Preemptive Retaliation

Update on my fingers: more of them hurt now, but they’re also getting better. None of them are in danger of weeping blood, no matter how metaphorically apt that may be.

What happened: I painted my fence. I used Hammerite, which is less like a paint and more like a thick molasses. When a quick job inadvertently lasted several hours, I came indoors with a sore back, a spent paint can, and the brush that helped me achieve both. When washing the brush I made the error of using water instead of white spirits, and the paint covered my hands and arms like some poor taste body paint. Or like Venom from Spiderman, dependent on what produces the funnier image for you. What was less funny was scrubbing my hands raw with a nail brush for an hour afterwards, and even less funny is the myriad of skin problems that have arisen from that thanks to my slightly wonky genetics. For a month now I have been wearing plastics over my fingers, moisturising every opportunity, and, when I can, ruining it all by typing too much.

I’ve set myself a target of at least three hundred words a day or one page from my notebook. The notebook is arguably the easier task to fulfill, but I’ve typed more words than written in the past three weeks. And when I eventually write these three hundred words I tend to write more, since I can’t finish in the middle of a thought or anything. So I’ve made my way through four chapters at a steady pace and I am feeling quite happy with that. I know it’s not NaNo levels, but it’s a rhythm that I can easy type to. I could go faster, I suppose, but I’m not going to. I’m in no hurry.

I suppose one of the things that fatherhood has taught me is… not patience, but something along those lines. Maybe a sense of inevitability? When I was in my twenties I was gripped with a desperate anxiety. I need to get things done, I need to get going, I need to write write write, because I was running out of time to be an author. Or should I say a cool author? Everyone else was producing content, everyone else was being creative. I needed to do the same. I needed to write short stories, to write novels. I needed them out there.

Now it’s different. I’m in my thirties. My youthful writerly phase has passed. Every day is another step to the average published author age. Every day I am less unique, less genius, less special. And that’s ok. I’m still doing it at least, and I am doing it at an unrushed pace, at a comfortable canter. Three hundred words a day. It’s not a lot, it’s often not the end result, but it’s enough.