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Typically when falling asleep
in bed at night great thoughts enter the mind, long
stringed and meaningful sentences trip over each other to
receive attention at the front of the brain alongside all
the brilliant findings, results, meanings that speak
volumes and hard hitting phrases that are just the ticket
to open the door to success. The last thought in the brain
before sleep overrides this brilliant future work is,
“must use that tomorrow”.
The next day as you stumble
out of bed to clean the teeth with little enthusiasm and
to sit staring inanely at a pot of hot water (the coffee
machine that you had forgotten to put the coffee in yet
again) these thoughts are still asleep. They are heaped
and well obscured in other jumbled and nonsensical
reasoning’s and justifications –Double Dutch without
subtitles or translation.
In fact, as you opt for a
cup-of tea (seeing as how the coffee machine makes the
water) and you stub you toe on the stool that was in the
way, absolutely no prose, ideas or means to move forward
spring into the mind. It can even be said that after
switching on the computer and after having shot down
twenty spacecraft and been eaten up by a green alien sort
of thingy, that not even a title or starting sentence
seems worthy of being tapped into the keyboard.
It can justifiably be said
that the whole day has been spent in totally useless
fashion. Staring out of the window at the idyllic setting
only makes lying on the bed seem very attractive: the walk
to the corner shop to clear the head only brings anger
over the prices these shops charge and the afternoon nap
has now obliterated or obscured all that might have been
dreamt up that morning - in short the head remains an
empty void and a bottomless pit with no foundation..
There are two major periods
of fantastic prose assembly and justifiable award-winning
script construction. Had the results or product of these
two periods of mind-boggling activity simply been recorded
for posterity things would be very different. Even if they
had been written on the back of a cereal box, on toilet
paper or even dictated into a tape recorder (right over
your friend’s favorite tape) these reams of cohesive
cognitive and collective convictions would have been the
beginning, the middle and the end of many an article,
essay, poem, writing or story. They would have been the
justification, the vindication and the rationalization;
the crux, the core, and the essence; the plot, the
storyline and the scenario; the speech to end all
speeches, the thesis to bring in the top marks and the
book that would sell more than any Harry Potter novel ever
has.
Strangely enough the
mind-boggling prose that springs out during these two
periods in most writers’ lives is not often etched or
embedded onto some scrap of paper or recorded for eternity
on a Dictaphone – results that have been used the next
day that is. In the first situation the thinker and
brilliant script writer has unfortunately fallen asleep
before the thoughts of the night could be transferred from
brain to paper. And in the second case the new author and
Nobel Lauriat is blind drunk, so blind drunk and out of
his tree that writing or talking is not really a feasible
possibility – even though it seems like a good idea at
the time.
Many forward thinking and
desperate strugglers go to extremes to capture and to
retain these mind-boggling and superb strings. Some fall
asleep with Dictaphones switched on next to them so that
they may talk out their thoughts before drifting off –
sadly they typically replay to sounds of excessive grunts
and snores that shock to the core. Other more desperate
souls actually manage to struggle out of bed to write on
the back of a cereal box, over their mum’s favorite
recipe for peanut cookies or on some other scrap of paper.
The next morning, the ones
that managed to write their thoughts down do have some
success in thinking up new ideas, but only due to having
had a good night’s sleep. Safe and sound in the
knowledge that their wonderful thoughts had been recorded
they fall asleep like babies, knowing that the morning
will bring brilliance to light. Sadly, when waking up it
is either found that ‘little brother’ has used that
little scrap of toilet paper for what it was meant for or
more commonly that the words that have been written make
absolutely no sense what-so-ever. All of these pre-sleep
thoughts that had been recorded look like the ramblings of
an Egyptian Monk overdosed on Battery Acid.
The drunkard who manages to
write something down is not a common occurrence. Usually
at the point of aiming the pencil towards the paper at the
start of what will be a lengthy diction and thus the
subsequent lowering of the accumulated build-up in the
brain, the pencil snaps. But drunkards certainly prefer to
hear their own voices. One of their favorite methods of
attempting to record such galvanic thoughts and ideas is
to lean over to the next drunk and to recite in a loud
voice all that they have amassed inside their heads.
Having sprouted all out and after having warned the fellow
drunk not to forget what he has been told they usually
fall asleep, safe and sound in the knowledge that in the
morning their friend will give back what they had
received.
It never works! The average
drunkard never can remember with whom he entrusted his
precious thoughts. Over a beer the next evening it may
come to light that one man remembers being entrusted with
some important information, but for the life of him he
cannot remember what the actual information is These two
persons may even get together that evening but – it
never comes back again.
There it is. Two occasions
of superb idea formation and collation yet never do they
seem to bear fruit when it matters most! In fact whilst
sitting at the computer, keen and willing to progress
further than the blank page, the brain fails miserably.
Welcome to the club!
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About
The Author
Author
and Webmaster of Seamania (http://www.seadolby.com).
As a Chief Engineer in the Merchant Navy
he has sailed the world for fifteen years.
Now living in Taiwan he writes about
cultures across the globe and life as he
sees it.
webmaster@seadolby.com |
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