Joseph D'Lacey
- The Story of What Happened When I Dipped My
Trembling Toe Into the Frigid Currents of the Stream of Consciousness
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I dislike writing.
No, you don't understand. You're not listening. What I'm saying here is, I hate it. You know, really hate. Seriously, I do. Detest is a better word actually, or even revile or despise. Hold on, I can do better than that…I abhor it. Yes! That's exactly how I feel about writing.
The relationship normal people have to word assemblage can vary from the vaguest shiver of ambivalence right through to literaphobia. Artists avoid it. Dyslexics dislkie it. My Siamese cat, Solomon, doesn't exactly purr at the prospect of poetry, but no one, and I mean no living creature in the entire universe, can possibly abhor it the way I do.
I wouldn't even describe my dealings with writing as a relationship. It's more of a stand off. I'd like to shoot the jumped up monkey boy that invented language becuase that's where the trouble started. But the day some bright spark decided to write down the words that were floating around in his head causing only minor brain damage - well, that was a bad day for humanity and the day that ruined my life thousands of years before I even set foot in my existence.
I found scrawled in my Little Black Book of Notes and Ideas the following:
Q. What is language?
A. Gangs of letters banding together to commit crimes of miscommunication.Now why would I record such a thought if I didn't hate writing? It's not the inherent problems of language that I hate - it's almost amusing that something so seemingly useful and innocent can have so many conceptual drawbacks for individuals and societies. I can deal with that. No, what really dips my willy in the chilli is the act of writing. It's ironic therefore, considering I'm supposed to be a writer, that I spontaneously combust every time I sit down at the keyboard. What other pastime (and that's what it will remain until I start making a living at it) can make a person feel worse than writing?
Here's a great example taken directly from my daily life: I'm in the first third of a novel. As usual, I haven't told my future wife that I'm writing a novel in case the leak inside me that's providing the material dries up - I'm superstitious that way. Sue me, I'm a writer. We're like that. Get used to it.
My fiancée goes out to work, by the way, and I stay at home. Basically, I'm a housewife - ‘I bring home the bacon and he cooks it', she's fond of saying. I wash the clothes and hang them out to dry before ironing them. I make all the meals and wash the dishes and put them away. I sweep and mop the floor. I change the sheets, I make the bed. That is my job while she supports me. That is my contribution to ‘us'. When I'm not fulfilling these domestic necessities, I write (or I don't, depending on factors I'm unable to fathom).
Writing is my way of providing for our future.
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I was just waiting for the laughter to die down.
Okay, so in my entire life I've made less than $300 from writing, but why is that relevant? It's the dollars I haven't made yet that interest me.
When my girlfriend became my fiancée, (I think it was something I said, not something I wrote) the pressure on me to come up with a plausible career move immediately multiplied. My response? I broke the first rule of writing; I gave up my day job. A round of applause for the deluded hopeful. Now, instead, I'm a domestic goddess with a laptop. I understand the rules. I don't necessarily like the rules, but they are clear to me and, as far as I can, I abide by them.
So, to the example.
One day, I went out to do the shopping and when I came home, my fiancée was cleaning the floor during her lunch break. That was bad. She wasn't doing it the way I do it. That too, was bad. I unpacked the shopping and didn't know what to do with myself. Did she ever see me down there in the dental surgery pulling teeth on her day off? Come on. I didn't know where to go to escape how I felt. I didn't know what I felt; I only knew it was bad.
“Why are you cleaning the floor?” I ask. “That's my job.”
“I'm just helping out.”
I'm silent. My fiancée speaks in Implicationese and it can take time to translate correctly.
“Are you trying to say I don't know how to keep this floor clean? Are you suggesting that I don't do a good enough job? Are YOU saying that I am not capable of being a writer AND being a housewife? Is that it?”
“I came home early, I had some spare time, I wanted to help.”
“You're not even doing it properly. Why don't you finish sweeping the whole place before you start with the mop? You're going to have to go back over your work again and again to get rid of the smears. It'll take hours. I'll end up finishing a job you've half started. I've got a system. I can do this whole place in forty minutes. Now what am I going to do?”
I leave the room and go to bed in true, overwrought housewife style. I plan to stay there until they bury me. Sometime later she comes in.
“Are you okay?”
“…”
“What's wrong?”
“…”
“I can't do anything, we can't get anywhere, unless you talk to me and tell me what the problem is.”
“I don't know what the problem is.”
“You can't be angry with me for helping you out with the housework.”
“It's MY job. I don't want any help. I can do it myself.”
“But the floor was filthy.”
“I told you I was going to get to it. I told you that this morning.”
“I thought you were busy. I wanted to make it easier for you.”
I start crying. (Later she told me that I was rocking like a crazy person or a bomb blast survivor. I put it to you that this is mere fabrication on her part - coming from a desire to fulfil her role as provider and protector.)
“I'm writing a novel.” I say. Boo hoo, I go. Sniff, sniff. Tears in my ears, snot on the pillow. Foetal position.
“Great.”
“But I should be able to write it AND keep the house clean. I'm not a fucking idiot. Surely, I can do those two simple things.”
“You're doing fine. You're lentil recipes are…really interesting. And there's only three days worth of washing up in the sink right now and seventeen items of clothing to iron. The dusting isn't so important and we can always close the door to the bedroom if anyone comes round. You're right on top of it all.”
“I was trying not to tell you. I thought I could get the novel finished and then tell you afterwards. Now you know about it and I'll never finish it. I'll never make a living at this and the house will never be clean. I'm useless.”
Wah, wah, wahhhh. I shake like a jelly in an earthquake. The pillow is soaked, I can't breathe through my nose. I feel weak, exhausted. The hidden, pent up emotions have got me all run down. I'll probably get a cold sore and won't be able to show my face in public for a whole week.
“You can do it,” she says. “I know you can. I've got to get back to work.”
She leaves.
Once again, it's just me, the keyboard, the novel, the paralysed flat that cannot keep itself clean and needs me to do it. But boil it all down a little more and there are just two players left in the story. Me and writing.
A typical day tackling any literary project will find me doing many or all of the following in a random rotation that results in zero words on the page and zero income in my bank account:
1. Staring out of the window whilst sitting at the keyboard - obvious one, that, but very common.
2. Sitting on the couch looking through my Little Black Book of Notes and Ideas to set me off in some mightily creative direction. (As you'll have surmised from the entry I shared with you earlier, my Little Black Book of Notes and Ideas is full of purposeless excrement. Half the stuff in that book means nothing to me at all. I have problems reading my own handwriting. I don't know when I wrote most of the entries, what was on my mind at the time, where I was, or why I bothered to uncap my gel writer. Anyone could have written in there and I wouldn't know the difference. Having owned the book for almost a year, I turned to the front page and found this inscription: ‘My name is José, please kiss my butt.' I did not write that; it was the ‘friend' who donated the book to me in the first place. How many of the rest of the cryptic entries are mine I can't say, but I sit on the couch and look through them just in case I might find anything of value.)
3. Sitting on the toilet with pen and spiral reporter's notepad in hand, not wanting to be unprepared should inspiration strike. No prizes for guessing what I produce and what I use the paper for.
4. Falling asleep on the couch with my Little Black Book of Notes and Ideas open on my lap.
5. Falling asleep at the keyboard and drooling onto the keys.
6. Making toast and tea in the kitchen with my back to the room where the keyboard is and staring out of the window.
7. Attending to any of a number of household chores.
8. Cleaning the bathroom - I mention this separately because it is an absolute last resort.
9. Looking in the fridge.
10. Looking in the freezer.
11. Checking my email (ten or eleven times a day).
12. Playing FreeCell with an open, but blank Word document in a separate window.
12b. Playing Doom II with an open, but blank Word document in a separate window.
13. Meditating. (Douglas Adams took numerous baths every day to help him write, or at least to make him feel like he was doing something useful when not writing. Me, I mediate - the most enlightening way of writing without writing.)
Any of this sound familiar? Oh, you're a writer too, are you? Goodness gracious, how quaint.
It amazes me that a writer can be a writer without ever writing a single word. How my four novels were completed is a mystery to me. Likewise the megabytes of poetry, articles and short stories stored on my hard drive. As far as I'm aware, I've never written a single word. If I have, I certainly wasn't present when I did it.
What other activity (potential career, potential cause of poverty, potential cause of suicide - wait, scratch that; I can see the scene now: me with the suicide note, pen poised, heart ready to outpour its pain, to tell the world how writing obliterated my will to live and then…Nope, I can't think of anything to say. Suicide cancelled.) or lack of it, can cause anyone to feel as bad as I do now that I'm a writer?
My normal mind/body/spirit condition is as follows:
A constant feeling of low level anxiety, tiredness, heavy limbs, poor concentration, RSI in both wrists even though I never write anything, dizziness, anxiety, poor eyesight, palpitations, bad posture, achy joints, unruly hair, erectile dysfunction, depression, anxiousness, lack of confidence, poor self-image, being a useless, dim-witted fool, constipation, bad breath, paranoia, a constant feeling of high anxiety, a tendency to repeat myself inaccurately, a tendency to repeat myself, forgetfulness and some other stuff I can't remember right now. Oh yeah, and haemorrhoids.
What happened to me? I must have been cruising along one day, sun shining, good tunes on the car stereo, tapping my fingers on the wheel and singing along, on the way to a barbecue party somewhere and thought to myself, “Oh wow, I know; I'll become a writer. Now that has to be the coolest job in the world. A couple hours work in the morning, lunch with my agent or editor or whoever, mind-blowing sex in the afternoon with three chicks who all say they're my biggest fan, an Aston Martin, a helicopter, a leer jet, a submarine, my own personal space station in orbit around Jupiter where the party goes on forever, cocktails in the evening, any flavour of pizza I want in whatever size I say, a lifetime supply of Ben and Jerry's, sex with more groupies again after dinner, finest quality drugs, two full body massages a day, a Breville toasted sandwich maker and a chick to operate it for me. Yeah, that would be so cool.”
I bet I was happy that day; before I tried to make dreams a reality. What the hell was I thinking about? If I was that stupid back then, I've got no chance now. My brain has deteriorated since that particular example of smarts and that toasted sandwich maker looks like it's still on the space station that I'll never be able to afford.
Yeah, that's right; I hate writing the way a toothless alcoholic hates not having a bottle opener for his beer. I hate it the way the Iraqis hate George Dubya. I hate it the way vegetarians hate cattle farmers. I hate it the way God hates mankind's religions, the way Catholics hate Protestants, the way Palestinians hate Israel. I hate it more than all of that stuff.
If I thought there were any means of stopping YOU from doing it, I would go out of my way. I would sell you my children. No, I'd give them to you. Fuck it; I'd pay you to take them off my hands. If I thought for an instant that it might merely distract you from thinking about taking up writing, I'd remove my own testicles with a spoon and hand them to you on platinum saucer, I'd commit seppuku with a stale carrot, God damn - I'd get baptised, I'd be christened and confirmed, I'd sell my soul to the devil and give him a discount, I'd get down on my lousy, sinner's knees and beg you. I'd kiss both your armpits on the Buckingham Palace lawn at high noon with a feather up my arse. If I thought for the briefest nanosecond that you would put it off, that you would reconsider, that you would set a date for contemplating the idea of having a meeting to discuss the possibility of planning a special moment in which you might conscience reconsidering your decision to write, I would do all that and anything else you required from me. Please. Look at what I've done. See what I've become and, for once in your life, learn a lesson from someone else's mistake. Don't write. Don't ‘be' a writer. Don't ‘become' a writer. Don't dream about it, don't fantasise. Put it from your mind, go back to what you believe is mundane and worthless and uninteresting, and I swear that you will be happy in comparison to me, that you will live out your days in the kind of harmony and tranquillity that I can never know.
It won't make me any happier of course, but I beg you, just show me that small act of mercy. Okay, well, just think about it for a while. Talk it over with your boyfriend, teddy bear, slightly significant other, mum, guardian, adopted child, spirit guide, pillow, bank manager, the guy in the hairdresser, your astrologer. Shit, talk it over with me if you have to - here's my number: +00 (0)1788 597 141.
No? Still keen to ride into that literary sunset? Haven't you read a single word I've wri-
Hey!
Hold on, now!
I've been writing this whole time! Did you see that?
Hey, everyone, look at this. This page is totally covered with words! I wrote this stuff. Me! Yeah, all of it.
Honey? Come and look at this! What do you think? I mean this is like, twenty thousand words or something. Oh, it isn't? Well, how many…oh, okay. Not even three thousand. Fine. But still, I mean, LOOK AT IT.
I WROTE SOMETHING!!!
What, honey? Yeah, I mentioned the crying. No, I didn't tell them everything. Okay, I did mention that . Did I…what? No, I didn't swear. Come on . Well, not much anyway. Of course I was politically correct. Sheesh!
Okay, that's enough, honey. I'm still concentrating here. No. Yes, I know the bathtub is dirty. I'll get to it later.
Wow, everyone. I just love writing. Seriously. I love it the way Cagney loved Lacey, the way the desert loves the rain, the way Jesus loves a sinner. I live for it. You should try it sometime…***
Joseph D'Lacey is great. We love Joseph D'Lacey. Did I mention he's great? His new novel, Meat, comes out 21/02/08. You can check him out more on his new swanky website.