The writer�s great fear of the blank mind and page

by Gunther Simmermacher · July 16, 2008

Every writer lives in fear. It�s a dread that would make dealing with the taxman followed by an unanaesthetised root canal and an evening in the company of Robert Mugabe seem like a splendid day.

The scribe�s perennial anxiety is that of being confronted by writer�s block; of struggling for the words needed to express an idea coherently; or worse, of being lost for an idea in first place. The experienced writer will have techniques to conquer that state of blankness. Those who conform to stereotype might find inspiration in a few generous drops of the good stuff. Others might recycle pieces published long ago, in the hope that their readers have deleted the memory of these. Others yet employ the method of stream-of-consciousness prose, most of which is destined to be discarded.

The latter is my preferred method. To the writer, it is particularly useful as a means of clearing out ideas which should never be administered upon a readership (and, yet, sometimes they are; in lesser newspapers than that you are holding now, of course). Writer�s block is akin to the predicament of a listless athlete facing the unwelcome demands of training. Once on the road or on the cardiac circuit, the rhythm of exercising usually returns; imperfectly, perhaps, but back nonetheless. So it is with writing when the muse needs to be seduced.

At least, I presume the analogy fits. In matters of physical exercise, I endorse Mark Twain�s regimen: �Whenever I feel the need to exercise, I lie down until it goes away.� And as the years advance, I expect that, in the words of the 19th century American politician Chauncey Depew, I will �get my exercise acting as pallbearer to my friends who exercised�.

I had two such work-outs last year: at the funerals of my dear father-in-law, and, soon after, that of Owen Williams. On July 20 it is a year since Owen Williams took the stairway to heaven (I feel compelled to point out that I am referencing the marvellous David Niven film, not the hard rock band Led Zeppelin, of whom Owen possibly was not a fan). Having just deleted a whole passage on the, well, passage of time � involving childhood memories, a Venn diagram, and the advance of general decrepitude � I shall simply rely on clich� as we exclaim in unison: �Goodness me, one year already?�

Sometimes I still expect to receive a telephone call from Owen, who had a way of unintentionally timing his calls to cause maximal disruption in my work. These interruptions would be extended by the genial delight of these conversations, which invariably would turn to the movies at some point. Owen had a gift for translating his fine conversational facilities to the page. His elegant and erudite prose seemed effortless, like that of his idol PG Wodehouse. But �effortless� writing requires hard work. The masterful American humourist Dave Barry once said that he might spend hours deciding whether to use the word �received� or �got�. Really good writing hangs on such torturous detail.

Editing and finetuning one�s work has become much simpler since the advent of word processors. Owen practised his art the old-fashioned way. He wrote his manuscripts on a typewriter, the old ribbon of which gamely held out for years to extract desperately scant smudges of ink it. These would then be faxed to The Southern Cross, from a fax machine calibrated to remove almost any suggestion of contrast. And all that was annotated with multitudinous squiggles intended to signal to the hapless sub-editor (usually the long-suffering Gene Donnelly, who handled most of Owen�s weekly columns over 24 years) where changes should be effected, and how. It did not help that Owen�s handwriting was of such a standard as to make my deplorable excuse for penmanship seem calligraphic by comparison. And yet, for almost a quarter of a century, not a week passed without an Owen Williams column in The Southern Cross.

Good writing requires constant revision, attention to detail, the humility to sacrifice a great line for the good of the whole�and something interesting to say. Owen Williams� body of work is a study in such good writing�just read the anthology of his Southern Cross columns, Any Given Sunday, which I had the privilege to curate.In the age of indiscriminate blogging, newsroom egotism and Dan Brown (never mind txt spk), genuinely good writing is becoming ever harder to find. When you do find it, even on some excellent blogs, savour it.

Now, let�s see whether I have conquered that blasted writer�s block yet.