Thursday, January 7, 2010

Pabulum

By now you've probably figured out my problem.  Blogging just isn't working out for me at the moment.  It's annoying because I actually really enjoy it, but at the moment I'm unsatisfied with what I'm coming up with.  Perhaps it was a mistake, but I went back and read some of my posts from the latter half of 2009, and what I saw was way more interesting than anything I can think of now.

I was a bit alarmed a couple of nights ago when reading Larry McMurtry's book Books, which is mostly about his life as a dealer of second-hand books.  He asserted that writers and artists have a finite amount of creativity to burn and once they are done, they are done.  I certainly don't consider myself an artist, but it did make me ponder the ageing process once more and whether or not this blog will capture my inevitable decline and decay. Perhaps that was as good as it gets.

Alarmist thoughts aside, I suspect that my lack of creative juice is simply a reflection of the relatively smooth and unchallenging life I have at the moment.  Most of the year I am caught up in the willy-nilly of studying medicine and the constant impact and friction of new concepts and ideas can't help but generate some heat.  But at the moment I'm cooling off after an interesting holiday so things seem pretty bland.  I can feel a bit of tension starting to build up about the year to come because I know it's going to be pretty intense.  Perhaps in one or two weeks time the fireworks will start.

Until then, I'm at a bit of a loss what to do.  Previously when I've lost the magic I just stopped writing.  I usually intended to stop for a couple of weeks at least, but I always found that after 4 or 5 days I was raring to go.  This time it's different - I want to write, and I'm coming up with ideas, but the end product just seems lacklustre and diffuse.  I want my writing to be shiny.  I want the curve of my ideas to gleam with bright specular highlights.

Lacking any idea for what is broken or how to fix it, I'm going to resort to brute force, an underutilised method in the arts.  I'm just going to keep throwing my fingers at this keyboard and eventually something will break.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sigh, I know what you mean PTR. My blogs entering its 6th year. But ever since I left undergraduate it has lost all its momentum. The bland unchallenging life is the greatest threat to literal success.

I guess this means you still have two years of good blogging left in you. Just use this time to accumulate memories that will eventually make great tangential metaphors - or something.

I actually hate my blog these days, the lack of frequency is an issue which only draws my writing in to a downward cycle.

However, you have interesting polls happening, so at least you can be reassured that once you have entered a permanent decline, people will keep coming back - if only for the sideshow.

Keep it up!

-L

Anonymous said...

And yes, 7 blogs in a row without drawing comment can also devastate the moral.

Just remember, the acoustics in here are terrible. We're actually laughing even if you can't hear us...

PTR said...

Thanks for the (semi-)encouraging feedback. In response, I say to you: "blog more".