High Doubts

a poem about the writerly doubt

I’m cross-posting from my main web site, because it is about the writer doubting himself.

As we went to bed last night, I said to M that I felt like just stopping all these writerly things, that there was no point in me writing anymore because I thought it was all poor poor and poorer. Of course she told me not to talk rubbish, but the point was that this was not a fishing for compliments, and neither is this post. We all, at one time or another, more or less frequently, or permanently, feel like this about what we create. And this morning the feeling was even worse (and feeling old age in my body didn’t help, doesn’t help). And there’s no way out from these moods; I just have to let them pass and not do anything about them while I’m in them.

MAGENTA

These days, it ebbs
And flows, 
My magenta mood,
The colour of melancholy,
Fear, lack of belief,
A sense
Of senselessness.

Today is a day when
The mood is a tidal wave,
When I want to press
Delete
On all the words
I’ve tumbled onto screen
And paper and thought
They were good enough.
None of them ever were.

The whole world is wrapped
In a magenta cloak today,
And it’s endless and too heavy.

R 26/09/2023 12:45

Despite this, I have managed to move nearer the conclusion of The Mortality Code. Going for two walks has probably helped (one of my favourite things to discover in Stephen King’s On Writing was that he goes for long daily walks, too).

And of course I won’t stop. It would be like giving up breathing.