The wandering pen
You may have noticed that there has been something of a gap since my last post. I wouldn’t say I have been blocked, exactly. But I have been thinking about purpose: the purpose of this ‘publication’ and of my purpose as a writer more generally.
This has coincided with some pressure at work over publications of a different kind, of ones that should be 4*, world-leading, world beating, world-all-conquering … My job depends on it.
So, this writing, the writing which will never count for that and that I don’t want to count for that – what is it for?
Dad has some thoughts. In a little red notebook he seems to have a mid-life crisis in the mid- 1990s with some alarming synergies to my own, but then I would say that.
He notes down a conversation with an acquaintance at church about research.
Research – introspection – analysis for what? Ok writing – that’s ok then. I do think there ought to be some point to research – some end product.
I don’t think the ‘I’ here is Dad. Or maybe I don’t want it to be. Who knows? But there it is: ought. The end product. The unit of assessment.
At this time, Dad was a self-employed finance trainer who travelled the country working with a wide range of companies. But he was somewhat dependent on a training company through which he got most of his work and this dependency frustrated him terribly.
In May 1995, in a short writing practice, he mused on why he enjoyed working for non-profit organisations:
Why is it that, when working with managers not driven by the profit ethic that I enjoy the experience at an intellectual level more than, say, with company sale executives? Is it that the work attracts a “nicer” bunch of people who who don’t really like me but are too well-bred to say such honest but hurtful truths.
Or would it be that there too [sic] accompany true altruism there is an openness which leads to taking a grander philosophical view which understands the world by hypotheses and addressing concepts or issues and I personally prefer talking hypothetically to dealing with the real world. Or is it that ungenerously, we’re all idealists and dreamers idealizing and dreaming together being paid pots of money to do so by those who have to “deliver”.
Perhaps all of these analyses have their own truth …
Perhaps they do, Dad.
But there are different kinds of writing and maybe there is still a tiny space left for us idealizers and dreamers.
It is good to let the mind (and the pen) wander when writing. Start with one experience and allow fresh (or old) visions and experiences into the mind – like sleeping but still awake.
It’s Saturday morning, not yet 8am. Half-asleep in conversation with Dad in conversation with himself.
In conversation with myself, I decide I don’t have to abandon dreaming.
… Perhaps if I put my energies into an “out of body” experience i.e. something that distracts and occupies me sufficiently … Look, when I’m not too well (I’ve got a bad back or a cold) I get on my feet and perform to the distraction of all else. No pain! No discomfort! Whether it’s adrenalin or a hormonal balance thing that’s altered when I’m “performing” or expressing myself, who knows? But who cares if it works. Could I get the same effect if I plunged myself wholeheartedly into writing. Well let’s give it a try?
Yeah, Dad. Let’s give it a try.
I've been working with a local history group, trying to shape a project, and the first thing I asked is... what happens at the end? What is the product? Not because the product is the most important thing or because the process is unimportant, but because the product is motivating.
But as I sit here with countless unpaid bloody projects that all want writing, I am unmotivated by product.