I am almost a writer, I feel. In that I feel a little more like a writer than yesterday, last week, last month. Although, never having been one before, I am not entirely sure what it should feel like. I mean, by the same definition, I also feel more like a bear, because I am looking for excuses to hibernate, punctuated by adventures in marmalade and/or honey. Plus I have very little brain. Trust me. I’ve forgotten if I had any toast this morning.
Better have some more to make sure.
And this feeling writerly / ritterly is on top of imagining my writing skills as some form of dog, inspired by a cow. It gets quite noisy, and messy, in my head sometimes. Lots of paws for thought. I said, ‘lots of paws for thought’. Oh all right, suit yourselves.
Yes, it’s animal month in the Ivan imagination. In the novel so far we have monkeys, seagulls, crows, pigeons and a rabbit. And, obviously, the first law being write about what you know, it’s drinks year. Those already named include whisky, port, Guinness, rum and vodka. Perhaps I should abandon all attempts at fiction and simply produce lists of things. I’d need a hook, though. Some variation of ‘The most crap top-tens for un-adventurous boys in 2010 ever’. Yes, that will get me published.
Although now that I think about it — yes, dear reader, the poor sod writing this actually thinks like this — I should name some of the drinks that Tom erm, drinks, after animals. Which would normally be the perfect excuse to lose myself in the intertron for a couple of hours researching animal-themed names for drinks that have some loose connection with children’s stories. (Feel free to comment if any spring to mind).
But I digress. Of course. This is half the point of my writing. To wander around. Turn the corner. Open cupboards. See what’s inside.
Of course there are different definitions of ‘writer’. To a degree, I get paid for putting one word in front of another. It’s just that they’re not necessarily English, and they tend to have more logic and structure than my fiction. They’re also, mercifully, shorter.
I have yet to meet another definition of ‘writer’ — that of being referred to as ‘a writer’. My greatest envy/pleasure at the moment, is that my friend-through-marriage As is referred to as a film-maker. All the prizes he’s won don’t help (the envy) but it’s the plain old simple introduction that I’m most jealous of. ‘He makes films’. One day — one day I’ll be referred to as ‘he writes books’. Until then, it’s plain old ‘puts some funny stuff in email / on his blog / gibber jabbers like a crazy fool’. Sigh. That’s a long old Native American name.
But in the sense that I’m ‘working at writing’ — that I now write most days, in volume and vaguely to a plan. Well, yes. I am a writer. I need a few hundred words to warm up — hence this post about nothing, but I do feel a bit more of a writer than I used to. And that’s mainly down to routine. To work. And a little discipline. I take the knocks a little easier now. I don’t let myself by side-tracked so much. I don’t spend hours lost in researching the name of a pub or person who only appears in bookspace for two paragraphs.
