This from the blog of a friend at whose feet I lay the accusation that it’s his fault you are reading my blog now *G*.

Saturday June 29th … Talking Point: on Modem Noise

If you're a writer, you might have an opinion on this question—
Why do we keep writing, when so often there's no reward, and seemingly no point? For years and years I kept going, producing a succession of ghastly books, in the hope that one day I could become a published author and make a career out of all this ridiculous work and loneliness.
I have the feeling, however, that, even without getting a book deal, I would keep scribbling regardless. Once, in the late 80s, I did try and give it up, and I went about doing proper jobs (jobs that nearly did my head in, but still), until the day I got an interesting idea on the bus trip into work, and the idea would not leave me alone until I sat down, in my morning tea, afternoon tea, and lunch breaks, and wrote the damn thing. I learned then that I was not in control of me as a writer; I learned that the writing controlled me, and would always control me. But is that how other writers feel as well? The subject has come up in discussion on a writer's mailing list to which I belong, and it's intrigued me. If you write, I'd love to hear what you think!


I’m not too sure whether this applies to me or not.
Certainly at various periods during my life I have gone through a spasm of writing copiously in a journal recording the day’s events with delusions that perhaps my children would be amused when they are old and grey to read passages from my books to their great-grandchildren (the advantages of having long lived grandparents – the expectation of longevity), but on re-reading some of those journals from a few years back, to see what it was that I had written I realise that it is typically a grumble about current living conditions and the occasional dream or my emotional state. I often wonder if the process of writing is an indication that the writer is not suffering from some kind of depressive illness, because it seems that most of the writing I have done is when I am in the grips of what Winston Churchill called his ‘black dog’, though I doubt that mine has been anywhere as near soul destroying as his may have been.

I think writing has something to do with the need to communicate things that we have thought about, or stories that have engendered themselves within us. I think that most of the people I know who do write are in some ways quite solitary beasts who need to tell someone the thoughts they have thought, but since there is no one close enough they find some avenue to express those ideas in ways that can be sculpted to display the strength of emotion and passion, yet the process of sculpting the words also brings clarity to the thought from which further work can spring.

Perhaps it is the fault of too much education that the simple things that might have once sufficed to “entertain” one during the hours of one’s leisure are now insufficient. Having been stimulated by vast quantities of reading matter or television or radio programs, one finds that the brain will just not shut up and is continually chattering on about this or that … with the result that the attempt to pin those fleeting thoughts down and organise them into some semblance of order, or merely just less disorder at least, results in thousands of words created for the sheer pleasure of stopping one’s brains rattling around like peas in a can!

Julia Cameron’s “The artists way” (Cameron, 1992) has perhaps, influenced me in that one of her basic techniques is to get up and write three pages long hand first thing in the morning. I don’t think she actually indicates what size page one can use, however, one can cheat by using small notebooks but after a while there is a need to move to a more standard size of paper and write more anyway. I think that this has been working on me since I first came across the book and the technique, but I can remember writing in a similar way well before Cameron’s book was released, so perhaps I am driven to write … even if there is no audience, and there are some things that will only ever get written in my offline journal which I still keep, or there is a potential audience of people who find my blog of sufficient interest to return to read it on occasion.
Actually as the destruction of my little Palm-III recedes into the past, the loss of the ability to write and know that I don’t have to transcribe at a later date makes me realise how much I have been just scribbling on it in the last couple of years and then editing those scribbles into the appropriate documents. I am now rediscovering the gentle art of keeping a notebook in my purse for those moments when a thought strikes and needs to be captured like a flying fish before is squirms out of my mind and swims back into the depths of my consciousness once again.

This is what I get for reading books until all hours and then checking my email before going to bed … incoherent thought processes, dribbled onto the page without benefit of hot chocolate to sip on the way to the land of Morpheus. However, the spousal unit has just wandered through the kitchen and corrected the previous lack in our lives, and I shall up load this and then toddle off to a night’s repose.

· Cameron, J. (1992). The artist's way. London: Pan Books. ISBN 0330 34358 0.