What once flowed onto the page in reckless abandon, words tumbling over each other in the need to be heard, is now barely a trickle. Where once I felt the need to express myself on virtually any given subject I no longer have that drive or compulsion. My fire is almost gone, flickering embers rather than crackling flame. It is a terrible moment for any writer – and I will just this once accord myself the luxury of that conceit, when they realise that the flame is gone, the fire cold.
The harder one tries the more the target recedes. Like an asthmatic dragon I have made effort upon fumbling effort to rekindle that fire. My desk is a shrieking bedlam of projects enthusiastically initiated then apathetically abandoned. An installation of empty espresso cups and Jaffa cake wrappers. Short stories, that novel I promised myself, plays, critiques, reviews and so on, a cacophony of incompletion, cheek by jowl with biscuit crumbs and coffee stains.
For months I have told others about my forthcoming screenplay, hoping against hope that, by talking about it, it might somehow become real. And it did briefly flicker into life, only to be too soon abandoned like some Wild West homestead shaped by the wind and tumbleweed. If I describe things often enough eventually I start to believe what I have said rather than what I have done. This is self delusion on an epic scale, the very grandeur of the deceit almost worthy of a certain ex-US President.
Parkinson’s lent me a voice, both figuratively and literally. The last five years particularly, when progress has been swiftest, discovery upon discovery in the perpetual flux of new and resurrected drugs, provided me with ample material to enlighten and explain for any readers so interested. Parkinson’s was my mojo. When you have written about little else for a decade, it’s hard to execute a credible volte face and speak with authority on other material.
I would like to believe, even in the face of such persuasive arguments to the contrary, that I will one day write a significant work of fiction – a screenplay, novel, or collection of short stories. Apart from occasional sputterings (https://jonstamford.com/writing/) the short story has largely eluded me as a genre. The novel too. And the less said about my moribund screenplay, the better.
Perhaps I should focus on maudlin self-pity. If the previous half dozen paragraphs are anything to go by, I’ve pretty much got that one nailed.
Class dismissed.