Sooner or later, all columnists (or bloggers) on the eve of a deadline are brought to their knees. Eventually the blank gaze of a computer screen and an editor drumming impatient fingers on a far-off desk paralyses the columnist’s brain and both typing fingers. This week it’s been my turn.
Kneeling abjectly before computer and editor, I have attained a pure emptiness of mind which only the Dali Lama achieves so effortlessly.
Although this may seem an enviable state, it’s hell for the columnist: an empty mind is empty of everything which makes column-writing even remotely feasible: ideas, motivation, willpower and fear. Monkey-mind is the columnist’s only true friend.
However, I have not given in to the columnist’s usual urge to expound on the horrors of punitively regular deadlines. Instead, I have employed my temporary mental clarity to put together the following sure-fire ten-step writing guide for fellow sufferers of writer’s block.
Although this may seem an enviable state, it’s hell for the columnist: an empty mind is empty of everything which makes column-writing even remotely feasible: ideas, motivation, willpower and fear. Monkey-mind is the columnist’s only true friend.
However, I have not given in to the columnist’s usual urge to expound on the horrors of punitively regular deadlines. Instead, I have employed my temporary mental clarity to put together the following sure-fire ten-step writing guide for fellow sufferers of writer’s block.
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