OMG I’ve started saying OMG. WTF. This is driving me nuts. I don’t mean driving my nuts. Driving my nuts would be nuts. The wheel could sit on my knees but the pain. The pain. I’m not driving my nuts. I mean to say I’m driving myself nuts and I need to talk it out.
I’m a writer which means I spend time alone but over the years my skill for procrastination has become what I can only describe as pathological. I am becoming the ghost of a ghost writer haunted by an idea of what he originally was. Work that one out. Lemn Sissay is a pseudonym and the real author has long since left the building. Grrr.
Not writing is like playing pass the parcel in a party group of one! The music drones continuously – it’s “Pretty vacant” by the sex pistols – and there’s just me sat on a chair holding a box and I’ve long since stopped thinking the damned music will stop. Pretty vacant indeed. If I had a pseudonym I could blame him (or her) for setting me up but I haven’t even got one of those. I’m going to Clapton Pond’s Palm 2 for a coffee. All advice appreciated.
Are well, thats why and then Lemn, maybe you could take a train ,ride the first train that pulls up to the station, have no books to read,no iphone thingy,no headphones.just paper and pencil,blast from the past cos it’s a new year,
new energy,thats the next train. All the best writing, make them laugh. Button.
Thanks B.
Well at least you’re honest about it! I too am not creating yet think of/thought of myself as “an artist” and described myself as such, but when that activity is not taking place, is not central, it starts to feel like a lie, or a fantasy. Can one be what one does not actually do? Hmmm…I think not.
You do have a fine body of work Lemn, and are always engaged with workshops, presentations, and the like, you’re busy! I know many writers manage having jobs and families whilst writing, and say it feeds into, stimulates their work, they dispell the ivory tower myth, others say they need isolation, lonliness, to allow the inner life to surface and make itself known.
Maybe you’re at that stage where a whole new project or idea needs to come forward, get into the mess and muddle of creating anew, juxtapositions, contradicitons, perhaps a play?