Advice for Writers- Part I- Sinners & Slayers

I'm guilty of a terrible writing sin & I know you are too. A sin that displays with ugly clarity, the egotistical & self serving nature of writing. Of, dare I say it, being 'a writer'? This sin does not result in the torture of fire and brimstone, but something oh-so-much worse. Because this sin is an amalgamation of all the others. 

• It is the lust for a quick fix and the self indulgence of writing not for craft but solely to self soothe.

• It is gluttony and greed. A greed that steals from itself, that wants to claim every character as its own. 

• It is sloth because it is lazy writing and makes the composer predictable.

• It is wrath because it is the inability to go beyond personal pain and gut reactions, to develop prose. 

• It is an envy of the self's creation and the resulting perversion of it.

• And it is pride because it;s the self (and not the quality of the text) as most central to the final product of the writing process.

This (most inevitable and pungent) sin is; the act of crafting ones character as mere reflections of yourself, and oh Father, I have sinned. Friends, writers, countrypersons, lend me your minds, I come to slay this sloppy and ineffective trope, not to praise it. 

Time and time again as an undergrad I spoke with peers, tutors and (OK, mainly) myself about this problem. And yes, it is a problem. If you allow every one of your central characters to be you (but in a desolate future world, but a recent recruit to the Tamil Tigers, but younger and Hungarian and about to beat some serious Stalin out of János Kádár) you are writing the same story! Your drive to write is a gift (not the scary Carrie kind) and you can use it to write the same story over and over (and bore me, your readers, your Nan and your tutors). Or, if you prefer, you can use it to explore everything, you can position yourself at the forefront of human thinking, consciousness and development. Be a renegade.  How? Well, you'll find out when I publish the sequel, won't you? 

Stay militant. 

Rembrandt's Bathsheba.

FILM ROLLS ON

 grains, congeals into-

You and I.

No breath between us and Bathsheba.

Our hips drawn together, a dance, inside Museé Du Lourve.

Later we will recreate the scene in a small apartment,

I kneel at your feet.

No breath between us but an echo where fingers and hips find rhythms.

The

drip

drip

drip

of the brass taps, keep your tempo.

The greatest and most natural movement.

Later we wake and walk the dusk light

To buy groceries.

In those days you would hold my hand in secret,

And when I fell asleep

You’d trace letters on my wrists.

Messages to me.

Nothing as sacred as those days in what follows.

Months bleed journeys

NEXT CLIP

We smoke cigarettes outside jazz clubs in the dark monotone of an acid ridden New York.

NEXT CLIP

We lock our hearts to the Charles Bridge and, dancing on the banks of the Mala Strana, throw away the keys.

NEXT CLIP

We take taxis around London, finding our palms crossed and our gazes averted in the back of black cabs.

NEXT CLIP

One day to return, we said, to Paris,

Aching in our poverty .

When commodity appears it is indeed

A very queer thing.

Painfully fashionable, we said, to revisit

The café where we had once drunk

From chipped china cups.

Dutiful symmetry

To find the city

Abounding in metaphysical

Subtleties and theological niceties.

FILM ROLLS ON

This summer it will be five years too late to

kiss your fingers.

Five years too late to

lay you down amongst your father’s book.

Let me make you a pillow of the Oxford Dictionary and play your favourite record.

FILM ROLLS

Crystallises the curve of your smile.

In the years that follow

Bombs cry down.

Each shivering and shining

Like the teardrops on windows in Paris.

Like the slow drip of the tap.

Back to that scene, Rembrandt looks on.

In a sentimental anomaly

I still hold the messages you left on my wrists.

I still read your letters

Cream paper, frayed edges.

I still smile when the calendar graces your birthday.

News of you came just three days after. In photographs I reconcile your smile with my laughter. What followed you was a five year winter. No breath between us, no more scenes to capture.

I still dust your records each November.

It is five years too late to play them

FILM ROLLS ON

devoid of action