When writing, we are attempting to correct the asymmetry between the internal world of our thoughts, and the powers of understanding of our hypothetical audience.
But wait: there are issues that I have to resolve with myself first, before I can even think about those who want to read the things I have to say. I must be certain that my own expressive powers are the best they can be, else how can I ever hope for an anonymous other to pick up the thread I leave dangling?
When these powers of expression are at their peak, the outcome is pleasing, for a moment or two. At such times, it feels (misleadingly) as though I’m capable of writing forever – the catch-all word ‘confidence’ is present and correct, and I sit upon its magic carpet and fly along for a short while.
Confidence, what is it? We’ve been here before, in the dim and distant recesses of the thousands of words on here. It is nothing more than the repetition of an act, time after time, so that it can be reproduced perfectly at any given moment: the human-turned-machine turns out copy after copy of the only thing it has an aptitude for, and never breaks down. (For this is the definition of a machine – it has a limited repertoire, but performs brilliantly to its specifications. So a powerful chess computer can crush even a grand master, but the same computer couldn’t boil a packet of Super Noodles, or do the washing-up afterwards.)
Confidence, then, equates roughly to the following (incorrect) maxim that practice makes perfect - and, yet, the more your author writes, the less confident I am in what's produced. It's the law of diminishing returns - the more I strive to produce, the more ordinary I become.
Over the last days, the thought of writing something - anything - has occupied my mind relentlessly, and yet I cower away from the keyboard as if it's burning hot. I'll go into the kitchen to make a drink, come back again with a drink I didn't want in the first place, and then fail to write anything.
It's not a shortage of ideas, or a shortage of desire or interest - it's just exhaustion caused by the striated unavoidability of event after event after event, delivered upon a person who's too weak to tolerate their aggregation. When I say 'event' I'm referring to an intrusive thought, a work-related mistake, a broken promise to the self to get up and go to the gym. The little things add up, and the result is the spiritual death of a thousand cuts.
Writing is the most important thing in the world, and by far the least important. It at once saves any remaining sanity, whilst sending the unfortunate completely mad. I believe I can continue this way forever, and yet I know there's not a single world left in me.
