Writing Crash Page 2

My fingers stopped tippy-tapping the keyboard on the iMac – ham-fisted and Neanderthal in their approach to approximating some sort of rhythm and style. I read.

  I re-read.

  I edited and read again.

  Read and repeat – edit and amend.

  It was almost ad-nauseum until I fine-tuned the first chapter into what I thought was a finished piece.

  Then I fixed it again.

  Was I polishing a turd? Or was this now completed?

  My wife, the artist, she would have known exactly what I was doing. So many times I had seen her finishing up a canvas, touching up a stroke here and there until, at some point, she would walk away and say: “Now, it’s finished.”

  I never seemed to know when that point was. I would review and re-write, stuck in the mire of a single chapter.

  No wonder the novel was still not finished. And, at this rate, it was unlikely to ever be completed.

  But, for now, I re-read the chapter again. There were a few phrases I was happy with, the last sentence especially. My demonic self-doubt kicked in almost immediately – a nagging, surreptitious demon of negativity that asked me:

  “Are you sure you’re not ripping anyone off here?”

  I wasn’t sure – had I heard these words before? Or approximations of them? Had I sub-consciously buried them only to be regurgitated years later as a literary re-mix? Or were these genuine original thoughts?

  I looked at the empty beer bottle next to the screen and it gave me the courage to hit “save” and ignore the demon.

  It was a stinking hot summer’s day, my sweating skin peeled off the vinyl office chair as I rose to go to the fridge for another beverage. The row of green bottles beckoned me like a bevvy of sirens, calling my name to lure me into their evil grasp.

  I knew what the sound meant – time to drown the demon in alcohol and self-satisfaction.

  “Pssst!” and the tinkle of the metal cap on the tiled floor signaled the onset of oblivion in the aftermath of satisfaction.

  The Floodgates

  The frustration I feel…

  I’ve never felt so impotent, so useless.

  These words rung in my head, over and over, like an alarm with no “Off” switch. The hangover hammer pounded away at my skull as my brain tried to find another home, knowing full well that nothing would want to take in this soused, shriveled pathetic excuse for an organ – at least not in its current state. In the meantime, those words reverberated around me.

  I saw them in the air – hovering above my head like a visceral thought balloon.

  That was how I always felt after a bender.

  I knew that I needed paracetamol, aspirin, ibruprofen…anything to help numb that pain. Perhaps a concoction of all three to take away the edge? I knew I needed Vitamin B, maybe Berocca, maybe Hydralite.

  I knew I needed rest.

  But, before all of that, I needed the keyboard.

  The frustration I feel…

  I’ve never felt so impotent, so useless.

  They persisted around me, like a mosquito that won’t simply fuck right off!

  I started to type.

  The frustration I feel…

  I’ve never felt so impotent, so useless.

  Read: Colby is a sack of bones.

  Useless bones, broken bones - bones that don’t fit any more. Some of my bones have disappeared. Some were surgically removed, some were ripped from me in the violence that turned me into this vacant pile of undead flesh that can never scream again.

  I wonder what happened to my lower legs.