I had a day off work this week. One ought to make something worthwhile of such bonuses. I wanted to write an erudite and no doubt lengthy essay about terror, horror, anxiety, Dracula, Lovecraft, MR James, Stephen King and Dr Who with mine, but I am once more suffering from Writer’s Block [a form of self-conscious spasm of the intellect, known to afflict neurotic little show-offs who have never quite forgiven their father for laughing at their first attempt at a ghost story - Ed].
As it is, I, made this of it [you mean, the usual - Ed]. Think of it as a glorification of impotence [And now you are seriously tempting fate. You’ll be spammed by Cialis peddlers again - Ed]. I will, now that you’ve mentioned it, yes. Thank you very much.
9:00 am. Make tea. Sit down at computer. Check e-mail, favourite blogs, The Grauniad, BBC News, Metcheck. Realise I have drunk all the tea.
9:45 am. Make tea. Sit back down at computer. Open a fresh page of ‘TextEdit’. Stare blankly at screen. Sip tea.
10:15 am. Refuse to make myself more tea. Open iTunes and try to find something atmospheric to keep me company while I gaze at the horrible empty white box I’m supposed to be filling.
10:30 am. Crack, and make myself herbal tea. Sit down at computer again, and type ‘Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party’ several times. Stare at screen.
11:00 am. Three cups of tea now require egress. On my way back from the bathroom, I detour through the kitchen and stare at the coffee machine.
11:15 am. Sit down at computer. Abruptly I remember splendid notes made yesterday while at work. Take satchel apart looking for notebook. Demolish fortifications of old newspapers and bills on kitchen table. Am lying on stomach trying to fish what turns out to be a copy of Macworld magazine out from under cupboard when I have vivid mental picture of said notebook sitting folornly in the Out-Tray the other side of London. Wonder what on earth the notes had been about in the first place.
12:30 am. Give up and go and make lunch and swear at Radio 4.
1:30 am. Re-open iTunes and put it on ’shuffle’, hoping serendipity will provide a good working sound-track. I flinch.
1:32 pm. Hit ’skip song’
1:33 pm. Hit ’skip’ again.
1:35 pm. And again.
1:37 pm. Go through entire upcoming song list and purge all unacceptable choices. Bugger serendipity.
2:15 pm. Am finally writing. Must just nip over to Amazon to find book to link to.
3:15 pm. Oops.
3:20 pm. Make coffee. Coffee machine unusually slow and noisy. Wonder if its innards are quite alright. Make note to buy proper cleaning sachets. Look in fridge to see if anything else needs to be bought. Make shopping list, find shoes, keys, wallet. remember I’m supposed to be writing. Go back to the computer and sit down again.
3:26 pm. Wonder what’s for supper.
3:32 pm. Go shopping after all.
5:00 pm. Return from supermarket. Am busy washing up and arguing with the newsreaders on Radio 4 when it dawns on me I still haven’t posted anything.
5:45 pm. Sit down at computer, in state of considerable despair. Re-read what I’ve written so far. Gibberish. Type more gibberish. Wonder if Terry Pratchett ever feels like this.
6:30 pm. Now I am not only not typing a post, but I’m inconsiderately hogging the computer while not doing it.
10:00 pm. Drag self away from CSI and stare at gibberish. Editor attempts to delete the whole lot. We fight for control of the keyboard. I win, Editor becomes quite savage.
11:15 pm. Complete post under blizzard of disapproval from Editor. Feel heroic. Hit ‘post’.
11:27 pm. Notice typos. [No comment - Ed]
Sounds like a normal day to me . . .
Left by azahar on June 24th, 2006
Me too.
What was it that I intended to get done today?
Left by David B on June 24th, 2006
Just to say . . . once one SITS DOWN in front of the computer you may as well kiss goodbye at least a few hours of perhaps otherwise productive time . . . but although it’s somehow addictive it can also at times also be productive.
Depends, of course, if there were other things you SHOULD have been doing instead . . . like cleaning the bathroom. Which reminds me. . .
Left by azahar on June 24th, 2006
[…] Back in June I posted about the agonistics feeding the blog. Here we are again, sitting about, staring at the screen, fiddling about with iTunes, trawling through other people’s blogs in search of inspiration, writing a sentence, glaring at it, deleting it, over and over. I wonder, does every blogger put themselves through this, or have I missed some colossally obvious point? Do the other bloggers whose work I admire spend hours in a frenzy of composition, or does it all drip from them like honey from the bee-drowsing comb of late summer? Are we a band of (slightly deranged) brethren of the pen, slaving in world-wide concert for no other reward than the sweet savour of words and some few lines of admiration and pleasure in the comments? Or are you all staring at me now thinking ‘Christ, no, it takes me about ten minutes to write a post. What on earth is the matter with you?’ […]
Left by Out of ideas » Blog Archive » The coffee’s gone cold. Again. on August 25th, 2006