I’ve been stuck for a while on what to publish next because I think it has to be a Really Good Piece of Writing. Maybe The Piece. It hasn’t come.
To make a rambling story much shorter, I decided that my previous style no longer cut it for me. When the change occurred, I’m not sure.
I used to read over my work and see something brave and slightly provocative; the work of someone who clearly didn’t care; and shared their intimate details as empowerment. Last year, I would’ve told a stranger my deepest secrets in 5 minutes. I had a suspicion they could hold no power over me if I didn’t keep them for myself, and wanted to test my theory by throwing them out for free to see how they landed. It was fun whilst it lasted, and my tell-alls felt fresh against a past of restrained essays and reviews.
This year rolled around and the creative stream I had drunk from before dried up. Or maybe it was still flowing, but this time I was choking on it. I wrote about living with PTSD, and felt no connection to what I’d produced. Do I even feel that bad anymore? I tried to pen a personal blog post to go alongside my Scottish Gymnastics article for The National and found it clagging in my mouth. I typed through anecdotes like wading through treacle. A permanent grimace on my face at the computer, I felt gross. Self-indulgent. Weighty.
My style, previously characterised by long sentences, rolling commas and tongue-in-cheek sarcasm, came back as heavy-handed and obvious. Obsessed with image, I began to think of graduate jobs and future employers googling my name to be met with detailed accounts of court cases and eating disorders. Dreaming up fake catastrophic scenarios, I thought of a partner’s parents searching for my work after meeting me and thinking “Jesus Christ – this is all a bit much”.
Unfortunately, emotional and provocative writing seems to be all I know how to do outside of news reporting. It’s like my brain, black and white as ever, decided I could only inhabit two opposite sides of the writing spectrum. I imagine my commissioned press releases waving to my sappy teenager memoirs from miles away.
If I consider my outside influences, there’s likely another reason behind my discomfort. It’s just one I don’t want to admit.
Since February, I’ve become immersed in an artistic world that I previously had no knowledge of. Falling in love with a whole other world, and the person showing it to me, I’ve spent my weekends at exhibitions and graduate shows where I meet wave after wave of extraordinary artists.
Every event I attend seems to be characterised by subtlety. Even realist paintings have a covert message I must draw out; I need to decide how it makes me feel, and why. Sitting at a laptop and scrolling through years worth of auto-biographical confessions makes me feel too simplistic. To think of a topic and to describe it in detail is one thing, potentially the mark of a developed vocabulary and understanding of good grammar. To take a topic and deconstruct it so that its meaning eventually seeps out past sculpted clay, oil drippings or folded fabric, seems to me, an elevation of what I have previously tried to do; rendering my style of expression close to nothingness.
Creation has become synonymous with physicality. I want to make something I can touch, something to run my fingertips over and breathe in its realness. Something to carry from place to place; to set up and stare at. I’ve minimised my craft to nothing, blank words on a blank page on a blank screen. I’m not sure how to stop.
For a while, I just told myself the next piece would be The Best. A Really, Really, Good Fucking Piece of Writing. So good it could stand up to the works created by those in my new circles. A piece of writing that could be considered art, maybe? So of course, nothing came. Naturally, I cannot shape my words to mean what I’ve seen emulated in painting. Or sculpture, or wool, or silver.
So what next? Whether I print out my pieces on sheets of card and fold them to make a bloody origami swan, or write a book, or learn to felt, I have to do something. Unfortunately I’ve not gone to art school, and writing is what I’ve got going for me. Nothing will ever be The Piece, but it can maybe be something else. Maybe The Portfolio. I’ll compile it all when I’m 60, and write about being a whiny student struggling with having too much fun and meeting cool artists every weekend when I was 21. Luckily, I’m never in a content deficit. As long as I’m me, I just keep on providing my future self with more heavy-handed sap to write about.
And that’s all for now.
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