Excuses Excuses

The problem with writing… or perhaps more accurately, the problem that I have with writing, is that sometimes I feel as though my creativity is entirely finite. It’s in a bucket, or maybe even just a small cup – a china one with a pretty pattern and a saucer – and once I’ve used it all up, it’s gone. Until it rains, or I dream, or meet someone exciting, or have one of those moment. You know. Those ones.

And this means it can be so easily wasted! I write a long email to a friend, a letter to my aunt…. I finally get my backside in gear and write another chapter, half chapter, 200 words… of my ‘novel’ in progress. I write a brochure at work – I write a press release, or an article, or re-write a whole new section of our company website. And then that’s it. No more.

You would think that it wouldn’t work like this. In theory, the more you write, the more ideas you should have. The more you move your characters, the more possibilities should be sparked off. The larger the world that you create, the more that can happen. The more you look, the more you should see…. you shouldn’t look and look and look, then get a headache and myopia and have to lie down in a darkened room with your eyes closed. That’s not how it should be.

But it’s all just excuses, isn’t it? A big long excuse for the fact that I have a wedding to organise, a book to write (30,000 words in… which sounds more impressive than the fact that I haven’t written anything for over a week, doesn’t it?), a job to do, friends to see, no internet connection at home, and other things to get on with which have stopped me updating my diary. I wondered if I was going to leave, when I realised I hadn’t been on OD for weeks….

But I don’t think I am going to leave. Otherwise, why would I be carefully updating my diary, ensuring that it doesn’t get deleted and whipped off into the cyberspace wilderness-ether for ever? No, I’m not leaving. Instead, I am procrastinating. Developing a cute little metaphor about creativity as though it were a small cup of tea. And pretending, even as I update and break my metaphor with paradox, that when the tea cup is empty, and I come to Opendiary desperate to update…

… I literally have nothing to say.

Sorry.