Archive for the Frustration category

I am giving up writing because … #11

If I do, I might finally be able to remem­ber the dreams that I am cer­tain I am hav­ing about writ­ing, which cur­rently escape my memory due to excess­ive tiredness.

I am giving up writing because … #10

There is no time to stop and smell the flowers. Or to pick the flowers, eat their petals and die of pois­on­ing. Most espe­cially, there is no to write about the flowers using pain­fully hack­neyed metaphors.

I am giving up writing because … #9

Stocks and shares on my real­ity index are climb­ing, whilst my ima­gin­a­tion exchange has nose­dived and is about to crash and burn. I am cre­at­ively bank­rupt, and the bailiffs are ham­mer­ing at the door.

I am giving up writing because … #8

It is winter. Because it is dark. Because it is cold. Because my head is no longer cent­rally heated by sparks being set off in my cereb­ral cor­tex. And because, tra­gic­ally, there’s prob­ably some­thing good on TV.

I am giving up writing because … #7

Face­book is appar­ently where we’re all wax­ing lyr­ical now, and it takes every last drop of my fail­ing inspir­a­tion to provide an aver­age of seventy-three hate­ful, passive-aggressive status updates each day.

I am giving up writing because … #6

There have been sick­en­ing moments recently when I ima­gined that my obscure verbal out­pour­ings would be improved if they were accom­pan­ied by pho­tos of a dog in a hat, or alabaster-skinned children.

I am giving up writing because … #5

I have finally given into my long-held neur­osis that demons lift my fin­ger­prints from my key­board at night, in order to clone them­selves into like­nesses of me and causes unholy ter­ror amongst God-fearing folk.

I am giving up writing because … #4

These days, I get my fic­tion kicks through applic­a­tion forms. Mak­ing myself sound exper­i­enced, effi­cient and emin­ently employ­able is enough of a chal­lenge to my creativity.

I am giving up writing because … #3

It was always my ambi­tion, at the age of 37, to donate my brain to sci­entific research, so that med­ical stu­dents could poke it with sticks and try to fig­ure out where it all went so dreadfully wrong.

I am giving up writing because … #2

I have noth­ing to say about the world eco­nomic crisis, other than the simple fact that I wish eternal dam­na­tion and abject poverty on every banker, broker and city trader.

I am giving up writing because … #1

The last ori­ginal idea I had for a piece of cre­at­ive prose was in 1972. It involved a Fisher Price activ­ity centre. Sadly, I was ten months old at the time, and couldn’t even hold a pen.

Scrapings and clippings

• Lists of dir­ec­tions • Lists of instruc­tions • Lists of noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar • Must tell him that from her • Must tell her that from him • Latest news (allegedly) • Open close open close open close • Code for this, that or the other • Pro­pos­als in trip­lic­ate • Refus­als in duplicate […]

Stickered tip to toe

Noth­ing fits, from dawn on through weary after­noon into still and sleepy dusk. I am out to vis­it­ors inside my own skin, since today I am an unwel­come guest myself. Your face don’t fit, mate. You ain’t fackin’ comin’ in. Frame cracked, smeared glass, imper­fectly aligned and pic­ture crooked. Up a bit, up a bit, […]

Work and non-work

It is going to be a long day. A very long day indeed. As I sit here, men­tally steel­ing myself for a five-hour ‘busi­ness event’ that is surely going to be the 21st cen­tury equi­val­ent of one of Leni Riefenstahl’s films of a Nazi rally — only slightly less enjoy­able, and with none of the […]

Skin-written

I can­not con­trol my skin, so I etch on it for tem­por­ary relief. Scratch out the fever­ish, black-bloodied let­ters onto the milky white. I should get out more, or else fade into so much grey­ing and decay­ing and gone, finely dus­ted. The nib bumps over the dry, flaky sur­face. Don’t scratch, don’t itch, don’t retch, […]