I am not entirely sure why I am doing this to myself.

The Editor and I have had the most exhilarating conversations about this blog, usually just after midnight, in the dark and in the total absence of a keyboard or notebook. Daylight is alas less inspiring, and the Editor declines all creative input when actually faced with writing implements. It is, I am told, my job to do the actual writing. The Editor is too busy being in charge of… things.

So here am I, and here is this empty white box, eyeballing me. I am to fill it with a tremendously witty discussion on, befittingly, beginnings. I have always had a hell of a time with beginnings. As a student I was always the sort who starts essays at ten pm the night before they are due, and who hands them in at the last possible second with a suspicion of pyjama top showing under their duffle-coat. It was never because I did not know what to write. I’d come to the task both astonishingly well read and with a stack of notes that were the envy of the entire class. My well-marshalled thoughts would nonetheless take one look at the blank sheet of paper and run screaming for the fire-escape. There are some people who, when faced with a virgin snow-bank, throw themselves down to make snow angels, others who practice their, shall we say, penmanship with hot liquids on it, and yet others who scoop handfuls out of it to ballistically inconvenience their peers. I could only gaze, awe-struck by the smooth glory that had so mysteriously done away with the fag-end-strewn road-side. And hope someone else would break into it first, or I’d never get to have a snow-ball fight.

Take online fora and message boards. On them I not only contribute, I babble. I gush. Great foaming torrents of verbiage (and I’d be a liar if I said even one third of it was apposite) burst into the empty white text-boxes and spread into vast new lagoons. So what? We’re all in it together, all jabbering away and half the time ignoring one another anyway. The snow-bank is already pierced and fretted and melting and nothing I can do to it alters that. But now the page is only mine, any imperfection, all infelicities, are entirely mine, and my words have to stand on their own merit, unshielded by any surrounding wit or folly. It makes me horribly self-conscious.

‘Just write anything at all!’ say well-meaning friends. And teachers. And books on creative writing. ‘Type “The cat sat on the mat” fifteen times! Describe the weather, or, how to darn socks, or anything!’ they urge. They are quite right. Write whatever you can, and then and only then allow the Editor to come in and hack it all into reasonable shape with the famous blue pencil, the delete key, and, just occasionally, a large G&T and an axe. I can refute none of this. Obviously, I should just write anything at all. In the age of word-processing, I won’t even be wasting paper and ink. Obviously. Nevertheless I will still be wasting half-a-dozen cups of tea I have made but did not drink in the white heat of composition. Not to mention wear and tear on the keyboard (and yes, some of that is due to my banging my head on it). I will be violating the ethics of my perfectionist streak, that demands that everything I do be done perfectly first go or, and this is the sticking point, NOT AT ALL. It’s less of a streak and more of a full-blown neurosis, these days. And I will be haunted by the Editor, complaining about the amount of time I am wasting as well. Time I could be spending on notes for the next entry, on chapter two, on my shamefully neglected private correspondence, heck, even on the washing-up. How dare I take this precious time and write trivia that the Editor will only have to delete?

And yet, somehow, and with an embarrassing amount of whining and tea-making, I have made a beginning. See? Write anything.

Posted by Reed on Monday, March 6th, 2006 at 4:57 pm.