A DISTINCT LACK OF ENTHUSIASM

I think that you and I, dear reader, are heading into a twilight world and I am somehow finding it harder and harder to dig in my heels and seem to be totally refusing to rage against the dying of the light. These (almost) daily musings on the state of my humble existence are becoming ever more difficult to compose as I skydive without a parachute into the grasping claws of a full-on midlife crisis. I mean, when even I think that I’ve become utterly boring, what else is there for you to do, dear reader, but to pack up your picnic things and head for the hills looking for things that are more fun to do?

Meanwhile, I keep on persisting with churning out my less-than-original thoughts and am constantly waiting for the inevitable disappointment of not hearing even that philosophical one hand clapping, and yet somehow I do still manage to keep on rattling along and carry on endlessly tappity-tapping away about things that nobody else is really interested in to an almost mind-shatteringly useless degree.

There are lots of theoretical texts about the process of writing, some of which I’ve actually read although you probably find that very hard to believe. There seems to be a consensus of thought about how to approach these matters written by a group of respected wise elders of the tribe and which have become accepted lore despite the fact that there are now so many exceptions to the rule that the rule no longer seems to apply. Nonetheless, the exalted and revered ‘they’ continue to preach that there is a ‘right’ and a ‘wrong’ way to go about these things despite all the mounting evidence to the contrary.

Nowadays it does seem that any tin-pot theory is just as valid as any other because, when you actually listen to writers (real writers, that is, not ham-fisted bun-vendors like myself) talk about the processes that they use, everyone’s processes are unique and valid because they work for them. In the theoretical world though, there are many long held maxims like “Writing is rewriting” which seems to make sense until you hear those of the literati who truly claim that they don’t do that but prefer to formulate their ideas and then rattle things out in as few drafts as they can get away with.

The mythical “they” will also say things like “writers write” or “you should try to write every day” but I think we’re starting to see the folly of those particular theories hereabouts. I guess the awful truth that needs to be faced by pathetic relative illiterates like myself is that good writers will write well and people like me are just stringing words together hopefully, pointlessly and ultimately unsuccessfully. I don’t refer to ‘success’ in the ‘glittering prizes’ sense here, by the way, I just mean the idea of successfully communicating a message in an interesting or amusing way, which is a fence that I seems to be stumbling at more and more often recently as my youthful vigour fades and the prospect of being put out to grass or sent to the glue and dog food factories becomes a more likely fate.

‘They’ do say that you should write about what you know. Well, I think that it has become abundantly clear over the course of the last few months that I don’t really know very much at all, and certainly not about people and how they work. I know that in the dim and distant past I did get something resembling an education but it’s becoming clearer to me by the day that I made a huge mistake (possibly due to tragic personal circumstances if I feel any need to spread the blame around…) when I stopped acquiring that when I did, and now I just spend most of my time feeling like ‘Captain Thickyboots’ whenever I open my mouth in the vicinity of the few people I talk to who are generally all so much cleverer than I am, especially in the ways of the world.

Then again, I’m always amazed when I look back at my earlier self and how much he thought he knew about the world. When I was twenty, I thought I knew everything, and it’s taken me nearly another thirty years to learn how little I actually know about anything. Perhaps that happens to everybody. The snorts of derision that you might have heard as you mouthed off about the world as a teenager, coming from people who you dismissed as being grumpy old so-and-sos whose own best years were already behind them, were actually a vision of your own future.

‘They’ also say that you must write about your enthusiasms. This seems to be getting ever more difficult too. There once was a time when I could get probably quite embarrassingly enthusiastic about things but that particular skill seems to be evading me now. Somehow everything I used to enjoy seems to have lost its gloss and doesn’t seem quite so important as it all turns to ash and slips off into the other bulb of life’s egg-timer.

For example, I used to love old television programmes and raved about them incessantly to a probably quite tedious level. I could, of course, just write about that every day, but it is rather a ‘niche market’ and my opinions upon them wouldn’t excite many other people I’m sure. Equally, I could write at length about films, or numbers, or bird-watching or even politics, and many, many other topics, all of which have managed to excite me in one way or another across the decades, but I suspect that such things are very personal and trying to get that joy across is very difficult when those fences are there to stumble over and my so-called ‘style’ is so very moribund. The problem is also that all of these topics are ones upon which you can always find much more eloquent and properly formed opinions written elsewhere, and so there’s nothing new or interesting that I feel that I can add to anyone’s life by throwing my own half-baked notions into the mix. That and the vividness of the memory of many of these things seem to be starting to fade as the years pass by and the sun sets.

Finally, ‘they’ might suggest that you write about something you feel passionate about…

Oh dear!

‘Passion’ – I do seem to remember having that once, but I’m not sure where I left it. Any passion I might show nowadays is usually mistaken for immature ramblings and ravings, or possibly mild eccentricity at best, and sometimes gets called ‘ranting’ by the more uncharitable of audiences, so instead I find myself wondering why I actually bother and consider that it might be better all round if I just shut up and faded into the gathering gloom and darkness of another long dark night of the soul.