The Blunted Pencil, or How I Waste My Time

Having watched the first three Harry Potter films for the first time ever this week, I decided that should I become as unutterably wealthy from my work as Ms Rowling, I would employ an artist to craft miniature ice sculptures for my evening tipple.

"Bring me a whisky," I'd growl, "and put a swan in it."

***

I have wasted a great many hours over the last few days browsing the internet, refreshing Tw*tter, and generally looking out of the window and despairing at how many dandelions there are in the garden, and how quickly they grow back despite my best and repeated efforts to dig up as much of the roots as possible with a bent trowel from the £1 shop.

I have come to accept my laziness as a natural part of the human spirit, though perhaps others would see it as a needless vice.  Either way, I am not too old to change, surely.  It just requires tenacity, though I am not sure I like the sound of that for it implies work.

Aside from banishing dandelions and beheading the seedpods of rogue Welsh Poppies, I am happy to admit, slyly, that I have also been able to reduce my backlog of stories in need of editing to merely two.  This is a good thing.  For too long I have been starting things and not finishing them, and it's about time I got on top of all that.  I have a vast heap of spontaneous beginnings, disassociated middles and even a couple of endings - it's the tying together of this multitude of elements that is the hardest part.

As I began last time, ideas come easily.  This is good.  The trick to writing, as in life, is to focus on a path, while being aware of the plenitude of alternatives.  The process begins when we are young, and are asked to choose only one of three gobsmackingly amazing toys, or later at school when we are asked at too young an age, an age at which we are still rolling in the beginnings of ourselves, to choose subjects of academic study, while being threatened that bad choices now will ruin us forever.

This is bad.  Pressure does not always help us decide.  It may help us pick, at whim and with the nagging fear of impending regret that will no doubt assail us when we inevitably fail to prove ourselves as worthy contenders, and instead reveal ourselves to be the bums we are - it may help forge us, and perhaps being on a path is better than being lost away from one.  Still, I cannot help but think we are trained from childhood to rush into life as a dog that is thrown a stick will rush into oncoming traffic.

What has this got to do with anything?  Well, I was almost ready to miss this week's entry and go back to some random detritus floating on the surface of the internet - cats involved in amusing circumstances, likely.  Now I have a blog entry instead and I can say I've kept up to it.  Minor achievements do add up.


This week I have been shortlisted in a competition over at 5 Minute Fiction, and would be grateful of any votes for my piece "Love Story".  Naturally, you may vote for whichever you like.

Also, I have signed up to Burrst, which is very new and seems to be a kind of space for collaborative feedback.  I am not certain I require feedback, but for those who are interested, it may be worth taking a look as it develops.


Finally:

On my comment last week that to be a writer, one must write - it seems Epictetus is with me.

Be productive.