It is 7am , I pour tea into myself and smash out half a dozen scrabble words for the 10 games I’m playing with a pal. She’s 1000 km away but part of my morning ritual. To the right of me is a list, also part of the ritual. It a long busy one, decorated with words like:
- Topsoil
- Cement
- Power Wash
- Dig
- Locate
There are more verbs than nouns and that is how I like my day, my life too when I pause to think about it. What is not on the paper is any notion of writing. No admonition to ‘complete 4000 words’ or ‘spend the day editing’.
Those are for a different list, right under ‘saw off own head and place on pike’.
No one has ever paid me to sit in front of a computer or a desk or just sit for any reason that I recall.
It is a problem. The list must be completed before my neurons are permitted to release writerly thoughts through my calloused fingers and onto the page. My body requires a nebulous level of energy to be expended before allowing my butt to stay seated.
Get the equation wrong and I’m up and down all day like the target in a Wack-a-Mole game.
The consistent battle between brain and biomechanics often leaves the former bulging with plot , dialogue and over -arching themes. Eventually some sort of coup takes place and I’m forced to the couch. Large note pad on lap, foot bouncing I purge myself onto paper. Empty once again, the body seizes it’s opportunity to paint the deck.
Talented authors urge newbies like myself to ‘ sit down and work at the key board as though it is a job!’
Bile rises in my throat at the thought.
Surely I’m not alone in my torture, with a head full of story and body unable to perfect the art of sitting?
Perhaps I’ll try Poetry…
