you want to write, then stops you from doing it.
Now, I say ‘stops you’; there’s actually nothing physically stopping you from putting words on the page. There isn’t even anything hindering your vocabulary or fiddling with the way you write. It just feels like there is.
That’s why I’ve come to the conclusion that this situation is, or at least is caused by, a very low-lying crisis of confidence or even an existential one. I’ve gone to write something and caught myself thinking ‘What’s the point?’ or ‘Why even bother?’ The belief that you could write something, but it would ultimately be terrible, unreadable drivel is a prime factor of writer’s block.
I’m forcing myself to write this through a hefty bought of it, and I can tell you that the horrible little gremlin in my head is telling me to delete every word and start over. I can also tell you that if I did delete every word the gremlin would then tell me there’s no point in starting again, and I’d probably abandon the piece altogether.
It’s that aspect that is the most interesting to me, and I wonder if people who don’t suffer from writer’s block are simply happier, more enthusiastic, more optimistic people.
It conjures the image of the tortured artist, slashing yesterday’s paintings in a fit of rage because they are ‘awful’, even after a gallery has offered to buy them. As cliché as that seems, that’s roughly what one can expect to be going on in a writer’s head when they tell you they have this malady. It’s very cyclic, to the point that it’s almost bipolar.
As I said; it comes in waves. There are periods of time where, at least for me, I feel like everything I write is gold dust and I can’t put a word wrong. There are others where I feel like every single idea I have is shit or stolen or stupid or a stupid, shitty idea that I stole. It’s so hard to fight through that and produce something, because even if you do part of you still thinks ‘This is awful. I must destroy all evidence of its existence.’
There are vast novels floating in the void or filling the shelves of Deaths library with my name on the cover because I’ve written something then immediately confined it to oblivion. (I like to think destroyed literature ends up somewhere).
There are ways around it, however. Forcing oneself to write something, anything, is one way, as long as you can convince yourself to keep going and then not to delete it upon completion. That’s part of the reason I like writing in notebooks; it’s not as easy to delete a physical object. There are exercises you can find in books and online that claim to help with writer’s block. Any and all writers will give you no end of various kinds of advice, some of it useful, some of it not.
The trouble is it’s a very personal problem. The prevailing feeling is that you know you can’t write right now, even though people tell you that you can. The truth of the matter, however, is that those people are right. You can still do it, you just feel like if you try to you’ll produce something sub-par.
Maybe you will, but that doesn’t mean you can’t fix it. Or write something else.
Writer’s block is as personal as writing itself, in that you may have certain music you like to listen to as you write, or certain sounds or sights that completely throw you off kilter and stop you being able to think straight.
As though to provide evidence to myself, I’m really struggling to write this last paragraph. Something in my head is screaming that this is all self-indulgent nonsense and to get rid of it immediately, but I refuse to give in.
That’s really all one can do in this situation. Dig in your heels, bite down on a stick and force yourself forwards. Of course you can still write; you just need to remember that.
J Bov.
