One A Day, Day 33: Freewriting #1

[As promised, here is an example of freewriting. I’ve given myself ten minutes to just write… or type in this case… and see what comes out. It could be anything – fact, fiction, prose, poetry (unlikely), nonsensical… err… sensical? Let’s see what happens. My time starts… NOW.]

It’s warm in here. A little too warm if I’m honest, but at least it’s nice and quiet. It’s good to have peace and quiet while you’re writing. I’m in my wife’s office, away from my usual blogging spot of in the lounge, because she’s watching the “live” episode of Eastenders that is on the TV at the moment. This despite never ever watching Eastenders when it is on TV in its normal form.

Eastenders is a depressing programme and I’ve never found myself wanting to watch it. I rarely get interested in soap operas at all, though I did find myself drawn to Neighbours a little bit during my time at university, though this was more out of interest in running jokes regarding Harold Bishop more than anything else. Harold Bishop even found his way into “The Adventures of Dave Thunder”, an RPG Maker 2000 project which I worked on off and on and which is now sadly lost to the mists of time and the failed hard drive on my old Sony Vaio desktop computer.

I can never type “Vaio” without first typing “Vaoi”. I don’t know why. It’s not as if “Vaoi” is any more a word than “Vaio” is. Stupid really. I should also stop going back and correcting the mistakes I make on here, which is perhaps missing the point of freewriting slightly, but by now it’s an automatic response. Anyone watching me write things is always surprised to see quite how quickly I type and how quickly and automatically I can go back and correct things.

Having nimble fingers is probably a result of two things – being able to play the piano and years of typing things in, both for pleasure and from copying things out of magazines. The old Atari 8-bit magazines used to have “type-in” listings in them which, when typed in and saved onto a diskette or cassette tape, allowed you to play the games which the authors had come up with for that issue. There were several authors of these games who were rather prolific, with one in particular sticking in my mind being Bill Halsall. I even went to the effort of putting all Mr Halsall’s games on one 5.25″ floppy disk and writing my own menu system for the disk. Yes, I was a supergeek even at that age.

Went out for a cup of coffee with a very good friend (and ex-workmate) earlier. It was a nice experience. We sat, we exchanged stories and ranted about the things that were pissing us off. There are a lot of things pissing us both off, and it’s always good to share those things with someone else. Neither one of us would want to be in the other’s position, I don’t think, but it’s always “nice” to share your pain with someone else. Perhaps “nice” isn’t the right word, but it’s – I don’t know. Cathartic? Is that the right word? Perhaps.

I haven’t stopped typing yet. This is good going. It’s 5:51 into my ten minutes. I wonder what other things will pop into my mind. I’m literally emptying my thoughts out onto the paper. Page. Web. Whatever. I’m literally emptying my thoughts out onto… this blog entry. Right. And I’m clearly stalling for time while I think of something else to talk about. I shouldn’t think. I should just write. What to write next. What next? Hmmm.

Let’s talk about the sound of my fingers typing on the keyboard. When slow typists type, you can hear each key being pressed – click, click, click. When a skilled (or at least fast) typist types, the individual click click clicks take on their own almost musical rhythm, the high-pitched clickity-clickity-click punctuated by the heavier thump of the thumbs on the spacebar. In fact, that’s one memory I have of home – I can always tell when my Dad is typing because the old keyboard he has attached to his computer (or had attached… I’m not sure if he still does) was one of those keyboards that clattered to a ridiculous degree while you were typing, and the thump of the spacebar would reverberate around the whole house, with shockwaves going down through the desk, through the floor.

Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but it’s a vivid memory. I find the sound of typing quite relaxing. It’s the sound of creativity. Sometimes. You hear the sound of typing in boring offices as well as amongst writers, and unfortunately boring offices tend not to be the places for creativity. I temped in a boring office for a while – a “loss adjusters” (a profession whose purpose still escapes me) and I had to type up the very boring men and women’s dictation on the subject of subsidence. That’s when your house is sinking into the ground and is supposedly the fault of a tree or something. Very dull.

I have ten seconds left, so with that, I think it’s time to sign off. Good night!