Writer’s Block

I’m blocked. Stuffed up. Jammed.

No, I’m not constipated. Or thwarted in any way. I just can’t think of anything to write about.

Just this week, I watched an incredible Test Match from Trent Bridge. However, many of the readers here have no idea what a Test Match is, nor where Trent Bridge might be. For the sake of completeness, it was a game of cricket between New Zealand and England that lasted a full five days, and involved slips in the slips, pulls, hooks, drives and cuts and a fair amount of short legs and silly mid-offs.

I’ve been playing some golf. Reasonably well at times. A simple tip “no sway today”, has me creaming iron shots on high handsome trajectories after months of fats and thins. Damn, my interests are niche. (That’s “neesh”, not “nitch”, OK?)

The rewrite of Sean, my novel, is going OK. I’ve just finished Act II, and am mapping out Act III. All mentions of “editing” have disappeared. I’m rewriting the whole thing. I have a spaghetti-plate of loose ends that need to be pulled straight and braided into a coherent thread, leading to a climactic denouement. I’m not sure, but I think that’s sort of where I should be at this point.

The world is going to hell in a hand basket. His Holiness the Pope is blurting well-meant platitudes about the war in Ukraine, that are either the result of poor advice or rank stupidity. The UK government looks lost. I’m assuming that the “process immigrants in Rwanda” plan is playing well in some obscure polling somewhere, but the very concept is abhorrent to me. Madness. Perhaps I should immerse myself in cricket.

Podcasts remain a haven. Both listening to them, and recording them. 1857 is a long-running show that I record with TJ Cosgrove. He’s young, smart, and technically adept. I’m pretty handy with a wine glass. Ostensibly, we talk about the analogue, but actually we witter on about all sorts of nonsense. There’s a massive back catalogue.

A newer project is Stationery Adjacent. It’s not that new, we’re over 60 episodes now. Justin Twyford is, now wait for it, all of the following. Finance director. Photographer. Lapsed Hare Krishna. Harley-rider. Musician. Podcaster. Model car builder. Stationery blogger. Tattoo canvas - and a whole lot more. Most importantly, he’s a great friend. We talk about making sense of work, about achieving some level of productivity despite everybody’s attempts to thwart us.

Finally, I record a third podcast (which Justin edits) called Writer Interrupted. It’s an audible version of my posts here on the website, both the public ones like this, and the members-only posts, which is a serialisation of the novel as it’s written. It’s a benefit of being a member.

My writing is supported by people like you. You can become a member of the site (here). Members access the serialisation of my first novel draft, and give comments to me in a member's Slack. They also get a free electronic copy of anything that I publish during their membership. Sign up - help me move writing from a side-project to the main event, or at least keep me in wine.