I read with wry amusement this post by The Little Professor about spicing up the opening sentences of letters to (for example) the Times Literary Supplement. A sneaking suspicion is forming in the dark recesses of my mind that this is advice I could do with taking.
As previously remarked, a large proportion of this blog’s raison d’être (about 64.25%, by my last assessment) is to provide me with experience. The business of churning out strings of verbs, adjectives and possessive pronouns should, in theory, improve my writing. According to a friend, that theory is even beginning to translate to reality. He’s right, I think: I sound more like myself now, the neurotic self-referentialism and self-criticism has started to recede, my prose is less stilted.
So what’s changed? Has my work really, over the course of eight thousand words or so, improved perceptibly? I think it has, and I think I know why: tension. Or rather, a reduction in it.
I’ve always been tense, with the usual caveats that “always” means “as far as I can remember, and maybe I’m just projecting my current state of mind into the past”, and all the standard sceptical worries. It arises, as far as I can make out, from failing to attribute value to myself, at least to the correct degree (that normative standard arising from what we view as ‘normal’ or ‘healthy’, that is, able to carry out a reasonably happy existence, unimpaired by constant doubt). When I look at myself, I see failure. An unhealthy attitude, to say the least. But when I relax, I work better.
This is why I’m good at exams. When you’re sitting there in the exam room, locked inside your head with only a pen, paper, and the question, you are in a sense liberated. There’s nothing you can do now except right. It’s like being tossed off a cliff: terrifying, perhaps, but you can’t do anything about it so you might as well just get on with it. So you put your head down, and write, and feel better for those three hours than you have in months.
Coming back to the blog, there are two main points. Firstly, it was in itself a way of reducing the tension associated with writing. Do more writing and it becomes more normal, a less fraught activity, just part of the routine. Secondly, in order to keep writing—keep blogging—I needed to find some day-to-day coping mechanisms. This is something I’ve become better at lately, simply through realising that I had to. I had to stop being proud, stop thinking I would do things, write things, suceed simply by some kind of self-realising genius.
I started to carry a notebook everywhere; while I’d always taken my Moleskine in my rucksack, I didn’t have anything ultra-portable, so I bought a pack of new Moleskine Cahiers (pronounced kä-yā, apparently). These are little 64-page things with a cardboard cover; there’s a good review at 43F. I’ll probably post further about these at some point, but suffice to say that one now accompanies me practically everywhere (even to bed; I’ve borrowed a torch so I don’t have to clamber out of bed when that brilliant idea strikes me at three in the morning).
Inside the front cover of my current Cahier is a Post-it note, where I put down one-line blog post ideas. The temporary nature of Post-its invite the most deranged ideas, spur-of-the-moment thoughts. Since you can abandon them at will, there’s less second-guessing. Is this really a good idea? Probably not, but who cares? Down it goes! I have to feel free to scribble, to be scrappy, to just jot things down regardless.
The last component is implicit in the previous two: create a routine, force habits on myself. Put pressure on doing the little things (carrying the notebook around, keeping the right implements handy, writing several times a day) and the big things—like writing blog posts, even stories—take care of themselves.
