It’s just after three in the morning. I can’t sleep. As I’ve got older writing has become something of a therapy. So here I am. Wondering where the dead hours will take me.
Not towards fiction, however; that’s far too intense an activity and I may have lost the urge. Four novels completed, thirty-plus short stories. I’ve pecked at my fifth novel, having reached 60,000 words, but I can’t see an ending and it’s languished for several years.
The blog presently consists of 1916 posts; at 300 words a pop that’s rather more than half a million words. Given I started in 2008, not a lot. As a reporter working mainly for a broadsheet weekly I could write 1000 words in an hour straight on to the typewriter.
The blog has taken some twists and turns. Under the title Works Well I devoted myself to broad technology but found it too restrictive and went general. In November 2011 I announced I was ceasing blogging, but resumed twenty-four later. Why? Perhaps I was imitating the courtship routines of a pouter pigeon.
Changed my blogonym from Barrett Bonden (A bosun in O’Brien’s Aubrey-Maturin series of novels) to Lorenzo da Ponte (Mozart’s librettist) when I decided I would write exclusively about music. Ill-advisedly the blog became Tone Deaf. Nobody was much interested. Went general again.
As an ex-hack I know a little about quite a lot. Which means I will never run out of material. Nor do I need the stimulus of “events” in my life. When in doubt float an idea. Once I compiled a list of a hundred written works that had interested me.
In the end the posts are about me. I am not important enough to warrant an autobiography but the skeleton’s here. May I now sleep?
I hope you were able to sleep. I must say that writing late at (or in the middle of the) night deepens one's abilities. What is it about the night that does that to us? The pull of the moon? The rising tides? Or maybe we are simply only half awake, and our unconscious mind is more fully to the fore. So many mysteries! So little sleep.
ReplyDeleteColete: Night blots out distractions, concentrates the mind. In some - though not me - in encourages fantasy thoughts. I prefer the cast-iron world of present-day thought. There's just as much depth now as there was then.
ReplyDeleteI've given up blogging. After the blog got hacked back in October, I realized that it was time to move on. The world is drifting in a direction where my Dharma Bums dream no longer fit. I no longer read the news even though I have online subscriptions to three newspapers. So, what do I think about when I lay awake at night these days... I'll have to ponder that tonight. I hope you were able to get some sleep. (NewRobin13)
ReplyDeleteNewRobin13: Sleep still a problem, but never mind about that. I'm sorry you're giving up the ghost. I might argue that in these troublous times the need for civilised voices increases. But I don't want to add to your ponderings. You're lucky in that you do have a fallback - communing with nature. Auf wiedersehen.
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