This week I’m mostly trying to get a particular thought straight in my head. It often helps if I type through these things. Maybe it might help you too, who knows?
It relates to writing. And negativity. Well, a bit anyway.
I was having one of those ‘Dark Tea Times of the Soul’ (respect to Douglas Adams) about my writing a few weeks ago. My thoughts went something like this;
“Everybody in the world is writing. Everybody has computers and word processors and printers. Everybody is swigging coffee and pushing themselves and creating scenarios and characters and working hard and… just… writing. So why are you any different? In truth, you’re just another slob with a PC and a dream. There’s a million of you out there and quite a significant percentage are most-likely a whole lot better then you are. So why bother? How can you ever hope to succeed?”
Like I said, it was perhaps not the very best of days.
But then I had this other thought. This thought that I’m trying to get straight in my head. Oddly enough, it was about the Live Aid Concert in Wembley back in 1985. Bear with me on this, I think it’s pertinent to the point about negativity, I just have to work through it a little.
You see, I was lucky enough to be at the Live Aid Concert back in 1985. It wasn’t quite ‘The Perfect Day’ that it may have seemed on the telly but, looking back, it wasn’t terribly far off it either.
But this thought-of-mine doesn’t relate to the concert itself, it relates to what happened when it finished up.
What happened was that we all went home. All of us. Pretty much at the same time. And there was a bloody enormous crowd of us. As we all crushed out of Wembley Stadium and onto the pavilion, I remember thinking something like this;
“I am part of an enormous crowd of people. We are all going the same way, wanting to get to the same place. How can this ever work itself out?”
But I kept walking in the crowd, shuffling along. What else was there for me to do? Eventually I turned down a street, and then another, and then another…
… and suddenly I was alone.
Quite alone.
…
This was very surprising to me. One minute I was in a crowd that seemed unbreakable, eternal. Yet it only took a couple of minor turns for me to lose the crowd, who had all made their own turns, and be out on my own again.
So at the end of all my gloomy ponderings (see above) I took some heart from this memory. I don’t want to kill the point by driving it home, I think the analogy is pretty clear but, just in case…
Perhaps you write (or whatever it is that you do) and you fear you are one of a huge crowd and will never stand out, in your own right. I reckon that if you just continue to go your own way, make the turns you need to make and be true to your route then, not too far down that line, you will be out on your own, doing your own individual thing.
Will it be good enough? Well that’s another question, isn’t it? That takes learning and perseverance and maybe a little luck and talent, who knows?
But as for The Crowd? There is no real need to fear The Crowd.
Just turn once down there at the bottom, then again at the end, then once more - you decide which direction to go.
Then, for sure, you will be out on your own.
It relates to writing. And negativity. Well, a bit anyway.
I was having one of those ‘Dark Tea Times of the Soul’ (respect to Douglas Adams) about my writing a few weeks ago. My thoughts went something like this;
“Everybody in the world is writing. Everybody has computers and word processors and printers. Everybody is swigging coffee and pushing themselves and creating scenarios and characters and working hard and… just… writing. So why are you any different? In truth, you’re just another slob with a PC and a dream. There’s a million of you out there and quite a significant percentage are most-likely a whole lot better then you are. So why bother? How can you ever hope to succeed?”
Like I said, it was perhaps not the very best of days.
But then I had this other thought. This thought that I’m trying to get straight in my head. Oddly enough, it was about the Live Aid Concert in Wembley back in 1985. Bear with me on this, I think it’s pertinent to the point about negativity, I just have to work through it a little.
You see, I was lucky enough to be at the Live Aid Concert back in 1985. It wasn’t quite ‘The Perfect Day’ that it may have seemed on the telly but, looking back, it wasn’t terribly far off it either.
But this thought-of-mine doesn’t relate to the concert itself, it relates to what happened when it finished up.
What happened was that we all went home. All of us. Pretty much at the same time. And there was a bloody enormous crowd of us. As we all crushed out of Wembley Stadium and onto the pavilion, I remember thinking something like this;
“I am part of an enormous crowd of people. We are all going the same way, wanting to get to the same place. How can this ever work itself out?”
But I kept walking in the crowd, shuffling along. What else was there for me to do? Eventually I turned down a street, and then another, and then another…
… and suddenly I was alone.
Quite alone.
…
This was very surprising to me. One minute I was in a crowd that seemed unbreakable, eternal. Yet it only took a couple of minor turns for me to lose the crowd, who had all made their own turns, and be out on my own again.
So at the end of all my gloomy ponderings (see above) I took some heart from this memory. I don’t want to kill the point by driving it home, I think the analogy is pretty clear but, just in case…
Perhaps you write (or whatever it is that you do) and you fear you are one of a huge crowd and will never stand out, in your own right. I reckon that if you just continue to go your own way, make the turns you need to make and be true to your route then, not too far down that line, you will be out on your own, doing your own individual thing.
Will it be good enough? Well that’s another question, isn’t it? That takes learning and perseverance and maybe a little luck and talent, who knows?
But as for The Crowd? There is no real need to fear The Crowd.
Just turn once down there at the bottom, then again at the end, then once more - you decide which direction to go.
Then, for sure, you will be out on your own.