If I Were A Real Writer, I Wouldn't Eat Crisps
My appetite is the only thing stopping me from achieving artistic greatness.
I offered a crisp to a poet once. She reacted as if I'd offered her crack cocaine. I shrugged and carried on munching. I do love a fine craft crisp. Or any crisp, for that matter.
Photo Description: This is a packet of Walkers Prawn Cocktail Flavoured Wotsits. The package is pink, with orange crisps floating on it. Unfortunately, they taste of of aeroboard, but sure, you can't have everything.
It is this love of crisps that tells me I will never be a truly great writer. Because truly great writers forget to eat. I am fond of a sweeping stereotype, but stereotypes contain truth. And I've yet to meet a roundy poet.
Great Writers Forget To Eat
If I were a true artist, I would be fuelled by the fire of my words, by the power of my ideas. For great writers, food is a distant murmur in the background; it takes a long time for that murmur to become loud enough for them to stop writing and start eating.
When I write I find myself regularly lost in contemplation of the wonders of salted caramel chocolates, melted cheese and that perfect after-dinner crisp, the barbecue flavoured Hula Hoop.
The Bon Viveur Writer
I am determined to become a stereotype myself, to preserve the stereotype of the bon viveur writer. In another life, I was an 18th-century gentleman, gorging on cheese and cuts of meat and discussing the South-Sea Bubble over a post-prandial liqueur.
When I was on my second People Wipe Me tour with the Theatre Guru and the Lighting Guru, they never ate on the day of a show. Meanwhile, I was coating my nerve ends with carbs.
I'm the same about sleep. I have heard that there are writers who look around their writing room at three o'clock in the morning, startled to discover that it's dark.
Meanwhile, I'm sleeping for a solid eight hours. I sleep remarkably well for a neurotic person.
A State Of Flow
These artists forget about food and sleep because they're in a state of flow. They lose themselves in the flood of ideas that pours through them. This has never happened to me when I'm writing.
I can lose myself when I'm reading, socialising or performing. But when I'm writing, I'm like a naughty child on a car journey, whining, 'Are we there yet?'
I have, however, learned to trick myself into a state of flow. I designate time for free writing in my day, tell myself how long I'll be doing it for and remove all timepieces from my line of sight so I won't be distracted. And then I write.
When I feel that the time has come for me to stop, I look up my timepieces and I discover that it is exactly the time I told myself I would stop. Now I can reward myself with a post-writing barbecue flavoured Hula Hoop.
If you'd like to challenge my crude writerly stereotypes, you can email me, derbhile@writewordseditorial.ie or 0876959799.