Write like you have nothing better to do. Write like a walrus is following you and wants to steal your overcoat. Write like you just sat down on a language bush and are trying to find the best way to ask someone to remove words from your buttocks with a colossal pair of tweezers. On rainy days, write like you have eaten too many beans and are trying to find a quiet portaloo. Write like the ink is rising and you do not have a snorkel. Only write! Write like your pen is a grumpy stallion. Write with heredity and purulence. Write like one of your bunny slippers has a hole in it and little bits of slipper stuff are coming out. Write like you’ve just swallowed a duck. Write like your aunt drove you to the supermarket of writing in a Ford Fiesta that smelled of sardines and always came to pick you up later at the end of your shift with her knitting. Write like your elbows would write, if they had fingers. Write like an accordion. Write stripily. And in the reaches of the night, in those desolate lonely watches when your thoughts wash up over and over and over and over and over on useless shores, ask yourself, must I write? And realise that you must, because in the reaches of the night it is really cold and if you don’t then that fucking walrus will steal your coat.
On writing
Published
Question of Smoke 