#2 - These Things Take Time

Dear Morrissey,

Woody Allen was right. The best an idea gets is when it's in your head. If it wasn't for these comforting and destructive words, I would have left university at 3.45pm today and returned home to write some actual real-life words.

But I didn't.

Instead, I headed straight to the union where - holed up in a window seat - I spent three hours looking over the Guardian cryptic crossword. I still can't do them. I'm not even close to perfecting their peculiar coded science. And yet, with cloudy head and cotton mouth, I dedicate these slow alcoholic hours to the pursuit of of a single answer.

I could be writing. Scripts or screenplays. Poetry or prose.

I am not writing.

When, finally, I stumbled into my bedroom, I sat at the end of the bed and wrestled the laptop from its carry-case to find the wires in a state of terrible disorder.

You can tell a lot about a person by the way they untangle electrical cable. Some people find a thread and follow it patiently until there are no more knots; until order is restored. Me? I grabbed and pulled and tugged and forced before realising that a gentler, more considered approach was needed.

Writing is the same. I keep looking for a shortcut.

And there isn't one.

Yours Gracelessly,

Jack x