CrayonFist

I’ve run out of things to say. This was bound to happen sooner or later. I’ve said a lot of words in my life, thousands I shouldn’t wonder, and now, at long last, the well has run dry. This is partly because my brain is stuck in production mode, constantly mulling over ideas for the short film and sketch show I’m working on. But telling people about your  ideas is like telling people about your dreams – they only fascinate you because they’re yours. Expecting anyone else to be enthused is a recipe for sickly disappointment. So, though the gears of my mind throw out constant sparks on the social relevance of zombies or intriguing structures for the sketch show, I keep my lips firmly sealed, lest I let slip, to the few people who don’t know already, that I’m secretly a self-absorbed twat.

Another piece of the problem pie is that the non-work part of my brain is crammed with election nonsense. Right now, left to simmer, the few ‘interesting’ facts that bubble up to the top of my brain are:

• Nick Clegg speaks Dutch
• The BNP’s publicity manager, Mark Collett, was recently questioned by police over a possible plot to kill Nick Griffin
• On May 6^th, Labour could get the largest number of seats even with the smallest percentage of the vote
• David Cameron is a cunt

These information nuggets are quite hard to casually drop into an evening’s banter and, even If you do, they don’t lead down any particularly vibrant avenues of discourse. Worse still, the usual method of starting a political discussion just seems to guide me into a distressing conversational cul-de-sac. Observe:

Me: “How are you voting?”

Them: “I’m voting for the Green Monster-Raving-Libservabour National Independence Party. You?”

Me: “I’m going to burn my vote.”

Them: “<Confusion, Anger, Unpleasantness>”

With the only subjects my brain wants to chat about being off limits, I’ve been brushing up on my listening. Or, rather, I’ve been brushing up on looking like I’m listening, while desperately trying to think of something to say, so people won’t think that I’m quietly having a stroke. Nodding helps. So does asking incisive questions, like “Oh yes?”, “Did you?” and “Really?”. When I feel a little more pizzazz is required, I just listen out for an appropriate sounding adjective and sagely repeat it while hazily staring into the middle distance, as though I’m weightily considering the ramifications of the fact that their Nissan Micra is blue.

The one thing I’ve yet to perfect is empathy, though God knows I’ve tried. Time and time again I’ve heard myself interminably mutter “I know what you mean” or, worse still, “I can imagine”. Whenever I do, a loud klaxon goes off in my head, and the big neon sign installed on the back of my eyelids burns the words “SHOW DON’T TELL” into the surface of my retinas. I’m concerned that I seem to be writing clunky dialogue for my own life.

Obviously this has to stop, so I’ve spent literally hours trying to catch up with popular culture  – you know, the stuff normal people seem to like. As a result, I now have fascinating opinions about several things you’ve probably heard of. Next time I go out I plan on telling people that “The new Dr. Who is quite good” though “the last episode was a bit of a let-down”. While they’re still gathering their senses after that verbal roundhouse, I’ll knock them off their feet by saying “I think Lady Gaga’s latest video was far too long and a bit derivative” before smacking them in the solar plexus with a snappy “That Lionel Messi can certainly kick a ball!”.

If you’ve got any other opinions you think would wow and bamboozle my friends, feel free to share them in the comments section below. I need all the help I can get.

Yours, speechlessly,

Jonnie Marbles

According to Parkinson’s law “work expands to fill the time allotted to it”. Sadly, this is not true. In reality, work gorges itself on procrastination until it is far too bloated to fill the time allotted to it, at which point desperate phone calls are be made, implausible excuses are fabricated, and shameless lies told. This particularly applies to writing.

My favourite method of procrastination is to Begin Something New. At the moment of penmanship I find myself working on no less than six projects. There is a short film, a sketch comedy show, a topical comedy show, a novel, a sitcom, a speech and a set for a stand-up gig. This is not because I am some kind of brilliant multi-tasker or modern Renaissance man. It’s because, whenever I look at the baffling array of equally urgent projects in my everlasting backlog of work, my immediate response is to say “sod it” and start something new. Given the chance, I will eagerly escape from my pesky mountain of unfinished work by hiding in the glorious glow of a blank white page. Unencumbered by the old ideas, polluted as they are by my lack of attention, I can once again be creative. Take this blog, for example.

While the other projects are parked in inconveniently pokey literary cul-de-sacs, I can embark on this fresh adventure, and actually write the things that my brain wants to talk about. Today, it’s the topic of why I can never get anything finished. Right now, it fascinates me, but if I were to press pause and go to the shops, I’m confident that by the time I got back my passion for the subject would have mysteriously disappeared. I’d be left feeling icky as I looked over words, typed in a style that was mine an hour ago, that now seemed alien and other. Second drafts after the fact are a no-no – correcting my own mistakes would mean reading my own mistakes, which makes my eyes hurt. In weeks, months or possibly years I might engage the topic again – but only after deleting every character I’d written and starting again from scratch.

Obviously this is a bit of a problem for a “writer”, as I’ve lately taken to describing myself. The chances of me sitting down and banging out a novel in a single sitting are pretty low. So, as the first drafts of first chapters pile up on my hard drive, the chances of me ever completing one diminish accordingly. In fact, it’s a bit of a misnomer to say I’m “writing a novel”. I’m writing at least four, and by tomorrow afternoon it could be five, if a bright, shiny new idea pops into my head.

What’s the cure for this? Buggered if I know. I’ve got rough ideas for several cures written on the backs of beer mats and cigarette boxes all stuffed in a folder upstairs, but I never get round to trying them out. A part of me thinks it shouldn’t be a problem. Truly great writers (as well as artists, musicians, and other such grandiose tossers) see their flightiness as a gift. Da Vinci spent thirty years of his life failing to build a big wooden horse because he was too busy inventing anachronisms, and he was a genius. Leonardo could afford to let his muse rule him – she was a bright, energetic and constant presence in his life. Mine is a lazy cow who visits as briefly and often as an obnoxious Social Worker. While Da Vinci’s notebooks were filled with half finished but fantastical imaginings, mine are stuffed with half-cocked idea-lets like “Sherlock Noam Chomsky” and “Large Haddock Collider”, which are at best utterly meaningless and, in all likelihood, just shit. In short, Leonardo Da Vinci was better at stuff than I am.

Now I must conclude, partly because I’ve been prattling on for almost seven hundred words, but mainly because I’m getting bored of this idea. The muse has made one of her inconvenient, unannounced visits and so I must now go and write a short story from an atom’s point of view, or invent an edible book, or teach myself the bongos, or anything, really, except for what I’m supposed to be doing.