Monday, 7 September 2009

St Vincents here we come

There's a mythology about writers being great drinkers, either as bon viveurs or dark tortured lonely souls with a bottle; as a man who believes he hovers and vacillates on the lowest points of the graph between the two states, but does write every day, here's my take on the theory.

There's an optimum number of words you can spill in a day; if you don't cough enough out in a given timespan they sit like bloated otters in your gut and weigh you down in indolence. Heave up just the right amount and both brain and body hit a synchronicity of exhaustion that drops you into a happy void of contentment.

But push it just that step too far and over-write and its all The Red Shoes and crazy and the fingers are too fast for the mind which then overtakes the fingers and so on , into a vicious arms race of inspiration and industry... and thats the point where you need to reach for the bottle to stem the flood of opinions and objections and musings and mullings or you'll quite simply just Roald Dahl pop...

and its in those moments (and I speak from experience of trying many other soporifics) that you find yourself reaching for the liquid anaesthesia to quell the barmy ceaseless flow of verbiage...

so lord today, too many pages done and a leap of editing to do tomorrow, please let blessed liquor lethe do her work and club me into blissful wordless oblivion.

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