Hesitation, repetition, deviation

Curi­ously unin­spired at the moment. Seem­ingly noth­ing pro­found or even remotely inter­est­ing to say. I’m wrest­ling with lan­guage, and words are simply refus­ing to do what I ask of them. If you indulge in writ­ing as much as I do, it’s really notice­able when everything grinds to a halt and the thoughts stop flowing.

I’m ask­ing for trouble with those state­ments, aren’t I?

Do you ever get the feel­ing that you’re wait­ing for some­thing to hap­pen, yet have abso­lutely no idea what that some­thing might be? If only I knew; if only I could put my fin­ger on it. Whatever it is, I hope it’s excit­ing. I am crav­ing excite­ment at the moment, more so than I have done in months.

I think that the words began to dry up a few days ago, after I went into a book­shop and saw a heap of books for sale in one of those tempt­ing “3 for the price of 2″ offers. As I looked at the titles avail­able, it sud­denly dawned on me that they were all of a sim­ilar theme — yes, I was brows­ing through the late-twentysomething, early-thirtysomething reduced price bon­anza sec­tion. Tony Par­sons, Helen Field­ing, Nick Hornby, Mike Gayle, Lisa Jew­ell. I don’t need to go on — you know the authors to whom I’m refer­ring. I’ve read a lot of these nov­els, I’ll admit it. But now I’m begin­ning to hate them with a pas­sion. If you’re of “a cer­tain age”, it’s almost impossible not to get sucked in by such books; equally, how­ever, it’s almost impossible not to emerge from their pages and think:

“That’s me, that is. I’ve turned into a ste­reo­typ­ical char­ac­ter from a thirtyso­mething novel. How many times a day do I think about my dir­ec­tion in life? How many times a day to I won­der where I’m going or what it all means (whatever ‘it’ might be)? How many times a day do I indulge in mean­ing­less remin­is­cing? Are the vari­ous con­tents of my fridge also ste­reo­typ­ic­ally thirtyso­mething? And finally, if I can’t help think­ing like this, why don’t I just take up my pen and write it all down? It’s true that I’ll just end up adding to the huge num­ber of such books, but at least I’ll make some money into the bargain.”

To be fair to myself, I don’t think like that very much. Just once or twice an hour.

When I’m a bit­ter, cyn­ical and twis­ted fortyso­mething (as opposed to a bit­ter, cyn­ical … oh, you know), I’m almost cer­tain that there won’t be a single con­tem­por­ary novel reflect­ing that situ­ation. At which point I will notice a gap in the mar­ket, and begin writ­ing frantic­ally. Expect to see me at your local book­store sign­ing in ten years, then.

In the mean­time, I would respect­fully sug­gest to the above named authors that they find some new sub­ject mat­ter, before they turn every­one in the 27 — 33 age range into nervous wrecks. Or turn me into a nervous wreck, any­way; I only included every­one else in this age bracket in my con­spir­acy in order to make myself feel better.

Oh look, the words are back. Sort of. Funny that.