PREMISE

In the spirit of another Superman lover, this is a blog about nothing.

That believes in nothing.

Certainly not itself.

So, it’s nothing even if it’s something.

Something for being nothing?

ENTITLEMENT

Why is it called suspicions and superstitions?

Suspicions are placeholders for inquiries.

Superstitions for certainties.

Arise where their absence is felt most.

I aim to raise suspicions about superstitions.

Yours?

My own mostly.

Though I’m unable to determine whether my own suspicions are superstitions.

My superstitions sublimated suspicions.

WHO EVER ANYWHERE?

Call me Richard Morley.

This is not my name.

Why the nom de plume?

For the same reason Superman has a nom de voyage.

(Two, really.)

Because I’m a strange visitor from another planet?

Work for a great metropolitan newspaper?

Get a kick out of telling one set of people I’m this and another that?

No.

Because I fear my actions will imperil those I love.

Their reputations, at least.

Embarrass them.

And myself.

If this fails –

When it does –

I’ll have to return to the action-packed world of programming.

Evidence of my belieflessness may be held against me.

AGE BEFORE SANITY

Who begins a career at this age?

No one.

So, on top of everything else, I fear ridicule.

Just try, my wife says. You never know.

No, I know.

Nevertheless, I will.

Why?

Choice.

Lack of same.

POSTS FROM THE EDGE

What are my posts?

Essays in the original sense of the word.

Montaigne’s sense.

(But, of course, not in the least man-mountain Michel-like.)

From the French essayer –

To try or attempt.

Each was a trial to write.

But not, I hope, to read.

Or only as much such as paintings.

Turner’s seascapes, say.

The same subject from different angles.

Or Monet’s Rouen cathedral series.

The same object at different times of day.

Nothing like their paintings, of course.

Great paintings, that is.

Not good paintings even.

But like them in being – not being – the last word on anything.

Just expressions of something.

Impressions.

Rather than worldviews.

Mere framings.

Ways of seeing.

And, like daubs, if this one fails, doesn’t fulfil, feel free to move on to the next.

Or off into another gallery.

WHY I AM NOT WISE

I’ve been writing for 40 years.

And, boy, am I tired.

In between choring about the parental home, caddying, cinema ushering, video-store managing, administrative assisting, programming –

Husbanding, fathering, grandfathering –

I’ve turned a pen towards everything.

Poetry, plays, short stories, novels –

You name it, I’ve failed at it.

Fallen over it.

Got up.

Tried again.

Failed again.

Better?

Differently.

So, I’m a heroic failure at least?

In this one regard glorious?

Not really.

I failed at failure too.

Proved to be nil-ettante, not dilettante.

MADNESS IN MY METHOD

My not-working method?

Learn from an unpro:

First comes research.

Borrow every book for dummies and dopes.

Study all exemplars cited.

(If you’ve not done so already.)

Pick up precisely what you need to know to get everything wrong.

Force a fatuous first draft.

Put everything into it.

Take everything out of it.

Rewrite and dewrite it endlessly.

Twist fingers, toes –

Then, dispatch the manuscript to agents/publishers/producers.

Formerly as hard-copy, never to be copied, consecutively, after each is slushpiled.

Latterly, electronically, hundreds at a click, concurrently.

The result?

Indistinguishable.

But now rejection comes quickly.

Exhausted, revert to doing what you’re paid to do.

Don’t want to do.

For – oh – a year or two.

Espy a glimmer through a gap.

Experience another hope.

Crawl towards it.

Worm through it.

Lean into that rock.

Start up the hill.

Why have I succumbed again and again?

I’m a sucker for a sob story.

My own especially.

Self-romantic.

Always knowingly sold a bill of bads.

Sell myself on same.

Sell myself out, the rat.

Reading that poetry offered full creative freedom, I indentured myself to it.

Got nowhere.

Radio drama seemed a softer option, kinder, wider.

The BBC produced 300 plus plays a year.

And I’d listened since I was a pipsqueak.

But it proved not to be for me.

Or me for it.

Then the road to unserfdom lay in screenwriting.

I sent my screenplays to Hollywood studios unsolicited.

As you’re not supposed to do.

(Outsiders knew no better then.)

Later, I learned the right way to go about it.

Went about it.

Vive La No Difference!

Overhearing that a writer will always find a home for a novel, I dedicated five years to disproving the claim.

‘It’s just not the way the market’s going right now,’ a publisher told me.

My reaction?

There’s a scene in The Godfather where Michael Corleone says something like:

‘Don’t tell me that because it insults my intelligence, and makes me very angry.’

I didn’t have the publisher whacked.

But I did suggest he enter his local bookshop –

Glance over the thirty thousand volumes staged by genre, age group, size –

And tell me there’s a market.

WHY I HAVEN’T WRITTEN EXCELLENT BOOKS

The reason for my remarkable failure?

Lack of talent.

Lack of drive.

Lack of self-belief.

Lack of self-belief due to lack of talent.

Lack of drive due to lack of talent.

Lack of talent due to lack of self-belief…

Ad lib the matrix to fade.

In addition, I’m no one.

From nowhere.

Know nobody.

Anybody who knows anybody.

Still, I am a writer.

Just not a published one.

A paid one.

A blockhead?

You’re leaning against an open trap-door after the horse has bolted pushing the cart before it.

I’d own every accusation you can level.

Other than I haven’t put in the time.

I’m not read but, Lord knows, I’ve written.

And it takes as much effort to write an unpublished as a published book.

More probably, because an unpublished one is never finished.

So, blockbusterers probably spend less time penning million sellers than I do my non-starters.

But at least I’m unique?

Not a bit of it.

I can’t claim that even.

I’m in the majority.

Billions write.

Thousands get published.

Hundreds taste success, a soupçon.

One in a generation is rewarded with enough to retire on.

WHY I AM NOT CLEVER

The most likely reason is that I simply can’t hack it.

Willing and wanting doesn’t always lead to mastering and practising.

After all, there are other things I’d like to do that must remain forever above me.

I’d love to be able to fly, say.

(If granted invulnerability also, of course.)

But no amount of wishing or trying is going to shuster that up either.

Put simply, I don’t work.

Rather, I work –

Don’t get paid for it –

But I – me – this – it doesn’t work.

Why?

Thomas Mann is alleged to have said:

‘A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.’

For me it’s impossible.

Or nearly, clearly.

A greetings card, reply to an e-mail, prescription request – all demand twenty passes.

More.

So, where others claim to get by on a couple of drafts and a polish –

Claim?

First off, it’s hard to accept that some are capable of doing what’s impossible for one.

To believe that any writer would be comfortable doing as much.

Not doing as much.

And even the greatest artists dissemble, don’t they?

Undermine any suggestion that they’re other than self-generated.

(Michelangelo denied he served an apprenticeship in the Ghirlandaio brothers’ workshop.

Insisted he emerged on the art scene fully-formed.

Simultaneously vestal and worldly-wise.)

Then, maybe there’s a way to reconcile the claims of published and un.

I used to believe that a book was a consequence of a superior talent penning one or two drafts –

An editor checking the manuscript for typos –

And a printer delivering the result to the world.

However, recently it’s emerged that even the greatest of them is flagged into pit-stop after pit-stop –

By mechanics rude and respectful –

To receive the tinkering necessary to horsepower them to the finish line.

That every name on an acknowledgements page has reviewed the rest of the manuscript at least once.

Harper Lee’s editor Tay Hohoff turned Go Set A Watchman over a span of two years till it hatched as To Kill A Mockingbird.

If Raymond Carver’s body had received as many slashes as editor Gordon Lish dealt his shorts no surgeon on earth could have done a thing for him.

The presenter of the New Yorker fiction podcast rarely preludes a reading without betraying how much supervised revision transported script to news-stand.

So, perhaps what writers mean when they claim to need no more than two passes and a polish is that their work is done at this point.

Then their editor, publisher, reader, publicist, friends and family take over.

Why don’t I draw comfort from the realisation that my scratchings have never been assessed unliked with liked?

Because it reforms every brusque rejection into a comprehensive indictment.

Not only affirming that my work wasn’t satisfactory as was –

But that were I to enjoy the assistance every professional receives –

It wouldn’t pass muster still.

Was not only entirely without merit, but potential.

Or that’s what I suspect.

I’ve never sought clarification.

Fearing confirmation.

But I hope professionals get a lot of help.

Or I’m beyond hope.

WHY I AM NOT A DESTINY

I hate writing.

Have always hated it.

But feel obliged to do it.

That is:

Jot down ideas – flat, exanimate – as they arise.

Titify a few into something rounder, pneumatic.

Build up.

Tear down.

Keyboard.

Screen.

Print black.

Ink red.

Keyboard.

Screen.

Print black.

Ink red.

Repeat till every wound is staunched.

The tendency has ruined my life.

Had I stuck to programming, I’d be better off.

Financially, certainly.

And mentally, probably.

I wouldn’t wake at the very witching time most nights.

Bladder and Biro in need of draining.

The odd thing is I’ve no pretensions about what emerges.

Don’t have a mission.

Just an urge to purge the crap filling my mind.

Though I know it’s of no more importance than the counterpart that occasionally bloats my bowels.

It seems to be my fate to do so.

As such, I suppose I ought to welcome it.

Say yay! to it.

Love it even.

But amor fati is amour fou.

A lover who uses and abuses.

Une Belle Dame to die for.

Given all this, is it any wonder I’ve come to expect rejection?

Respect rejection?

Welcome it?

Engage in it even?

(The majority of my efforts remain undispatched.

Divine wind at my back, I blew them up before they could be shot down.)

Thus, the prospect of releasing my work via this blog –

A forum I built, fund, and so cannot – in all conscience – be canned by –

Filled me with trepidation.

Over what now?

That there’s something compromising about sending anything into the world.

Formerly, I hoped that doing so might vindicate my unwarranted self-belief.

Rather, in this single area of my life, lack of belieflessness.

Now I worry that public attention – however modest – will confirm the opinion of the hundreds of agents, publishers and producers who’ve dismissed my efforts.

Confirm I’m more Thersites than Achilles.

See, if you do nothing, no one can rate you.

If you do anything, it better be something because it’ll be regarded as your everything.

All you were capable of doing.

RETICENCE RE. RELUCTANCE

My philosophising is to my heroes’ art what a dog chasing a tennis ball is to Ronaldo closing in on a Nike Flight.

We’re all playing the same game.

A game.

So, a feint family resemblance is observable.

But I’m reluctant to call myself a philosopher.

I’ve been reading it for forty-plus years.

Writing about it, too.

Around it.

But I’m not a professional.

Didn’t study it formally.

Doubt my understanding of what I’ve read entirely.

Hesitate to dub what comes out of me philosophy.

Why?

It sounds presumptuous.

Why this should be, I don’t know.

Knock a golf ball about a public course of a weekend and no one will conclude you’ve PGA pretensions.

But dare mention that you write what – for want of a better term – might be dubbed philosophy –

Read it merely –

And you’re a shoo-in for Pseuds Corner.

Though I’ve never claimed to be a capable thinker.

Even mediocre.

Only, that I am one in the sense that I’m a writer.

Though I’ve had nothing published.

But do write.

A naive philosopher might be nearer the mark.

As Henri Rousseau was a Naïve painter.

No, that’s going too far, too.

As much failed philosopher as failed writer, then?

That doesn’t entirely repel.

WHAT ARE THESE BLOGS?

These articles of faithlessness are spun out of observations that occurred to me.

That I’ve noticed.

Drew notice to themselves rather.

(I considered calling this site:

Noticings.

But feared it sounded like Borat’s next venture.)

The musings, losings, loosings are inspired by ideas jotted down over four decades.

That I avoided processing for that amount of time, progressing.

And now that I am compelled to do something with them…

I’ve been on a journey that was destined to end in me having to cross a rope-bridge strung over a chasm.

Macheting botany, I felt confident.

Was content to be occupied.

But now I hear fast water echoing off rock…

RELATION TO FICTION

These noticings don’t seem to belong in my fiction.

But are fictions.

Ones I can’t dramatise.

Why?

I doubt them.

Their provenance.

The original epiphanies were jotted down as and when they occurred to me.

No –

It makes as much sense to say that I occurred to them –

More sense to say that –

Than that they occurred to me.

They were set down as much to delete them from my consciousness as prepare them for publication.

Transfer them from my random access memory to a floppy jotter, or hard-backed diary.

Unable to conceive of a way to make any sort of living from them, I couldn’t justify spending time converting any from multivariate note to definite article.

Why am I doing so now?

THIS IS NOTHING BECAUSE NOT EVERYTHING

Contemplating this blog I was paralysed with fear.

On account of what?

To say something about anything is to say nothing about everything.

To be minimalist to the point of monism.

Above everything, then, I fear doing anything.

Something rather than everything.

My first article threatened to scupper the entire enterprise.

No wonder I couldn’t let it go.

There always seemed to be something that demanded it be added to it.

Wagner’s tetralogy –

Ring! Ring!

He’d intended to produce one opera.

About Siegfried’s death.

Just that, on its tod.

But this seemed to necessitate explaining how the hero came to be.

Two operas then.

And Siegfried’s parents?

Twenty-seven years later, Bayreuth showcased three operas and a preliminary evening.

I feared remaining unsatisfied till I’d incorporated every non-musical note I’d ever transcribed.

MODEST EXPECTATIONS PIP! PIP!

What do I expect to gain from this exercise?

Have these indefinite articles held against me.

Trashed carthaginianly.

Or, at best-worst, ignored.

So, why submit them for review?

I have to.

Why?

(Now?

Yes!)

Okay, here goes –

EVERY BLAG DEMANDS A BLOG

Resolving to self-publish after four decades of being unpublished, I learned that an unknown writer must have a constituency before going it alone.

How to attract one?

Give something away.

What do I –

A man who has nothing –

Is nothing –

Have to give away?

Perhaps if I punched-up that application I built for my own use a quarter of a century ago?

Booted it up to Kickstarter as a means to promote my fiction?

Conscripted a band of brothers and sisters off it?

Resolved, the man with a plan yossarianed the same catch:

To launch a successful crowdfunding campaign requires you to have drawn a crowd already.

And a crowd before that?

From down here, it’s crowds all the way up.

I doubt I’ll attract one.

People do.

And I am – taken all in all – a person.

So, it’s possible, in principle.

But if I were a betting man…

WHY NOT ME?

My disposition.

I don’t have the correct attitude.

I’m a sceptic.

Cynic sometimes.

Not least towards myself.

Others take on all-comers, conquer, crush, consecrate.

Though I struggle to avoid it, the urge to rationalise, pacify, accommodate always overcomes and overwhelms me.

If I might be returned to the original position, and given the choice, another chance, I wouldn’t chose this.

I’d be a Spielberg.

Positive, dynamic, successful.

And, on top of everything else, authentic.

You know that if the crowds dispersed, the backers withdrew, he’d still be at it, always.

8MM film, his phone alone – he’d do it somehow.

Have to.

For himself.

Unfortunately, I’m not him.

What am I then?

Like Howard Moon, I have a generic face.

So, people often tell me that I look like someone else.

(Oddly, never the same someone else the last person told me I was the spit of.)

I never know what to say.

Rather, I know what to say –

What the fuck am I supposed to do with that? –

But never say it.

Instead, I mutter something along the lines of:

I didn’t buy it –

And gesture to my physog –

I inherited it.

And it’s the same with my persona.

Given choice, who would settle on this?

For this?

Purchase it?

It’s something you’re left.

That’s been left out.

Passed down in a will.

Yes, my will-lessness was a bequest.