My Writing Day

How does a writer fill their day? Well, it does not include biscuits.

07:00 the alarm shrills my brain back into existence; it is a painful ride down, letting slip your dreams and realising that you are a lump of flesh and bone collapsed onto a pillow. Minutes tick by as the brain makes sense of what is going on; questions fill the space in front of you: who am I? Where am I? What day is it? Where am I meant to be?

Panicked, you stretch out of bed and your legs manage to guide you to where you keep the kettle. In the kitchen, the kettle slowly comes to a boil as I stare out of the window watching the world streak by in cars and lorries.

Coffee starts the day, yet tea is the order for the remainder of daylight; as darkness looms so the liquid refreshment becomes heavier and thicker. Straining the brain into different directions and running up and down on a snakes and ladders board.

I am reminded of the landscape painting from Top Secret, directed by the Zucker Brothers. All these people zooming across my life blurred into a brief moment of existence. Coffee has been consumed and it has forced the nerves into gear. I pretend to smile as the grey sky brightens from a dull grey to a lighter dull grey. Oh the joys of being in northern Europe in a country trying increasingly harder to extricate itself from the world.

All this is by the by; because writers create worlds rather than reside in the one that is being sold to us as the real one. It is time to get dressed, and I fumble with designs within my head. Happy with a nouveau Dr Who style I stride onwards towards my trusty laptop which contains a myriad of thoughts and ideas. I jump in, eager and keen to rid myself of the dusty British blues.

Writing is not something which I choose to do: it is something that I have to do. When I am caught staring out of the window it is not the sun I see, or the light dancing playfully on the current of the river. It is the grime that blights our green and pleasant land; the hatred that fills our tills with ill-gotten gains; the anger which fuels our lustful desire for snide remarks and hurtful asides. In those moments when I write, I am choosing to turn away from all of this and embark on my own journey into a place full of danger and excitement; populated by heroes who are heroic and villains who are villainous. Good always wins in creative worlds, that is why ours fails so dramatically – we have stopped being creative in our thinking.

Once writing has ceased I ponder. My mind turns to Star Wars and I ask the question, are we actually the empire in the great scheme of things? I’ve always wanted to be part of the rebel alliance, but I increasingly convince myself that the western world is the empire and I am party to that. Perhaps I carry the soul of a wandering Tie-Fighter Pilot (I certainly carry the action figure), lost in the galaxy and floating into extinction, far, far away.

Buoyed by whimsy, it is lunch and there is nothing more thrilling that cheese on toast with a boiled egg broken on top.

Writing is so desperately difficult to write about; the process of heading into your creative bubble, tasting of Hubba Bubba, unlocks all-sorts of liquorice and helps towards making things impossible to link to a fearful and bleak world. So I head back into mine, and lie down on the blue grass while dragonflies breathe their flames above me.

Until next time…