I have been reading a lot of columns lately and I have decided that this stuff can’t really be as hard as it looks. I mean, all you have to do is type out a couple of, mildly, coherent words together in a sentence and then string a couple of those sentences to make a paragraph and hence forth until you have a couple hundred words which, if you know the right people, you can sell for about 10 bob a word. Do two or three of those a week averaging about 2000 words each and you can make yourself a clean sixty thousand shillings in every week for all of 5 minutes worth of work. That sounds pretty decent to me.
So I decided to give it a shot. I installed Microsoft office on my laptop, brewed myself a bad cup of coffee sat looking out the window and wore a scarf. I was sure that this would beat the job that I currently have. After looking outside the window and putting on as deep an expression that a man of my mind could muster I opened a new word document and began to type. Okay, you got me, I didn’t begin to type I kind of sat there and had a blinking competition with a relentless cursor. I had all these thoughts in my head but putting them down on paper was proving to be more difficult than I had imagined. I, however, am a man with a plan and my mother taught me always to have a plan B. So I did the one thing that I was sure would make me a brilliant writer. I put on a hat. Not any hat mind you, it was one of those beret things that I see the creative types prancing around the town in with their skinny jeans and leather jackets. I was hoping that my block wouldn’t push me all the way to wearing skinny jeans because I find those things way to tight in the nether region. Plus I prefer the skinny on those of the female gender.
Fashion, or lack of it, of the younger generation aside I was ready to be a writer now. With my thinking cap on and my, now cold, cup of bad coffee I resumed my position on the window seat (I lie I was on a pillow outside the house – I figured it can work seeing as I have NO window seat) and put on the deep. Ben Okri like, stare. Surely this timesomething would come – and something did. Only halfway through my typing did I realize that while I thought I was on a roll I was actually typing out the lyrics to “What’s My Age Again?” By Blink 182. In disgust I packed up my laptop and went back to doing things that I know how to do, watching old reruns of friends.
Surely though this writing thing can’t be as difficult as they claim? Put aside my own lack of success at it I think it is pretty simple. I mean if people like Jeremy Clarkson, who is as coherent as two ducks sitting in the middle of a whorehouse playing pin the tail on the otoscope can do it then why can’t I? Joel Stein makes a great deal of money writing his “awesome” column where he generally rants and raves about himself and makes no headway in the process. Surely if writing is for the intelligent then you’d expect the Einsteins of this world to be the ones who are doing it, not the people who cleaned his shoes. That being said what more am I to expect from a couple of people who look up to Shakespeare, a man who himself couldn’t understand what he is saying, as the god of their profession?
Armed with this logic I decided to try again with similarly dismal results. Following all this and looking at my laptop I have decided that my failure at writing is due to my utter inability to wear a pair of skinny jeans, and I’m fine with that.
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