I was smoking just now, and thinking about my own fear of writing. This was something I have had cause to think about now and again, that I put off settling down to write because of all of the pain that has come with writing and not managing to get it done. I had been thinking of Modafinil, which I am taking at the moment, and how it seems to have been helping me to focus on fewer projects, reading just one book (!) and more or less focusing on one story for at least a few days, which is more than I usually achieve. It seemed that I would be able to finish something, and that that could free me up to fear sitting down to write so much less. This led me into thinking of a story that I have considered a couple of times before, about a darts player who develops a condition whereby he cannot let go of the dart.
I first heard of this years ago watching the Darts at university while procrastinating, putting off studying for an impending exam or essay. Darts, snooker, even curling became fascinating at these moments, but darts I found particularly funny. Well, funny and sad at times, perhaps, but certainly funny. There was the way the stars of darts seemed to come from another world, one that was unchanged by political correctness and any of the advances of the last twenty years.
It was funny how they promoted themselves and pimped themselves up in gaudy clobber and big rimmed glasses. It was funny how the one guy came on to the BBC to speak about women’s darts and completely ran them down, talking like darts was so physically demanding that women couldn’t cut it in some way, and completely unaware of how insensitive he was being and the protocols of diplomacy that were being demanded of him. It was funny too how one white overweight middle aged New Zealand player came out and did the Hakka before throwing his featherweight darts. And it was funny how this one feller spoke about the tragedy of these players who cannot throw the darts, how it just won’t leave their hands.
Part of the humour of this last phenomenon seems to come from the fact that these are unreconstructed men’s men, and this is such an absurdly diminishing problem.
But this story wouldn’t be intended to send it all up. It was intended as a pure, realist, short story such as I should not allow to grow into increasing complexity. It would feature a man who had grown up all his life spending time in pubs, playing darts in a league. A trucker or some such. First would come the smoking ban, which threw him a little, and then this problem.
And because he is such a man’s man, his mates would take the piss, and his missus would do the same. They didn’t realise it was such a big part of his life and that it was hitting him so hard.
He breaks up with his missus and everything goes to shit. He is angry and embittered.
They meet up again after a long while. They haven’t spoken at all. They talk like they never did and together they work towards some kind of a life that could work for them both.
It’s such a simple story it would have to be handled well. But it’s the kind of story that could be part of the healing process in terms of not fearing sitting down to write.