Things I have done today in order to avoid writing...
I'm proofing some short stories. Its quite hard. There are, I think, eleven of them, running to some 80 plus pages. This is the point where you turn the things you have written into "writing". The thinking stuff up, the gathering of ideas, that's the easy bit, the fun bit. I like that bit. At the end of this, five or six drafts down the line, when you're getting to the point where it feels more like polishing a diamond than a turd, that bit is good too. But I'm not there yet. I'm solidly in the brown stuff and it is unpleasant. At the moment all of my choices feel like the wrong choices. I feel I'm not being brave enough and I'm giving all my darlings a reprieve. The annoying, comma-spattered pedantry of my prose style seems to be tying me up in knots as well and realistically who are these stories for? Are they funny? Are they sad? Are they neither or both? Are they even meant to be?
But in order to get them to a finished state I have to continue wading through the mire. Or, I can do something else. This is what I have done today in order to not do any work:
1) Bought a Pot Noodle. I went to a shop and bought a chicken and mushroom Pot Noodle. I quite like a Pot Noodle but I didn't really need one. I'm not sure anyone has ever needed a Pot Noodle, but I really wanted one in order to avoid my weird and stunted sentences. So I wasted twenty minutes going to the Co Op and back and then I sat down to eat it. Which leads me to my next distraction...
2) "Serious Charge" (1959) is a film chiefly remembered as Cliff Richard's first - he plays a pleasant youth named Curly who sings "Living Doll" to a group of matronly hand-jiving teens in a milk bar. Jess "This Pullover" Conrad plays another one, but he's a tough nut with a bike chain. The film's plot revolves around hard-as-nails army vicar Anthony Quayle resisting the advances of a local spinster (on the shelf at 30!). When he is later accused of sexual assault on a snide Teddy Boy she turns against him. It transpires that he is not a pedophile - he just doesn't fancy her, and in the end she sees sense after a stern talking to from his mother. Its not a very good film - its based on a play and has a great many static scenes where people talk at each other a lot, making IMPORTANT POINTS ABOUT MORALITY. But I watch it anyway because its on. I've seen it before, of course.
After it an episode of the TV series "Hannay" comes on. Robert Powell is back as a slightly portlier version of John Buchan's hearty racist dare-devil than he was in the Lew Grade film. I've only seen one episode of the TV series and by the law of television its the one that's on now. Maybe they only made one. Anyway I watch it as well, before...
3) I make a mix-CD. Yes, people as determinedly old and terrified of the future as I am still make mix-CDs. It's like a Spotify playlist but without all of recorded music to play with. I'm in the foothills of a new musical project and the recipient of this disc and I are, rather sweetly, sending each other examples of the sort of sounds we'd like to create. There are notes too. Its all so charmingly old fashioned - like leaving a visitor's card or being conscripted or dying of plague. Its the world we'll be living in again after Brexit.
4) I read a book. I'm re-reading Olivia Laing's magnificent "The Lonely City" which is one of my favourite books of recent years and which I would heartily recommend to you if you like a) writing, b) art and c) the forensic examination of what loneliness does to people and the things that they create.
5) Some paid work. I started editing the short stories to avoid doing some paid writing work. I'm now doing the paid work in order to avoid doing the work that was originally a distraction from the work I'm now doing.
6) This blog.
But in order to get them to a finished state I have to continue wading through the mire. Or, I can do something else. This is what I have done today in order to not do any work:
1) Bought a Pot Noodle. I went to a shop and bought a chicken and mushroom Pot Noodle. I quite like a Pot Noodle but I didn't really need one. I'm not sure anyone has ever needed a Pot Noodle, but I really wanted one in order to avoid my weird and stunted sentences. So I wasted twenty minutes going to the Co Op and back and then I sat down to eat it. Which leads me to my next distraction...
2) "Serious Charge" (1959) is a film chiefly remembered as Cliff Richard's first - he plays a pleasant youth named Curly who sings "Living Doll" to a group of matronly hand-jiving teens in a milk bar. Jess "This Pullover" Conrad plays another one, but he's a tough nut with a bike chain. The film's plot revolves around hard-as-nails army vicar Anthony Quayle resisting the advances of a local spinster (on the shelf at 30!). When he is later accused of sexual assault on a snide Teddy Boy she turns against him. It transpires that he is not a pedophile - he just doesn't fancy her, and in the end she sees sense after a stern talking to from his mother. Its not a very good film - its based on a play and has a great many static scenes where people talk at each other a lot, making IMPORTANT POINTS ABOUT MORALITY. But I watch it anyway because its on. I've seen it before, of course.
After it an episode of the TV series "Hannay" comes on. Robert Powell is back as a slightly portlier version of John Buchan's hearty racist dare-devil than he was in the Lew Grade film. I've only seen one episode of the TV series and by the law of television its the one that's on now. Maybe they only made one. Anyway I watch it as well, before...
3) I make a mix-CD. Yes, people as determinedly old and terrified of the future as I am still make mix-CDs. It's like a Spotify playlist but without all of recorded music to play with. I'm in the foothills of a new musical project and the recipient of this disc and I are, rather sweetly, sending each other examples of the sort of sounds we'd like to create. There are notes too. Its all so charmingly old fashioned - like leaving a visitor's card or being conscripted or dying of plague. Its the world we'll be living in again after Brexit.
4) I read a book. I'm re-reading Olivia Laing's magnificent "The Lonely City" which is one of my favourite books of recent years and which I would heartily recommend to you if you like a) writing, b) art and c) the forensic examination of what loneliness does to people and the things that they create.
5) Some paid work. I started editing the short stories to avoid doing some paid writing work. I'm now doing the paid work in order to avoid doing the work that was originally a distraction from the work I'm now doing.
6) This blog.
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