As a writer, you’re not really
meant to go on too much about whatever it is that you’re working on at the
moment. There are many reasons for this, the most compelling being that if you’re
talking about the writing, then you’re
not getting on with the actual business of doing the writing. It’s a form of
procrastination: if you can talk about how fantastic the finished product is
going to be, it (deceptively) lets you off the hook of actually putting in the
work of putting one word after the other on a page. What you talk about will always be better than the
dull, flabby story that you finally produce. There’s also the fact that you’re
likely to dilute the story. Speak it out loud enough times – and all stories,
at their source, come from the oral tradition (oh, stop sniggering at the back)
– and the written version becomes a pale tracing.
There is, of course, yet another
reason to shut up about your writing, and it’s probably the most simple. Unless
you’re already published, unless people are prepared to fork out twenty quid at
a book festival and ask some variation of ‘where do you get your ideas’, then,
frankly, nobody gives a damn about that thing you’re probably never going to
finish. Oh, sure, some of your loved ones will, and the couple of people who
earnestly believe that you actually do have some talent – but even those people
would rather you shut the hell up, and get on with the writing.
Back when I lived in Croydon, I
remember attending a house party, although I don’t clearly remember anyone
there, suggesting that the party was of a friend-of-a-friend. Therefore, I
found myself wandering aimlessly through the various rooms. I do have one very
clear memory of the party, however, and it’s of a writer talking – rather tediously
– about this book he was working on. I remember thinking, even then, that this
book would never be finished. The woman he was talking to also seemed to have
reached this conclusion. He was speaking about how he got his ideas, making him
reasonably unique in all of authors in that he actually had an answer to this
question, even though it was likely that nobody had asked him it.
He’d written some kind of sci-fi
book, which to my eavesdropping ears sounded somewhat like a EE Doc Smith kind
of book. He was speaking about how he’d come up with the name for his hero. ‘You
know the housing estate by the ABC cinema?’, he asked. It’s genuinely likely
that you – yes, you, the one that’s reading this blog – do in fact know what
housing estate he was talking about, since it’s the one that Jeremy and Mark
live in, in the series Peep Show, and
appears in some form in almost every episode. The name of the housing estate
was (and may well still be) Zodiac Court. For as long as anyone could remember,
however, the ‘O’ in court was missing. And therefore, our writer friend
declared in revelatory tones that one normally reserves for penicillin being
discovered growing on your lab table, wouldn't it be a great thing if those two
words were reversed, and - ? Well, the rest is history. Uh, literally history,
it seems, as a perfunctory Google search suggests that that character has not
yet reached any kind of saturation point.
As I’ve indicated, though, I felt
even then (and I wasn’t particularly doing any regular writing at that point)
that his talking about his ideas in
such a way seemed to pretty much guarantee that he’d never finish the book. I’m not a big
fan of Family Guy, but I’m fond of
the repeated gag where the would-be intellectual Brian is constantly mocked: ‘you’ve
been talking about that novel for three years now. How’s that going, anyway?’
Most of us probably know of a writer (read: not actually a writer) like this. I’m
very aware of that trap.
However, that hasn't stopped me
banging on about my writing on various networking sites. I know it can be
tedious and boring to read/hear, and that it can be an excuse – as I’ve
mentioned earlier – to not actually put the spadework in. I do it, however, for
the same reason, I suspect, most writers do: partially for the affirmation, to
get friends and other writers to show interest and support – to cheer me over
the finish line – and also (the theory goes), if the declarations of a story
are in such a public forum, then the idea is that I’ll be too embarrassed to do
anything else but actually finish. However, I’m acutely aware that many other
writers do this, and never finish (or even start) the stories that they’re
wittering on about. After all, writers
have no excuse not to write, no matter how tired and emotionally drained at the
end of a work day they are (which is normally, literally my excuse). The only
thing to do is to sit down and write.
I feel a little more relaxed
about banging on about what I’m writing (or so I tell myself) because the bulk
of what I’m talking about is, for the most part, actually finished, done,
completed. In the case of one play, it’s already had a full cast production.
What I’m going on about now is the re-writes, the final draft. A few more of
those well-wishers are now more vocal about wanting to actually read something
I’ve written at some point. And, at some point, I’m going to have to take a
deep breath, and let that happen. After all, why the hell else does anyone
write?
