Writing from memory

I don't like writing very much. I prefer thinking to writing as it is easier to do and fits in with my general tendency towards inertial sloth. Furthermore in a Jeromian way, I like to think about writing even more, but getting ASCII down onto text areas (I haven't written a word on paper in a long while) is too tedious. The reason this blog sometimes sees a supernovic (is that the adjective form I wonder?) burst in posts is because of inertia - since I've taken the infinite pains of switching on my PC, opening programs, and writing stuff, I reckon I'd rather flush out everything then and there.

It has been one of my childhood fantasies to keep a diary. But the chronicles of my life are littered with the corpses of diaries that began on January 3rd (having re-acquainted myself with the ghosts, as Scrooge would appreciate, on the Christian New Year and finally roused myself to resume that chore in 2 days) and died miserably and unattended on the 8th of January. I started a few on my birthday as well (I find that a more reasonable way of celebrating a personal New Year) but the cost of raising an unruly new-born was too much. I found the physical act of writing (serialising onto stable storage, if you will) too cumbersome, and not speedy enough to keep up the neurons firing away (the well known context of slow I/O devices and fleety CPUs). Add to it the fact that my penmanship would invariably go to pieces, aided by pens that loved to blot both the paper and my record, which was actually desirable as it meant an easily defendable fortress against anyone who accidentally peeked into it - they couldn't get past the camouflage of my inky (sooty?) handwriting.

Cut to the present, and I find myself having sustaining a blog for a long while. I like writing online - my backspace key keeps my sanity. I'm not obviously in the Wodehousian school of writing (lest you think I've gone again and acted high-and-mighty, I refer merely to his habit of churning out novels in a day-and-a-half, surrounded by beautiful sunshine and a dog at his feet, with words pouring out like treacle from the jar). For me, it is more in the streets of an Scorcese-RGV production - sinister forces lurk at every semi-colon, threatening to snuff out my slender cargo of enthusiasm and flow. But when it flows, it does flow; much like a stream of words from Pesci in a Tarantino flick.

Some of my best posts have been written in my mind; most of them have never made it to screen in their Sunday best. For by the time I have roused my skeleton to do the many things prior to clicking away furiously, the river has stopped raging and it's viscosity has increased manifold. The few splotches that I have flung on these pages are mere cardboard imitations of what they were. Which is why I would find tremendously exciting if Blogger would to suddenly announce a mind-blog. I have not much use for an audio-blog service, but would love a mechanism where I could post a blog by only thinking - raw, editing left for later, forceful and in its full glory. Perhaps they would hack at my mind, and find out all the things I am really thinking about and then sell me depression tablets or a trip to the MCG instead of quizzing buzzer gear. But I'd be ready to pay that price. Perhaps like Cruise in Minority Report, we will have personalised, visual advertising calling out our names, but don't I have a separate post on those lines already?

Why am I saying all of this? One, because I've started to realise that I actually like to write once I'm already writing. It is getting started that is the problem. I know I have to stop soon. I'm scared I can't. But I've done it in the past, so I know can do it soon. Two, if you think I write too many long posts, you now know you haven't seen half of it. Many of them were snuffed out in the slip between the cranium and the finger-tip. Three, it's getting to the end of this post and I am applying these brakes, and they're stopping...

Sigh! what a waste of time, blank spaces and html tags.