The Scribbly One

“She’s a glamorous actress. Why is she even wasting her time talking to me?!” a friend asked, flustered. If a male could be fluttery, he would have been fluttery.

“I’m just an ordinary guy. She could have anybody she wants!” he went on.

“Get a grip on yourself, man!” I told him. “You look at her and all you see is the glamour - you’ve let that dazzle you. But she actually considers herself an ordinary person too. To her, acting is just something she does for a living.”

I continued, “It’s just like how people constantly think your job as an journalist is so glamourous, getting to hobnob with the rich and famous, being invited to their parties, gain access to their homes, interview them. You don’t think it’s glamorous at all, do you?”

He snorted. “You’ve gotta be kidding! Glamorous?!”

“See? You have to start seeing her as a person. Being an actress doesn’t make her any different from the rest of us. Don’t let what she does blind you to the person she is beneath all that.”

“Oh no! I’m getting scolded by The Scribbler!”

“Because you are letting externals get in the way. Stop being so fixated on the fact that she’s an actress and start treating her like a normal human being.”

“Wow, you are so fierce.”

“Because this is something I feel strongly about! You’re a wonderful person but you don’t believe how wonderful you are. You’re letting your own insecurities impede you and the development of a relationship. ‘Who am I compared to her’ and all that rubbish. She would be damn lucky to get you, you know!”

People say you must first read in order to be able to write. That’s long been a belief I share.

Look at all the great writers: every single one was a voracious reader. Perhaps reading sows seeds in the imagination, perhaps it teaches us the wonder of paying attention to the images we see in our heads, perhaps it gives us the words to use to describe those ever-changing pictures. Whatever it does, one thing is clear: reading supports writing.

But I have, I feel, wasted ten years of my life reading ‘trash’. As a friend once said, for a bibliophile, I’ve read all the wrong books.

The truth is that trash is easier to read. Undemanding and comforting in its very predictability, trash doesn’t demand intense concentration or a focussed mind. It neither stimulates thought nor requires chewing and digesting.

So I am a lazy reader. I read only to be entertained, and, in some ways, to escape. I do not want to engage my faculties any deeper than the very minimum required for mindless enjoyment.

Somehow, in my mind, my reading habits have come to be associated with lax morals. As an aspiring writer, I am ashamed of my lax morals, evidenced by my choice of dubious reading matter. I am convinced my actions have adversely affected my reputation and standing within the writing community. I believe I will never be a good writer because I have not read good books.

I write because I have to write. It is something I cannot explain, the need to put words down on paper. Often I do not even know what words will emerge until my pen travels over the blank sheet and its ink forms individual letters, leading up to words and phrases and sentences.

Yet at the same time, I do not feel that I have anything to say.

“Write a book,” friends have suggested.

“A book about what?” I ask. I have no idea. My mind is blank.

It is terrible to have the compulsion to write and yet not have anything to write about. That is why I write about my life - it is the only thing I know to speak of, the only topic on which I can converse with any authority. At least, in chronicling my life, the well of ideas can never run dry, for it is filled afresh each day and no two days are exactly alike.

I have never written anything in spurts and am afraid to do it now. Much of what I write has never seen draft form: I just plonk it on a page, and it is there.

On the rare occasions when I have left a piece unfinished, it has inevitably remained unfinished; frozen in time, in stasis, never achieving full splendour.

I have a fear of breaking off my writing. For me, it is not breaking up but breaking off, because I find that when I come back to it I have lost my original train of thought and do not want to board another. To do so would be disloyal to my initial muse. I still want to capture the picture that danced in my mind’s eye at the beginning; I am reluctant to loosen my hold on it, and am even more reluctant to allow it to morph into an image I do not recognise. If it slips through my fingers, I would rather leave my unfinished piece as a monument to its brief existence and mourn the loss of potential greatness.

I do not like to take something which I know ought to have pointed in one direction and turn it to another instead. This is why I am so afraid to write a novel. It is impossible to write a novel in one sitting - in fact, some authors have laboured over their works for years and years. I am afraid I will write something on one day from which I cannot continue on the next.

So it is not the infamous writer’s block that I fear, but my own stubborn sense of procedure and process. This should be followed by this and cannot be substituted by that. If I get stuck in such a manner I know I will never finish and it is safer not to begin than to endure the frustration and self-disgust at not finishing.

Friend: “He sounds quite unconventional.”

Me: “Paying for everything sounds conventional to me!”

Friend: “Well, except that…”

Friend: “Ask him to pick you up from the airport and give you a ride home.”

Me: “You’ve got to be kidding! If he weren’t here, I’d manage on my own, but now that he’s here, I suddenly can’t manage?! The last thing I want to do is abruptly turn into some helpless damsel in distress.”

Friend: “Not damsel in distress; it’s called ‘testing the waters’, my dear.”

Me: “Testing the waters is when you tell him you’ll be arriving by plane and wait to see whether he offers to pick you up from the airport!”

Friend: “Even better! Why didn’t I think of that? You’re a closet wheeler-dealer!”

Friend: “Does he make you laugh?”

Me: “It’s hard to say; I don’t particularly remember him being hilarious.”

Friend: “Does he make scintillating conversation?”

Me: “I didn’t notice any scintillating conversation… it was a normal chat, like between friends.”

Friend: “You don’t sound majorly thrilled. What do you think about him overall?”

Me: “Overall? The impression he gave me was not negative so I suppose you could say it was positive.”

I have never felt so neutral about a man before. Usually, I have a sense of “He could be the one” or, “No way, he could never be the one!”, but this time I am just blank.

Even his looks leave me feeling nonplussed. I am neither attracted to nor repelled by them. The best description I can come up with is ‘normal’.

My friends, however, think he is good-looking. One liked the fact that he is tall and had “the build”. Another gushed over his sideburns. Yet another said he is “definitely above average”.

What does it mean when your friends are more excited than you over a man and the possiblity of you being in a relationship with that man?