Once Around The Block

You lot out there will know what I mean. A month ago fingers were moving over keyboard with a certain degree of assurance. Even if the results were crap, at least they were results. This last couple of weeks the brain is a combination of mush and brick and the words just won’t come.

I’m retired. I have entire days to feel guilt and frustration. For decades I planned for when I would have endless time to write. I’ve now got endless time to write. Currently I’m spending that time declaring to the cat, in resonant tones, ‘It’s gone, Little Cat. Whatever it was, it’s gone. I’ll never write anything again. I can’t find the words for a shopping list. I am purposeless. I am redundant. I am a waste of the air I breathe and the space I take up on the planet.’ Sigh. ‘A Hobnob might help. Or a cream cracker. Is there any of that cheese left?’

Suddenly, there’s an overwhelming desire to watch Volcano on Netflix (or possibly Disney+), again. Other varieties of distraction crap are available, but for me a rubbish disaster flick does it every time. Volcano is a load of nonsense from 1997 about, you’ll be surprised to learn, a volcano that’s been hiding under Los Angeles, gets bored and decides to have some fun. People get lava-ed, a child is rescued at the last minute, I’m sure there’s a dog in there somewhere. Before streaming, I used to watch it whenever it popped up on TV on a Sunday afternoon or Bank Holiday. Which meant I mostly saw it from anything between a quarter and a half hour in. Not that it mattered.

Alternative options include The Day After Tomorrow (new ice age), Twister (tornados) or, if the distraction gods are really smiling, Towering Inferno. You can keep your Bridget Joneses or Richard Curtis so-called ‘comfort’ monstrosities. In the absence of a good disaster, I’ll take Die Hard Nos 1(for Alan Rickman) & 3 (for Samuel L Jackson). Yes, I know Alan Rickman’s in Love Actually, and mostly I would do anything for Alan. But I won’t do that.

Although I do occasionally like a silly romcom. I’m a big fan of You’ve Got Mail, with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. I can’t stand Sleepless In Seattle, with the same combination, because as far as I can see it’s about a deranged woman who stalks some guy she heard on the radio and ruthlessly uses his child to get to him. A horror movie grinning at you through pink ribbons.

 I like When Harry Met Sally. And The Philadelphia Story (1940) and Bringing Up Baby (1938), both with the incomparable Katharine Hepburn. Or a nice Hollywood Golden Age musical. Singin’ In The Rain or Guys and Dolls. You can have and keep Les Mis or anything that’s had Lloyd Webber near it.

But, for a bit of brainless nonsense, you can’t beat someone falling from a great height/tumbling into flames, lava or other noxious substance/being found frozen to death.

You see? This is what happens. I sit down to write something hopefully worthwhile, and my mind is already wandering around the RECOMMENDED FOR YOU section.

I hate not being able to write. I know all the things I’m supposed to do. Be kind to myself. Write a bit, just a bit, a couple of sentences, anything to see marks on paper. Go for a walk. Read something that will stir the imagination. Read some of my own stuff to remind myself that I did it once, ergo, I can do it again. Listen to music.

STAY AWAY FROM THE REMOTE!

Logging on to ABC Tales helps. There’s always things to laugh with, cry with, rejoice with or shiver with. Over the last week there’s been a couple of very thoughtful pieces about the process of writing and the feelings about it afterwards (thank you, Itane Vero and mcscraic). I’ve also reduced my consumption of world news, the better to persuade myself there’s actually a point to doing anything at all. It won’t last, because I was brought up by current-events-addicted parents and if I don’t listen to Today in the morning and at least one news bulletin in the evening (I’ve kind of given up on TV news), and read a newspaper either online or in print, I can feel the Shades gathering.

Sadly, I have done far too good a job of passing this on to the next generation. When my son phones, I want to talk about the health of one of their kittens (poor little cutie has a hip problem) while he is eager to discuss the Big Bads everywhere and how he warned me about Keir Starmer. And I can’t help but succumb. I have no idea where he gets the rant gene from.

The daughter’s reaction to The State Of Things is ‘But why the fuck are they doing that?’ ‘Well, it goes back quite a way…’ ‘Well, it didn’t work then. Why the fuck are they doing it now?’

No, no. As well as putting down the remote, I am staying off the rants. Think nice thoughts. People screaming while sinking into a pool of lava.

I’m meeting a friend for lunch tomorrow. She’s a very successful writer of romances. We’ve done each other good because, before becoming friends, I would probably only have read a romance if a considerable amount of money changed hands, and she thought science fiction, fantasy and the supernatural were exclusively for fifteen-year-old boys who’d got bored with porn on the internet. I now know that a good romance can be an engrossing thing and she actually tried her hand at a vampire story. It’s not her natural environment, but she’s done better than I have. My first bash at a cute meet is still a long way off.

Or maybe that’s what I should do. They say trying to write something way outside your comfort zone can be a way of beating the Block. A good-looking couple, not short of a bob or two, each with a complex past, and the only barrier to happy-ever-after is a misunderstanding rather than a looming dystopia. Could work.

Or, they could go for a romantic weekend in an Airbnb that comes with an awful lot more than they bargained for.

The synapses just might be tingling.

Picture by Drew Coffman, free to use at Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Writer%27s_Block_I.jpg