Usual...

So I guess I’ve got everything I wanted: come down to the country, no responsibilities, no job, working my self free from London life – nothing to hold me back from this passion for the thing called ‘writing’. And all those ideas and finally the chance to do something about them and then what happens? What happens is I wake up this morning and think, what the hell was I thinking? I can’t write. My ideas are stupid. I need to get fucking real, man. I mean, I’m not a writer at all.

Oh hell.

It’s just the way it goes, I know, standing at the door finally and then the panic of what should happen when it opens. Will I be invited in? Will I be welcomed? What will I say? All I’ve been thinking about is getting there. It’s normal, I know – it’s a voice I probably shouldn’t listen to – but…oh, I don’t know, I sort of feel like I want to cry. I need to knuckle down. Work.

“But writing shouldn’t be work!” another voice shouts.

But it is.

Anyway, probably no need to go on in this fashion – let’s have a think about some of the things we would say/do if we were a writer…

1. An idea about writing about the last ten years of my life – the ten years that follow Discovering Beautiful – called ‘The Seven Pillars of Idiocy’. Simple that, I suppose material’s already there.

2. Re-writing Discovering Beautiful. I’m sure I could make it shorter, and I’ve started to think that maybe it would be better if it included retrospective musings rather than what I did do, which was ignore all that and try and make it purely as it was happening at the time, all my innocence and all.

3. The idea of a whole book of Wayne Mercedes short stories. Could be a lot of fun. Fiction’s always more daunting because you actually have to create something. But lots of ideas already there.

4. Walking in Israel I thought I could write a ‘new gospel’ or something (The Gospel of Jack) but then this morning I read a bit of New Testament and it’s actually fairly mad and couldn’t really be made sense of with a few simple additions here and there. Bit sad about that. But maybe all those Israel walking thoughts were more to do with me and less to do with writing.

5. Writing Around The World With Eighty Quid as a fiction, based on my travels and Mikey’s travels and ending there in Israel with the realisations that it’s not really important to go on, that friends and family are where it’s at. Good be good. I feel like people are always trying to point me in the way of fiction and I resist.

6. Blogging. Blogging like I am doing now. Was always good for me and I’ve stopped and maybe I should do it more. Just expression. Gets you typing. And that’s a good thing.

7. Nothing more.