Jonathan Dodd‘s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
The time is 4:05pm on Saturday 3rd January 2015. I’m sitting at my desk about to try to beat the world speed record for blog writing. I have to produce 1,000 readable words as quickly as possible. Partly because I’m late for submission and Sally will extract a terrible revenge if I fail to produce copy by the deadline, partly because I have a serious evening’s lounging in front of the blu ray player coming up, whilst clutching a well-warmed bottle of Argentinean Malbec, my current favourite tipple. But mostly because I can.
I have no idea whether a speed record for blog-writing exists, nor, to tell the truth, do I much care. I’m aware there are millions of people out there who blog about such a multitude of subjects that my mind can’t even begin to imagine it. Every now and then someone’s blog gets to be very popular and they even manage to become famous, if not rich, on the back of it. This is an idle dream of mine, because a bit of fame and riches never hurt anyone. It certainly wouldn’t hurt me. I’m quite sure of that.
Wavy red lines and green underlining
I’m powering on, leaving a trail of mis-spellings and bad punctuation behind me. I don’t even want to see the wavy red lines and green underlining that Word adds to my precious text to remind me that I am indeed fallible and cack-handed and that the mighty Word can rectify all my shortcomings with a wave of the Spellchecker wand.
I do trust Spellchecker absolutely, as far as I can throw it. But just because someone plants a flag saying ‘ALL MINES IN THIS AREA HAVE BEEN CLEARED. SAFE TO ENTER’, doesn’t mean that you should trust it. So I shall run Spellchecker when I’ve finished and then proof-read, as always. There’s no substitute for eyeballing.
313 words, says Wordcount
How am I doing? 313 words, says Wordcount, another wonderful helper supplied by Word. I’m about a third through, and it’s only 4:16pm. Quite good going. I do know that I can write 1,000 words of fiction in an hour, and I’ve even done that on a train before, but fiction usually comes after a prolonged period of gestation, usually unconscious gestation, although I’m aware it’s been going on.
I usually know when there’s a fiction loaf in the oven of my brain, and when the pinger goes I need to get to a keyboard and disgorge the precious words before they burn to a crisp and turn to dust and ashes. This blog isn’t fiction, as far as I know. But then I’ve never quite managed to find a definition for what I do for OnTheWight.
A space into which I can pour words
My blog just springs forth each week, sometimes it’s memoir, often rambling opinion, and occasionally fiction, but I’ve created for myself here a space into which I can pour words without needing labels. It’s very liberating, as well as a self-imposed sentence. Perhaps I just need to be able to tell the difference. 489 words now.
I’m wondering what constitutes an actual world-record blog attempt. The words on the screen are just the start. There’s the tuning and buffing-up using Microsoft’s finest tools, and then the editing and moving around of the text so it makes at least some nominal sense. Then I have to think up a title and the paragraph headings, and finally I need to find pictures.
That’s usually the icing on my cake
I love finding pictures to match the text of my blogs. That’s usually the icing on my cake. I have to use various picture repositories to search, and I’m only allowed to use pictures that are labelled as Creative Commons, in other words, those that have permission attached that allows reuse. I had no idea that such things even existed when I started down this road.
I’m not going to count the picture search in my world record attempt, because most blogs don’t have pictures, and a lot of them use pictures without checking the permissions. Sometimes I find a picture that’s perfect, but I can’t use it, and that can be frustrating, but I can’t cheat, because Sally always checks, and at the bottom of the text you’ll always see a list of accreditations for the pictures.
I don’t think I’ve ever repeated myself
The thing that does amaze me is how on earth I find things to write about week in and week out, without repeating myself. At least I don’t think I’ve ever repeated myself. I sometimes worry that I’ll empty my brain of words and memories and ideas and I’ll be like a planet that’s had all its resources depleted by an ever-more-rapacious population eager to plunder it without any thought for the future.
But that could never happen. Could it? What would happen then? Would I know? Would my memory just reset so that I start writing everything again, maybe in different mixed-up combinations? Would I be found some time later, slumped inertly over my dusty keyboard? I have no idea. Maybe it’s happened before. Maybe it happens all the time.
Everything gets sucked in and blown out again
Somebody once told me that time was speeding up. This was before 2012, when the world was supposed to end. They said that time speeds up gradually so we don’t notice it, until it becomes like a whirlpool and everything gets sucked in and blown out again, and the world just carries on. Everything is different, but we don’t know it. All I could think of was this – ‘If it’s all changed but we don’t know it, how could we know that we don’t know?’
Then 2012 came and went, and everything seems just the same, apart from the new barbarism that’s sweeping the world. People always say that civilisations never recognise the thing that’s going to destroy them until it’s too late. We watched the entire Lord of the Rings saga during the break, and I kept thinking that it was all about people getting too comfortable and not noticing or worrying about the important things any more, and those who missed out on the benefits of civilisation getting so angry that they just wanted to tear everything down.
Wordcount says that I’ve written 1036 words
And I wonder if that’s where we are at the moment, or it’s just another of those complications that happen occasionally, like brush fires which blow themselves out. But I don’t know.
What I do actually know is that it’s 4:39 and my Wordcount says that I’ve written 1,036 words. What are they? I have no idea. I’d better use Spellchecker and tidy it all up and find some pictures.
I wish you all a peaceful and prosperous 2015. Keep your eyes open and your money dry, and make sure you only take necessary risks. How do you know which risks are necessary? Ah! That’s for a future blog.
(Final wordcount – 1186 words. Blimey!)
If you have been, thank you for reading this.
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