Grieg’s Piano Concerto, by Grieg

The fol­low­ing quote struck a chord — not of recog­ni­tion, but of admir­a­tion and slight incomprehension:

“I’m really lov­ing not writ­ing any­thing at the moment … Right now I have no ima­gin­a­tion or motiv­a­tion, and it’s a fant­astic feel­ing. I wasn’t able to switch off for six and a half years, and now I’ve man­aged it I’m very reluct­ant to go back to writ­ing. I wrote obsess­ively, to the det­ri­ment of every other aspect of my life, and I’m not sure I want to go back to that, and I know I wouldn’t be pre­pared to write with less com­mit­ment. Maybe I’ll write some­thing else one day, but if I do I’m hop­ing I would be obliged to approach the work from a com­pletely dif­fer­ent angle — not from the per­spect­ive of a miser­able git.”

That’s the author Dan Rhodes — yes, you may remem­ber I’m a fan — talk­ing in Book­m­unch.

Of course, by now you will have noticed that I’m not exactly a pub­lished writer (don’t worry, because I’ve noticed that too; noth­ing escapes me when it comes to the import­ant facts of my life). But I do love writ­ing. Incess­ant writ­ing. How­ever — and with apo­lo­gies for the sheer pre­ten­tious­ness of the fol­low­ing state­ment — some­times it’s bloody exhaust­ing. It gets too much. Usu­ally, it’s not because I’ve run out of words, but rather because I have too many words and they are all scream­ing at me in a des­per­ate attempt to find an escape route out onto the page / key­board. At that point, my writ­ing becomes like Eric Morecambe’s piano-playing — all the right notes, just not neces­sar­ily in the right order. And shortly after, the inev­it­able hap­pens — my head explodes. That, at least, goes some way to explain­ing what happened recently, when I tem­por­ar­ily dis­ap­peared off the web­log radar and returned to the wil­der­ness of Nor­mal People.

Yet, read­ing the above quote, for the very first time I actu­ally found myself think­ing that the act of not writ­ing soun­ded rather appeal­ing. Ima­gine being able to live without that con­stant desire / urgent need to put almost everything down in text! Ima­gine being able to talk to people in a nat­ural and unforced way, without your sen­tences fall­ing apart as they splurge out of your mouth in a rush of words because you’ve sud­denly had the dread real­isa­tion that you’re not nearly as prac­ticed at speak­ing as you are at writ­ing! Ima­gine all that time you could save — writ­ing, edit­ing, re-writing, delet­ing, start­ing again, writ­ing, look­ing at the clock and real­ising that it’s 2.00am and your eyes are hurt­ing! Ima­gine not wast­ing weeks or months of your life writ­ing bad poetry! Ima­gine the dis­ap­pear­ance of those awk­ward moments when you try to explain why you write and why you love it! Ima­gine the emo­tional release of other people not think­ing that you’re a bit odd!

It would be bliss. Possibly.

Except it wouldn’t. That’s why I keep com­ing back here. That’s why I’m sit­ting here won­der­ing how I’m going to fin­ish this entry in a nice, well-rounded, sat­is­fy­ing way, even though it’s gone mid­night and I’m tired bey­ond belief. That’s why I’m look­ing back at that last sen­tence and try­ing to think of a bet­ter word than “nice”, because the words of the best Eng­lish teacher I ever had are circ­ling around inside my head, her soft West Coun­try burr remind­ing me that “nice” is the most banal and bor­ing word in the entire lan­guage. That’s why I’ve writ­ten myself into a corner in the space of a couple of para­graphs. That’s why I’m wish­ing that I’d never begun this entry in the first place. That’s why I’m not going to delete it either.

For heaven’s sake, I’m hav­ing an Eric More­cambe moment yet again.

To some people, writ­ing is as import­ant as speak­ing. But for the first time in my life, I think that I can actu­ally appre­ci­ate the wis­dom — and the appeal — of occa­sion­ally observing a vow of silence. [Link via Splin­ters; entry title by Ernie Wise]