I recently read an article written by Megan McArdle an American blogger and writer, in which she expounds on the tendency for writers to procrastinate. I thought to myself “I can do that” – procrastinate, that is. I’ve sort of been doing it in relation to this blog for a couple of years now (20 years if we include all of the attempts to actually write a book). You see my time was previously taken up with gainful employment but my position with a mining company was made redundant. That allowed me to set up a consultancy to capitalise on my invaluable experience. I set it up during the worst market conditions in a long time. By “long time” I mean geological time which for the unaware means a really, really, long time, sort of like the time it takes for Christmas to come round when you’re six years old and it’s January 2nd.
So I’ve had a bit of time on my hands. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done a bit of work, kept my hand in as they say. But things are pretty slow as they also say. Actually, to digress, you’ll know when business (the one I’m in) picks up because this blog will slow down or stop. Fortunately I’ve got a lot of material to drip feed into it for now.
Ms McArdle makes the point that the driving force behind writing procrastinators is the deadline. Fair enough if you’re an employee of a newspaper company or a magazine company or a regular freelancer or a repeat novelist. For the first timer there isn’t a deadline for anything or with anyone so procrastination beats drive every time. There are plenty of people out there who would challenge this contention – those with boundless energy, ambition and a plan. They’re keeping the rest of us awake.
This tendency to procrastinate when it comes to writing is a shame. Apparently we all have at least one novel in us and it would definitely be forthcoming apart from you know what. Isn’t that the biggest cop-out imaginable? “Aw I was going to write this blockbuster on the weekend, you know, violence, action, sex, plot twists that would stun Agatha Christie and that. But the footy was on so I thought fuck it; I’ll have another beer instead”.
It’s a shame I haven’t found the motivation to get round to it because let’s face it, a book’s not a bad legacy even if it is crap and with self-publishing available you don’t even need to convince anyone that it’s any good. I had hoped writing was like riding a bike – once learned never forgotten. How many activities prove that old adage (apart from riding a bike)? None that I can think of. I can’t run as fast as I could 30 years ago. I can’t drink as much as I did in my reckless youth because the defence mechanism automatically kicks in and I fall asleep. I can’t hold my breath for as long as I used to. There are a number of other things I can’t do for as long as I used to but we’ll leave it there.
My earliest attempts at writing used to make my primary school classmates laugh, possibly because what I wrote pissed off my teachers so much. By way of an example, if the essay subject was “Pirates”, I might write something like this:
The fierce looking smelly (for they did not wash) pirate captain waved his cutlass and said “Ahhhh” which was pirate for “Attention” but he didn’t say that because he didn’t go to school because his parents were drunks who spent all their time in the pub in London which was a big town made up of houses and mud caused by the rain and horses which were also smelly.
Stream of consciousness essay writing only got me so far (as far as the principal’s office once) and I had to revert to more conventional prose to preserve my position in the class exam proficiency hierarchy – that’s a politically correct term I just made up.
Actually, I have to confess that I’ve made two previous attempts at writing books; one attempt valiant but ultimately in vain, the other rubbish. One was a novel (the rubbish) and the other was a travel book (“There Are No Yellow Cars in Korea” – fantastic title if I do say so myself). I found the novel outline when cleaning out some old files recently. It was scribbled in long-hand on both sides of an A3 sheet of paper. Then I found the manuscript (about 75% complete) but couldn’t bring myself to read it. The travel book, on the other hand, is written (also in long hand) in numerous note-books I used to carry with me when I was a regular international traveller. That sounds uber pretentious doesn’t it? I was effectively a travelling salesman although to be fair (pretentiousness alert) what I was selling was worth tens of millions of dollars. I’m not going to tell you what I sold because if you vote Green, you’ll stop reading.
Alright, it was coal. Very large amounts of it. Millions of tonnes at a time sometimes. And just to add to the pretension, we didn’t sell it, we “marketed” it. And when I say “we” I mean a small select “Band of Gypsies” at the top of our game, keeping your lights on and the world’s steel mills producing the material that built the chair you are sitting on (unless it’s made of wood or plastic, of course). Those were the rose coloured days.
Why didn’t either of these books get finished? You guessed it.
So there’s the motivation for writing this blog – antiprocrastinarianism. But what’s it about? Novels have plots, non-fiction books have themes. I know novels can have themes as well, especially clever ones like those that Ayn Rand used to write. Actually her themes were developed into a full-blown philosophy and I’m really getting out of my depth here.
Anyway, I’m going to write about stuff that I know and have experienced and the rest I’ll make up. I know about international travel as previously mentioned so there’ll be a healthy dose of that. I’ll try hard to distinguish taking the piss from xenophobia and outright racism but there’s no pleasing some people especially the terminally disgruntled lemon suckers. So to you people, get stuffed. There’ll be a few business and sport themes running through various narratives and copious references to the good old bacchanalian pleasures as the name of the blog suggests. Hope you enjoy the ride.