Ain’t nothing going to do it except doing it. So why am I still pfaffing around?

OK, I know exactly what I should be doing but I’m not doing it. It’s not rocket science. There is not great shakes about it: I should be getting up - not early, doesn’t have to be at the crack of dawn - and sitting down in my ‘shed’, which is what this place has been called, and doing nothing until I am so bloody bored I start writing.

It doesn’t matter what I fucking write, but as long as I write, that is fine. Jesus there’s enough shite out there as it is and a little more, courtesy of me, isn’t going to bring the world to its end. But I don’t. I have no idea was stops me. Laziness isn’t the word, because it isn’t laziness. I mean if it were laziness I wouldn’t even be writing these bloody words which, so far, these included, make up 745.

It’s not even ‘dread of failure’ because I don’t give a flying fuck whether or not I ‘fail’. But for some reason when I wake up I am in a kind of torpor which lasts until 10.30 in the morning.

BUT - I am going do it! So far in my life I have three times been disciplined enough to sit down and write something over a prolonged period. The real irony is that ONCE you sit down, you wonder what all the agony is about. I did it with one ‘novel’, which was not a bad idea and could be re-written though what I did produce (which is the Lord knows where) I don’t imagine was very good. That was in Birmingham while I was still working for the CEGB staff newspaper.

The routine was simple: get a litre of Strongbow (or whatever) from around the corner, a packet of ‘skins’, ten ciggies, then get back home and write for four hours until I was so knackered I slumped off to bed. That routine, at least, produced a novel, however shite that novel was (and I think I still have it, but if I don’t, oh well, not the world’s greatest loss).

Later, while living and working in London but staying down here in St Breward at Terry’s, I used to get up early, about 6am and type away for several hours, this time sustained by nothing more dangerous than tea and fags. And I did get something done.

And even though I say so myself, it was possibly a cut above what I had previously produced at Norlan Drive (which, as of writing, I still have somewhere).

Most recently there was ‘Love: A Fiction’, previously called ‘Letters Never Sent’ which I wrote in two stints in London in the early 1990s. Pertinently the same ‘secret’ was applied: just get if fucking done! In - as I say - two stints, I sat down regularly twice a week at 7pm to write after telling myself that I had no other choice but to fucking do it. And do you know, sweethearts, it worked a treat. And THAT is the one piece of work so far I would not in the slightest be ashamed of showing anyone.

It might not be ‘what people want’ at present but who gives a fuck. I’m almost 70. If not I were still to care about ‘being accepted’ and producing ‘what people want’, I am pretty much dead. Getting older, not being able to get it up - not that I have had any know that in practice, though after two heart attacks and the occasional wank I’ve to a pretty good idea - does have it’s compensations, not to say rewards. Not giving a fuck about what ‘I’m supposed to be doing’ is one of them.

To be blunt, I’m not going to starve, so fuck money from now on and fuck ‘playing the game’ (which I rather think I never did anyway, though I’m sure when I was younger I wasn’t quite as cocky or sanguine about not doing so.

Pip, pip

PS I have been indulging in a rather lovely concoction: brandy and alcoholic lovage, 50/50. I can recommend it. Helps to let you shout your mouth off (‘shoot off your mouth’? Subs please check).

PPS This is going both in my official blog and my unofficial blog (which you can find here).