I just can’t write a thing tonight

Tonight I cleaned my workspace: put the pens back in their jar, brushed the cat hair off my chair, sorted through the ever-reproducing pile of store slips gathering dust in a corner between the magazine-which-shall-become-art and the hard copies of writing competitions and calls for submissions and inspirational quotes by great authors.

I think that’ll be enough for the evening. I can go now curl up in the enormous leather armchair sitting on the porch and smoke, read a book, play some games, surf some internet. I’m tired, you see, and I’ve had a really long day at work. We woke up late this morning because L’s phone turned off in the middle of the night, so we got home from the office when it was already dark and you know I need my wind-down time before writing.

You KNOW I need that. I can’t just come home and sit down and write something. My brain is fried. Without the perfect routine and the perfect homecoming and no distractions and no changes of plan I can’t possibly be expected to access the deep recesses of my creative mind and actually DO something with it.

Can I?

I mean … reading a book is anyway just as valuable as writing things down, isn’t it? If I don’t read, how can I ever write anything? I learn things from those great authors, those oft-quoted crusaders of the mightier staff. They teach me how to speak, how to turn a phrase, how to imagine how people speak to each other. They show me places I can only dream of going. Their grand descriptions of the green, rolling hills of Ireland, ponies trip-trapping across them, allow me to imagine my own world that I’m building. So you see, reading is very important and at least it’s not watching TV.

I can do more tomorrow – oh, wait, not tomorrow, we have a thing on. We’re going to tattoo roulette. We’ll be too late home tomorrow to write a single word, and anyway we’ll be too excited to settle down. And then it’s Friday so we need to chill out. This week’s been fucking hectic. I could try to write on Saturday – oh, wait, no I have friends coming over for a braai so I need to prep for that. And Sunday’s a write-off (ha.ha). Arnold is coming to help me build a fence and heaven knows I’m not going to write after that. I’ll be much too sore.

I should really just stop torturing myself. I mean, even the greats take days off, right?

OK. But it’s only one night – well except for tomorrow and Friday and the weekend which I really can’t avoid – and I have plenty of time to finish the story and write the blog and smash out the book and cut up the magazine and colour in the colouring book and paint the picture and draw the pastel portrait of my love. I’m still young and as long as I get into some kind of routine before the end of this year then I’m still doing fine.

And anyway I’m so exhausted my eyes are closing and there is just no way I can muster up the inspiration to write one single word tonight …

Oh.