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Apparently blog is short for weblog. |
| I will now attempt to blog. |
| I don’t know what to write about. I love writing, but can never stick with an idea for longer than about three hundred words. Also, my sentences tend to get out of hand. I try to keep them short, yet they spiral rapidly out of control. I’ve taught myself grammar and the elements of storytelling, but putting them together with an idea for a story is proving to be quite difficult. I find my attention span for a single narrative isn’t great. As soon as I take a break from writing to get a coffee or a snack, I get a couple of new ideas and want to write them instead. I jump ship, start writing again, take another break, jump ship all over again, and so on. My problem isn’t coming up with ideas, it’s sticking with one idea without losing interest and getting bored. I find that writing my thoughts down each day is much easier than writing a story. But I really want to write a story. Nobody wants to hear someone’s random thoughts. It’s a useful writing experience for me, but it doesn’t move me closer to my goal of one day creating a story and having it published. In the meantime, I suppose I’ll keep writing out my thoughts in a stream-of-consciousness-like manner, hoping that it’ll kick up an idea from the sea-bed of my mind — one that sticks. If people have been telling stories for tens of thousands of years, is there anything left to make up? When you study storytelling, you learn about the ways in which stories are told, and there are a finite number of ways to tell a story: the hero’s journey, rags to riches, the seven-point plot structure, and so on. Then there’s genre — fantasy, sci-fi, westerns, and so on. These are all well-established genres, and when using them, you’re expected to stay within the confines of how they’ve been used in the past. Are there any new genres? Surely there have to be. Surely there have to be new ways of storytelling, too. How do you even create a genre? That’s what I want to know. Will there be any new ones in the future? I think the struggle is coming up with an idea that isn’t just a rehash of something that’s already been done a thousand times before. How do you come up with something fresh and alive — full of life and excitement and newness? I don’t have the advantage of having read a particular genre of fiction for years and years and years. Most successful writers seem to have done that. My favourite authors range from Hemingway, Brautigan, and Vonnegut, to Tolkien, Pratchett, Wynne Jones, and Wodehouse, to Murakami… and so on. The problem might be that I came to writing quite late. I didn’t read much growing up, just the usual stuff. I mostly read Garfield comics — and even then I mostly just looked at the pictures. Back then I wanted to be a cartoonist. I made a comic book about a lazy cat out of paper and stapled it together. I guess that’s when the rehashing of existing ideas began for me. It wasn’t until my late twenties that I started reading seriously. I’ve always loved language and been in awe of those who can use it skilfully, and when I was around twenty-seven, I began reading ferociously. I can’t remember why. And, like with everything else I do, it didn’t take long before I thought, “I want to do this myself.” And voilà — my desire to be a writer began. Only this time — unlike with everything else I do — it stuck. Sometimes, I think I just like putting one word in front of another. Do I just enjoy the act of writing sentences? It’s quite therapeutic, to be fair. But what am I supposed to do with that? It’s like enjoying playing up and down scales on a musical instrument without ever making music. I’ve learnt that you can’t come up with ideas — they are given to you. They float down from the mysterious land of ideas, somewhere up above, and say, “Hey, wouldn’t this be cool?” I guess all you can do is practice writing, find a voice, and wait. Calling on The Universe… please plop an idea into my head. Would really appreciate it. Thanks. Maybe this is The Universe plopping ideas into my head. The words are falling onto the page rather nicely. |
| I went to a driving range for the second time in my life. I’m thinking about getting into golf. I started with a wedge, and hit a few good shots, which was nice. I thought that maybe things were looking good, considering I could barely connect with the ball last time, but then I moved on to the irons — my nemesis clubs. I missed and missed, and whacked the ball every which way you weren’t supposed to. I decided to slow down, calm down, take a breather, go smoothly, and it worked. I was hitting shots with the seven, eight, and nine irons nicely. Of course, as a beginner’s beginner, the shots weren’t great, but for me they were cool. I could sense improvement in the air. Feeling smug, I moved on to the driver. The driver was the only club I was able to hit the ball with on my first go at the range, so I thought it was a safe choice to end the session with. Wrong. Somehow I was hooking the ball to the extreme left with every shot. I was scooping it badly. One scoop led to another… and another. I realised I was rushing frantically to take each shot. I slowed down again, focused on being real smooth. I had one ball left. Gracefully, I swung back and took the shot. The club connected with the ball for my best shot yet. Success. What a great feeling it was to smack the golf ball good. |
| Whilst walking Leo, I stopped to check my phone. Leo sniffed a good bit around some bushes. I half-noticed he was sticking his nose deeper in, but I was distracted by a message from my wife — a birthday present idea for mum. Suddenly, he was in the bushes, and I was yanking him out. He reappeared with a banana skin dangling from his mouth. Leo dodged my first attempt to get it from him, and in response, started chewing fast. The banana skin vanished into his mouth. He went to run, tail in the air, all proud of himself — but he forgot one key thing: he was still on the lead. I pulled him back, took hold of his mouth, pried it open. He resisted, naturally. But I won in the end. |
*** I think I’m good at writing minimally. Being direct and to the point feels natural to me. There’s a lightness to the prose when I write like this. If I try to write ‘clever’ or ‘masterful’ sentences, my head feels bogged down. I wonder if I have a very low reading and writing IQ — whatever that means. Are simple sentences all my intelligence can handle? I don’t think that’s it. When I use simple sentences, it feels as though I’m building a house, brick by brick. Each line is pulled from my head and carefully placed on the page, like little threads, and I feel my mind easing, calming, growing lighter. *** |
*** I think I should write in a really casual and informal way — conversational. When I try to write formally, in the style of whichever author I’m reading at the time, all the words on the page look phoney and empty and dusty. I’m a very informal person, and every bit of writing advice starts with ‘write what you know,’ you know? I know how to chat rubbish for hours and hours, using casual — unintelligent — language. Maybe that’s what I’ll do with this blog: chat rubbish for hours and hours. Peace. *** |
*** I’m struggling with writing at the moment. I’m motivated and passionate, that’s for sure. But I keep flip-flopping between style and form. Novel? Short story? Minimalist or maximalist? I read Hemingway and that’s that: I’m writing short stories. Then I read Pratchett, and I’m banging away at the keyboard, writing a Discworld knock-off. Next minute… And so on. It sure is difficult to stick to a style and genre with a brain as scattered as mine. *** |
*** We picked him up at a service station in Dover. He’d travelled by plane, ferry, and van all the way here from Cyprus. He cried when the man from the charity got him from the back of the van. He was so small and skinny and covered in muck. Leaning against my shins, he shivered and took his first look at England. As soon as we got him in the car, we gave him some chicken, and he settled down and stopped shaking. We used wet wipes to clean the muck from his black fur as he slept. We drove him home. We named him Leo. *** |
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