And the drought continues in the wasteland ...

Still, nothing has come.

I am now three enormously wasted days into the writing of my novel, a task which has involved absolutely no writing at all. Today I spent six hours in front of the blank leafs of my beutifully leather bound moleskine notebook and absolutly nothing. No flow of ink, no flow of words. I have, now, pretty much all the planning, all the thinking that I think I need. I have the structure - or at least as much of it as I think I can bear to put down, without completely tying my hands. Its scribbled on various envelopes and cadged pieces of paper (from Carley).

I didn't write any of the plan in my notebook; I wanted to keep its virginial pristine whiteness for the actual words. Its maidenhood has remained very much intact, its pristine whiteness unspoiled. I forced myself to stay in front of it, not to go off and drink coffee, from nine to twelve thirty and from one thirty to four. And I couldn't write a single word (or rather not a single word was left after I wrote shit and then furiously crossed out).

I'd call it writer's block, except of course that I have no right to call myself a writer - not yet, not in any sense. In fact, the last three days of writer's block, are nothing more than the continuation of the twenty-two years of my life prior to them; one long line of not writing.

I gave up in the mid-afternoon and took up the book I've been reading, V.S. Naipaul, The Enigma of Arrival. Its very much about writing, itself, though from the other end, from the side of someone who has arrived who knows it all - Naipaul now has since won the Nobel Prize for literature. I don't know whether it's my current state but I found it wholly disappointing and not a little smug.

The whole thrust of Naipaul's argument is that he has found his voice, he has found what it is to be a writer - and that is to be true to oneself, to understand your surroundings and all the different cultures that have made up the writer's self (Naipaul is Trinidadian, Asiatic, has made a home in England, and he puts great store in this).

I just don't find it very interesting, I suppose, this obsessive need to anatomize the self; to try and enuciate the modes of being, to hold up personality as some kind of deity to be kowtowed to. Its not how I'll write. I'm interested in what people think, not who they are; nor am I interested in people's weaknesses but their strengths. The rest of Naipaul's novels (a good 300 pages) is an inventory, it seems to me, of the weaknesses of the people who live around - what makes them small, what makes them petty. Like Blake he wants to see the universe in a grain of sand, is intent on finding something significant in the minutae of life. But not all grains of sand are the same, some do not contain the universe, some are just grains of sand. Writing takes decision, it requires choice.

This is me speaking, someone who is yet to put pen to paper, lecturing the winner of a Nobel prize. I suppose I should write something before I start to cut down those who do, who can. I will.

Am at the internet café again, so I should probably make a move on. Things at the house are well. Exciting news, I am finally to meet the elusive, infamous Scout, the laird who is currently in his mansion in wales and is the fifth housemate.

Right, tomorrow I am going to write.

Til then.