It takes my mighty might to write and it seems to me that the slightest anything is a reason not to write. This blog fails tracks all those reasons at least twice each week, and keeps watch in case any actual writing creeps through. Though if it does we shall not panic. We shall examine it cooly and, chances are, it will slunk away.
What is it that I might write?
The collection of poems - stuck in notebooks, left half formed, in the places that I have been.
Churchill my father - in which Daniel Walsh avoids the real word in favour of chatting with his authentic father W.S. Churchill
Heard - in which Andrea O'Shea hears her politician father give an extraordinary speech of reconciliation in the new Northern Ireland Assembly and decides to seek him out after thirty years of separation.
Daniel Psalmanzar Lever - in which Danny Lever learns to be a crook in 1980's South London
Untitleable Short Story Collection - mostly written out from longer pieces or with competitive fame in mind.
Why might I not write?
I am poorly disciplined with a wonderfully diverting family, work life and appetite for gathering experience. I am cursed with a wish to capture the resonance of all of life that I see and experience here, and now, but not blessed with the determination and ruthlessness to go for a kill and to push the space into being where I can reflect and write.
Which is not to say that I am down-hearted about this addiction. It is a doleful joy, about which I have no choice. I accept it and would pay some price for giving it up.
On then, and let's see what I see about why, as I watch myself not do what I should.
Antonio Damasio in his book The feeling of what happens suggest that firstly we all generate a film about the world, then our own viewpoint, and then the story about ourselves (I am boiling down somewhat - it is a fabulous book, read it yourselves) and so I see this blog as a look over my shoulder, as I not-write.
best wishes
