6022/18951
Having some locks repaired and changed today (no drama, just lost keys for some of them and making sure they're insurance standard) and it struck me: The ease with which a locksmith can gain access to a locked house makes me wonder if any other profession's work so clearly demonstrates its own redundancy.
I mean it's nice to keep the casual and lazy burglar out of your house, but anyone with the basic desire to rob you and the ability to buy the right items - it's literally open house.
Tweeting this did prompt someone to tweet me one of the great jokes of all time, from Police Squad. “Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith and I'm a locksmith."
I thought I'd try writing my sitcom idea “Everything Happens (For No Reason)†as a book - I think it might help get it made if I can show people where this rather high-concept idea is capable of going. So today I had a crack at getting together a first chapter to send out as a sample. I only had the morning to get it done as I was looking after the kids after 2 so I am quite pleased that I managed to get 743 words written and create quite a tight opening page or two. And it would only take three months of writing that much every day and I'd have a book.
In many ways I am annoyed with myself that I write so little. Or at least so much less than I could. Warming Up started from that realisation that days were passing and I was getting nothing down, though I hoped it would inspire me to get on with other writing work, which has rarely been the case. But look at me, cracking out 600-1000 words a day and now a sprawling opus that is millions of words. If I'd only spent another two or three hours each day pushing myself to write other stuff as well then I could have written maybe 30 books in the last 17 years.
Being a writer was one of my dreams as a child and a younger man and obviously I have had some success in that area, but I remember thinking that if only I had some reliable income then I could spend all my time writing. The thing is that I do now have a pretty reliable and solid income and a main job that doesn't take up all of my time and yet I am not using this golden opportunity to create. I don't have to sell my work, I don't have to worry about sales - I can just get my ideas down.
I know I am seen by many as someone who has a prodigious output, but I waste SO MUCH TIME and there have been times when I've been depressed where months of stasis have passed by. I'm not depressed now, though I do have responsibilities and I am often a bit too tired to work. But I still regularly waste a good two or three hours of potential work a day playing online poker or some other distraction. I think it's time to utilise that time and get some stuff written, even if it never gets produced or I have to produce it myself.
For those three hours today I enjoyed being a writer again, trying to weigh up if a metaphor was too strained or strained enough to be funny, finding the best way to describe the mundane scene that opens this story, not really worrying that I don't know where things are going, relishing finding out.
Like all writers I've had knocks and rejections and have allowed those to dent my confidence or convince me that it's not worth trying. It's hard to banish that negativity, but you absolutely have to. My fear of rejection and the sorrow at having my babies smothered at birth has meant that I haven't tried, following the lesson of Homer Simpson rather than that of Samuel Beckett. But it's time to try again and fail better. Or self-publish as it's now known.
I convinced myself this morning that I am a pretty good writer when I set my mind to it. But I might be terrible. That's the delicious jeopardy.
But at least I do seem to have a lot of ideas floating around in my head at the moment, which is always a positive sign.
