When you don’t know how to hit the ‘on’ button to create

Into the mind and moment, as a writer strains, claws and recoils at undertaking a writing task.

I’m constantly scared to start writing anything. Even that previous sentence, but not this current one for some reason. I often don’t know what to write, where to begin, how to do it effectively, what I want from it, how long I should take. The fear envelops me so absolutely that soon I find myself scrolling through Twitter or Instagram seeing the same things I saw three hours earlier when I previously got stuck trying to write something.

That’s not to say I lack the crumbs of an idea to write something — be it an article, a feature, a story, a script, a poem. The transition from head to keyboard is like attaining the jump to light speed — theoretically possible but for outside the realm of possibilities at this stage. The scraps I do have are scattered around my mind, overlapping with others, gobbling up the weaker ones, running scared when I try to cautiously approach it. Even know I can sense some of them cowering in fear of my shadow coming into sight of them.

There are yet others that are too colossal for me to comprehend, so out of control, so sprawling from my near endless tinkering of them that they stand like titans compared to my insignificant self, belittling my very existence, laughing in my face at the thought that I could somehow conquer them. Those are usually my feature script ideas. My white whales. I have endings, beginnings, scenes, pieces of dialogue, major moments and revelations. I once said to a friend of mine that my stories are like an idea of a story but not the story itself, or something to that extent. I also said that basically any script I write, or at least attempt to develop is essentially just a trailer. Intriguing but ultimately a disparate collection of images and sound that lacks the core that makes it a true story.

I just checked my phone for no apparent reason a third time now since starting this article. Five times if you include glancing at it, and I struggle to retain focus at this very moment, although typing it out in essentially real time helps to keep my eyes on a much more useful screen. Did I just grit my teeth? I’m pretty sure I did.

Some of the ideas that I’ve collected over the last couple of weeks that I thought could be of interest and relevance: analysing and comparing the differing perspectives and portrayals of war between Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line, more Seinfeld stuff, an ode to the Winnipeg Jets and Tampa Bay Lightning Stanley Cup Finals that could have been, Golden State winning yet another championship, Trump stumbling across with pure dumb luck one of the few possible ways to get North Korea to listen (sixth time looking at my phone), when too many options is a problem, something about unable to stop loving someone, a celebration at a bar, a house party experience, Lebron’s future, stuff about The Dark Knight and probably Pixar thrown in.

It’s a mess, and that’s just the articles. The script ideas I’m almost too scared to list, in case I have a panic attack at the realisation of how little I’ve produced of them.

The nature of a writer — if I can even call myself that — is twisted in knots of anxiety, hesitation, inspiration and deflation. Creative should be a dirty word. The whole goddamn process is dirty, slow, tragic and pretty much the opposite of every single article that pops up about how to write this or that or the other. What someone learned is completely different to what someone else needs to learn. Foolproof, guaranteed, quick fix, the only thing you need to read to day — each of those leading down a rabbit hole to nowhere. It becomes a battle not just within yourself but with every other single person who’s jumping for the same prize. We’re all in this together not because we want to be but because none of us know how to swim if we jumped off the boat.

Fretting and scratching, time lost yet again to the phone. A dryness hits the mouth, multiple tabs open like a lottery draw, maybe random chance will provide the jump, the hit. Often I stare into the middle distance, perfecting my adequate level soap drama acting (it’s still a career option right?) My body usually remains still even as my brain is running a trillion different simulations to kickstart this damn productivity. The thing with simulations though is that it takes in the future — and for me the future ends up blowing up the present. All those anxieties and concerns and worries and fears bleed out so profusely that there aren’t enough bandages to cover the wound.

What’s my priority? Why is it my priority? Is it worth it over that one? How much time do I have and how much of it should I devote to this idea? Where’s this going to get me? How far can passion take me? Wait, am I even good enough for this or have I been living a lie for nearly a decade? If so, what else can I do? Do I even have other options? If it doesn’t work out now is it simply luck or have I missed my one opportunity for it to happen at some point in the past that I can’t quite grasp? Maybe it’s just all in my head and I just have to keep working at it? But what if I’ve already taken my shot? When would I get paid for it? Will I ever get paid for it? How do you get experience for the experience? Did I do all of this wrong? Why wasn’t I into drugs? Did my lack of struggle or trauma in my life actually hinder me? *sarcasm*

So much of my life is filtered through this process of writing. It’s a mangled wreck of a thing, am I right? Something I cannot, or chose to not, escape. A passion and a curse. Am I even good at it? There’s been such minimal comparisons to draw, to measure up against for me to get a better idea of where I stand in my current place. Even though I’m nearly thirty, it feels like only this last couples of years have I really started out with this whole deal. A constant rush to catch up with everyone else, which can cause me to stumble along the way, not seeing the potholes in the road.

There’s often a strange film over how a writer writing an article about writing or writing successfully discusses struggle or pain or the distaff nature of having absolutely nothing to write. As if it’s something to slowly nudge into the shadows, or treated in a way as if there’s no possible way it was ever a constant. Not sure how to express it without trivialising it because hey, you’re reading it right? I’m slowly disassembling any cohesive processes now while simultaneously drifting out to the bigger picture, the vision is forever expanding. Not only this screen, the room, the chiming wind outside, but also the greater world, the march back through time, the tapestry of history seen and unseen, before the big bang, before existence. What was it?! Where was it? There wasn’t even the concept of nothing. There wasn’t even a blank. Any description of before fails since it cannot be described. If you could describe it, it wouldn’t be before. Even before taints it. Like Schrodinger’s cat. We cannot -

You kind of want to bottom out here so that your brain decides that a full system reboot is the only option possible — until you realise you won’t have time for it the next day either. But it hasn’t stopped me from writing about not being able to write, to turn a negative into a positive in some respect. Just to get something out and feel like the walls aren’t closing in. As much as procrastination has become this cool little meme to work with, the world doesn’t have time for it. Feeling the keyboard under my constantly moving fingers is like developing muscle memory, the impetus to make things happen without having to think about it. Will it last? Probably not. But I’ll try it again, even if I’m careening toward the cliff of oblivion in tattered rags and the dust of my once fruitful dreams.

I have yet to come across something resembling a finished product this night. But tomorrow provides yet another opportunity for the loop to once more make its run. Or for me to break it.