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| This is me flossing... I'm not a dentist, so for legal reasons I can't show you the rest of my face |
Okay, you got me, I was joking
about the sunbathing. The sun and I are
not on good terms. That 14% is instead
dedicated to accent comedy. With myself . Everything ends up sounding Indian and I have
no idea why.
In all honesty, a stupid amount
of time is entirely dedicated to generating ideas. An even stupider amount of time is put into discovering
that an idea is crap (common indications an idea is crap: “and it was all a
dream”, “and so they all die” and “it’s a solemn ode to the desolate nature of
the desert humanity has become at this juncture in our cultural development”). Of course I’m not stumbling across the lost
city of Atlantis here, I’m just head-butting the most common foe of all
aspiring writers (the 2nd most common foe being ‘crippling self-doubt’, and the 6th most common foe
being ‘certainty of one’s own
overwhelming genius’).
None of this is of any comfort to
poor housemate Layla. As far as she’s
concerned she returns home each evening from a hard day’s work to discover me
sipping tea in leisure wear.
Leisure Wear in this case is
specially formulated to withstand sub-zero conditions in our heater-less lounge
room, commonly referred to in winter as The Fridge. Suitable Fridge Leisure Wear involves (among
other layers), double socking, ugg boots, a knitted poncho, a scarf and
fingerless gloves. All we need is a
ferris wheel and I’m a carnie.
It takes quite a bit of
explaining to get her around the idea that I too have been working. I’ve been thinking. Really
hard. To the uninitiated it might look
like I’m gazing creepily across to our neighbour’s balcony, but Yelling Mum and
Dour Dad don’t really get interesting until 6pm most nights. No, instead I’ve been trying to come up with
a story idea so stupefyingly clever it will single-handedly lower the price of
oil (how will it do this? I don’t know,
but it seems like a decent indication of success). No joy so far.
So what’s a girl to do when an
epiphany doesn’t simply arrive on demand?
I’ve tried everything – magazines, red wine, Shakespeare plagiarism, and
even briefly considered watching The Shire – all in the name of
inspiration. But Inspiration can be a fickle douche – rarely shows up on
time, and always double-booked (poor Deep Impact, you never saw Armageddon coming). I mean if Speed 2: Cruise Control has already
been made, what stories are really left to tell?
 |
| “I’ve got a brilliant idea. It’s about a boat… that can’t slow down .” |
I guess I could always write a story
about a struggling writer desperately trying to find his/her voice in a world
of blah blah blah. Because nothing
screams thrilling quite like watching a struggling artist brood, does it? It’s like status updates about exercise – I
think everyone would be better off if you just stunned us with the final
product.
Hello Square One. I’ve missed you old friend, it’s been five
whole minutes.
Painefull Out
hello painefull
ReplyDeletei came across to your blog one day from reading WW - i was a 'stay at home mum' at the time, but now i'm a fulltime student too - trying to write a godamn psychology thesis. you think you've got it tough! Anyhoo, i just wanted to say that i think you have a lot of talent in the witty sharp writing and story-telling department. I've enjoyed all of your blog posts; they have made me laugh a lot which is not something that is easy to do when your thesis is about attitudes towards schizophrenic murderers.
so hang in there, i feel that your brilliant moment is hanging around just waiting for you to breathe a little deeper, then it will start flowing.
good luck