Block Chop 37: Continued creative nadir...

Almost identically to this time last weekend, I sit staring at a blank Word document unable to pick an interesting topic.  “Wow what an exciting opener, I must read on.”  And the credits roll at the end of yet another episode of Top Gear on channel Dave.  I have keenly observed the hair-lengths of the Top Gear presenters jumping up and down randomly indicating the episodes are out of sequence.  I have spotted another advert ripping off the Ricky Gervais podcast. Advertising just-eat.co.uk a belly and a brain communicate in the style of Ricky mocking Karl Pilkington’s bizarre anthropomorphic interpretations of bodily functions.  Now a programme, Trawlermen, wastes time by showing us the CD collection in someone’s glovebox.  Shameful isn’t it, the way some people will waste time on irrelevancies in order to fill up a quota, and other’s will shamefully steal other peoples work because they have none of their own ideas.  You’d certainly never catch me doing that.  Or resulting to tedious clichéd self-referential jokes.  Oh how I long for the glory days of three weeks ago; those halcyon days of the post about the bin men being shit.

I’m aware that this is fast becoming the diary I never intended it to be.  Not only that, but the diary of someone not doing or thinking much.  Almost as boring as Bill Bryson Neither Here Nor There.  But I look to the future.  I will continue to write every day, and this will keep me anchored to the act of writing.  I will never again get so far removed from writing, mentally and physically, as I was a couple of months ago.  When the ideas return, I will still be a well practised writer able to capture thoughts on paper as they emerge.  For me the most notable benefit of this daily blogging is that I can now directly type my thoughts.  Previously all my writing was done on paper, and then typed up.  This is an extremely long winded process, although it does force an initial redraft.  I’d left writing at the wayside for so long that my hand began to hurt after just a few moments scribbling with a pencil.  I just couldn’t get the words out fast enough, yet I was still averse to writing directly using a keyboard.  Gradually it has become the natural way, and my speed and accuracy have increased, as has my ability to transcribe thoughts into bits and bytes.

As fast as I can type now, it does me no good whatsoever if I have no thoughts to get down.  It’s almost as though I can feel the draft blowing through my ears, the creaking door to the Last Chance Saloon of my brain, the well flogged horse corpse...