People often ask me how I think of something different to write every week. “With difficulty,” is my stock response.
However, the terror of the empty page is a great galvaniser to creativity and a deadline is as serious as the prospect of being hanged in the morning.
The thing is, if I see or do or read something, the thought occurs, “I could get a piece out of that,” but if I don’t write it down immediately, it disappears like snow off a ditch. Rather than a memory, I have a forgettery. The best ideas rarely get as far as this page. Cold comfort is offered by a study carried out by the University of Tokyo, which explains that our circadian rhythms which regulate sleep and awake cycles also affect learning and memory. They advise: “Forgetful people who struggle to recall something should wait until later.” Well, I’m willing to wait, but the Irish News isn’t.
Oh Dear Reader, if you were only with me as I wander through the house in a state of growing agitation and despair and the hands of the clock travelling at increasing speed. Worst of all is the idea that promises much, but won’t go the distance. It’s 72 words short. “Put in more describing words,” was one less than helpful suggestion. Naturally, I keep a notebook by the bed, reach groggily for it at 3am, but can’t decipher the writing in the morning.
The late Loving Spouse bought me a dictaphone, but being a total technophobe, I’d inadvertently wipe the tape. Lately, I’ve taken to sticking fluorescent post-its on the furniture, scribbled with spontaneous thoughts and pertinent phrases. I took one of them to the supermarket last week under the impression it was my shopping list.
Of course there are tricks of the trade. I’ve done many creative writing courses facilitated by ‘real’ writers. “Just be spontaneous”, advised one. Heads bent obediently to the task, absolute novices beavering away, pens flying over paper – and I, biting the end of my biro, signally failing to ‘spontane’.
Years later, sitting in the writers’ centre at Annaghmakerrig at the very table, scratched and ink-stained, where Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney and a host of other first-rate poets, playwrights and novelists came to write, I penned a conversation between the pair of antique china dogs on either side of the mantelpiece who must’ve witnessed some genius over the years.
To be tutored by professional writers garlanded with awards and generously willing to share their ways into creativity is an opportunity not offered to many. Mind you, if you’re presented with a sizeable lump of Donegal granite and asked to write about it, you have a ‘rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee’ moment.
They say ‘Those who can – do. Those who can’t – teach.’ With the nerve of Nelson, I began tutoring community groups. Writing for novices is about what you know and feel and remember – as good a starting point as any. Nobody’s up for the Booker prize – yet. I was astonished and moved by the results. For some it was akin to taking the cork out of a bottle and finding a voice. And what a mutually supportive exercise it proved to be – therapeutic tears and laughter, generous praise from their peers, pride in their achievement – with the proviso that what’s shared in the group, stays in the group. I felt privileged to help them blossom and have their trust.
For me, there are rare days when the writing just flows unstoppably, which is a mixed blessing since I vastly exceed my word allowance and have to edit savagely, leaving the narrative like a badly-cut hedge and sacrificing phrases I’m particularly proud of is akin to drowning kittens. Today is not one of them.
Apropos of nothing, a team of Indian researchers has discovered that the pressure of meeting a deadline drives us to consume calorific junk food, especially sweet stuff. To this I can truthfully attest. Half a packet of chocolate digestives later, I’ve made it to the end of this article. And I didn’t even taste them on the way down……
