Monk Quixote

…despair.

You sit in Star­bucks and go through the rou­tine. First, you will have slogged your way up the High Road at ‘How Early?’ O’clock in order to try to snaf­fle your favourite writ­ing space in the cof­fee shop — the one where you can be eas­ily dis­tracted by the hun­dreds of nearly-but-never-quite acci­dents at the junc­tion; the spot where the sim­ple human drama of peo­ple park­ing ille­gally and then run­ning back to their cars to avoid a ticket (obliv­i­ous to the CCTV now trained in their direc­tion); the chair where you can see the queue best (and eval­u­ate shoes and hair­cuts), where you can hear the sofa-groups that form impromptu behind you, and study your fel­low mac-worriers (there’s rarely any war going on, let alone work) from the back of the class.

The tiny vic­tory of beat­ing a cer­tain gen­tle­man to that spot. The tedious week­end tus­sle with research girl who never stays for long. The fran­tic scram­ble when the cer­tain gen­tle­man leaves, as you know he always will (his sched­ule varies, you are sure, just to irri­tate you). The knuckle-eating mis­ery of wait­ing for ‘some ran­dom’ to fin­ish their phone-call / extra hot extra wet caramel soy machi­avelli machi­atto / fruit toast, bliss­fully unaware of the impor­tance of The Seat.

And then the rou­tine can begin in earnest. Pull the lap­top out of the bag and twist — it is never in the right way. Walk around the table and plug it in. Take head­phones out of cen­tre pocket. Leave draped to the left of the machine. Never, ever, ever to the right. Order your drink. When the baris­tas recog­nise you and start to offer you ‘the usual’, get para­noid and change. Or change out of spite, or a pathetic pre­tence at free will. Always answer ‘yes’ to but­ter and jam, even though you like nei­ther. Wait for your drink. Add sugar and stir three times. Pick up two nap­kins. Try to deposit all these items on your never-level table with­out spilling any.

Update your spread­sheet. Writ­ing is all about spread­sheets, at the end of the day. Bet­ter get used to it now. Watch your aver­age out­put plum­met. See the pro­jected com­ple­tion date slip fur­ther and fur­ther into the land of futil­ity. Tap at the screen in the ‘hours remain­ing’ col­umn, and kid your­self that you can pull the same kind of shifts you did ‘in the old days’. The ‘old days’ being any time before this spread­sheet began. On no account check the accu­racy of that state­ment. This is about present and future despair, not regret.

Lis­ten to the same song as you take your first sips. Pon­der on the con­sis­tency and com­po­si­tion of fruit toast. Stare out of the win­dow. Won­der why you ever chose such a ter­ri­ble waste of chord changes as ‘your song’ for this novel. Stare out of the window.

Even­tu­ally, you may start your Scrivener ses­sion. You will hope that you left some words strag­gling over from the last one — oth­er­wise you will have to read what you wrote yes­ter­day (and that way mad­ness truly lies). If you are lucky — very lucky– you will catch a flier, and some­thing you saw or heard or thought about or the colour of someone’s dress or a ran­dom tweet will worm its way into your fin­gers and occupy them for a while. You have no real idea what it has to do with the plot, char­ac­ters or price of fish, but hey, you’re writ­ing — be pleased.

And then the nag­ging begins. The lit­tle pecks on the shoul­der. The doubts. A child falls over out­side the win­dow. Or an old lady holds the traf­fic up to have a chat halfway across the junc­tion. A bus, steam­ing like an over­weight pig, slumps side­ways across the junc­tion, wait­ing for other, less piggy, vehi­cles to cede ground or nip impa­tiently past.

And *bouf* there it is. Focus gone. Con­cen­tra­tion wan­der­ing up the street with someone’s heels or pecu­liar mode of trans­port. @Ememess wrote about the feel­ing in Only For­ward — the sen­sa­tion where you’re dream­ing and you are tricked into falling awake. It is that same feeling.

You must keep dream­ing. You must keep being some­where else. Because if you look up, all you will see is real­ity. And all you will feel is that nag­ging, claw­ing, bitch­ing and bit­ing sense of despair. And you update your spread­sheet. The num­bers change but the doubts grow. You pack away your things and pre­tend to be happy.

Tomor­row, the fear will return.