What a wanker

I must be trying too hard, or maybe I write better in a crisis… or maybe I’m going about this all the wrong way. The sad fact is that I’m blocked, I can’t write anything – or rather, I can’t write anything I want to publish, which is too bad for you guys. I think the problem is that I set the bar too high with my first post, which I thought was pretty good, if a bit flowery and experimental. I mustn’t have a great deal of poetry in my soul because pretty much everything else I’ve written recently (with the exception of the first verse of a poem called “The Beautiful Bodies of Bondi Beach”, a poem that will probably never be finished) has been insipid nonsense.

I have actually written quite a lot in the past few weeks, but it’s all a bit too personal to publish. I tend to start writing a blog, thinking that if I keep going for long enough I may have a publishable piece on my hands, then four paragraphs later I realise my prose is steeped in emotion and anxious notions about what the hell I think I’m doing with my life. Suddenly a promising piece of writing becomes a testament to my failure to control my raging insecurity, an aspect of my personality I’ve finally concluded is utterly boring and not at all attractive to the fairer sex. Talking of which, this inability to complete a piece of writing isn’t limited to my blog, there’s also a handful of half-finished emails to ex-girlfriends (which will never be sent). Writing emails to ex-girlfriends is not a healthy past-time, it means I’m feeling lonely and unloved and need to experience some kind of affirmation…

See what I mean?! Emotions? Insecure notions? Loneliness? Affirmation? I’m not even into my third paragraph and I start talking about stuff that’s best saved for therapy. Good grief, does this mean that THIS isn’t going to get published now?! I thought I was onto a winner! I’m such a loser.

I’m embarassed because I’ve been on the road for five weeks now and all I’ve managed to produce is one half decent blog and one expression of hangover induced self-pity in blog form. Well, here I am about to remedy this sad state of affairs – desperate times call for desperate measures, so in my next blog, tentatively entitled Australia from back to front and more I will publish some excerpts from my private journal which will kind of sum up certain aspects of my time in Australia. It’s not Shakespeare but at least it will give those of you who are interested in my progress an insight into what’s going on in my confused little brain.

Whoever said this writing lark was easy? Well, I doubt anyone who knew what they were talking about ever did, but at the risk of sounding shallow and envious, let me leave you with this thought: Iain Banks writes one book a year, regular as clockwork. He spends six months of every year writing and six months frolicking in the glens and drinking single malt. He makes writing look as easy as riding a bike, it’s an unfortunate fact that he is one of my favourite writers.

What a wanker.