Ideas Come At Their Own Speed

Here comes the sun again. Hello from out here on the warm and windy Thames Delta.

OPERATIONS

NOT A GENIUS

You realise in your twenties that you’re not a genius. You get past that first blush of success, if you’re lucky enough to have experienced it, and get next to the fact that, in the words of Patton Oswalt, you’re not going to be the next Bill Hicks. But you do harbour the notion that it’s going to get easier, and that there will be a calm place in the future where you’re not working sixteen hours a day, and you’re not going to be subject to the ebb and flow of other peoples’ contempt and attention.

You discover, later, that you’re not good enough, or not lucky enough, or not present enough, and you made too many important decisions on the fly because you were too busy or too scattered or too tired, and that you’re never going to be that person who writes one of those inspirational blog posts about success. You’re in your forties and you’re still standing on the shore, keeping a wary eye on the riptide, because you know that all the small things you’ve built could be swept away overnight.

I am lucky. I make a decent living at this job, which puts me into a rare percentile among those identifying as professional writers. I almost always have work, and I can provide for the people around me. But it never gets easier. That’s the only lesson I can pass on, as I get older and I get slower. It is, perhaps, the only lesson worth passing on. You have to want to live like this. You have to love the words more than anything. You’ve got to be okay with your skin getting weathered, and the damp getting into your bones, and that little thrill of fear that never, ever goes away as you stand on the shivering sand at the cold water’s edge.

The above is a section of something I wrote for a publication called Matter back in 2015. The only thing that’s changed is that I’m not in my forties any more.

I do still love the words. And, in the end, that’s all that matters.

ORBITAL

GETTING BORED FOR FUN AND PROFIT

People have actually been writing into the office to ask about my garden! I have been trying to spare you! So, if you’re one of those poor kind souls, there should be a link right after this sentence that contains Saturday’s desperate attempt to prep the bomb site for spring. Garden notes.

Been having a lot of comics-related conversations this week: I filed 64 pages of script last month, and once I’m over the temporary hump of this week having been a clusterfuck, I expect to have filed about the same amount by the end of this month. I mean, I bloody hope so, the bills this quarter are crazy. That said, I’m blowing this weekend off.

We’re talking about formats and form and approaches, new ideas and things that may or may not work in the current market (whatever the hell that looks like these days - I don’t read any comics news and rely on other people to tell me what’s going on, which suits me very well). But at some point you need to just let it compost in the back of your head while you go and do something else.

Other writers have said it, and it’s true to an extent: some people have to get a little bored to have a new idea. The mind has to get empty and you have to have the time and space and bugger all else to do to poke around inside it looking for something interesting that’s gotten stuck to the wall. I love information and the new, but sometimes the story machine only works when everything else is turned off. Hard to do, now: if you own a smartphone, tablet or laptop, you never have to be bored. It’s an actual choice to put them down, and actual work to make them stop trying to entertain you (or anger or terrify you).

I work hard at being calm and focused these days, among other work. And being bored. Letting your mind wander while away from all the stimuli - the way it used to, only thirty years ago - might be good for you.

Creativity isn’t productivity. Ideas come at their own speed.

“In Iceland, Jan Erik Waider Captures Voluminous Bubbles Locked in a Frozen Glacial Lake.”

OTHER

OTHER NEWSLETTERS

Other newsletters I am always happy to see:

• Leila Brillson’s extremely random NIGHT CREEPS

• Lordess’ 404eva

• the remarkably useful Recomendo

• the always thoughtful and open Dougald Hine

• the very dense longreads that are the Film Comment Letter.

GOT MORE TIME?

LTD

The Theban Plays At The BBC

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, Finally

Revisiting FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL ’72

Looking Back On March 2024

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And that’s a wrap for today. Take this week slow. Be gentle on yourself. Lock out anyone who doesn’t want you to be gentle on yourself. Here comes the sun again.