Whichever way you want to look at it, I'm dying...

Aren't we all? So is that such a terrible thing to say?

photograph taken in Montecatini Alto, Tuscany (2017)

I was sitting at the dining room table when I had my heart-related episode about ten months ago. I felt a little ‘woozy’, then nothing. A minute later I came round, sweating profusely — and totally unaware as to what had just happened. Oblivion for sixty seconds.

The non-medical things I think I’ve learned from the experience are that: a) we’re all heading in the same direction, so why be scared of it #1; b) when oblivion hits, you won’t know or care about anything anymore, so why be scared of it #2; c) the ‘how’ of your journey to oblivion may be the most unpredictable thing about it (okay, you can be a bit scared about that one..!); and finally, d) it’s what we do now/next that’s consequently the most important thing. [All this with apologies to those of you who believe there’s something else beyond death. I hope you’re right!]

“Control the controllable”; isn’t that what they say? I can do nothing about ‘a’ or ‘b’, or probably ‘c’ — though I will avoid hang-gliding, motorbike racing, deep-sea diving, rowing the Atlantic single-handed, climbing Everest… We could be putting this list together for some time!

The only thing within my power is ‘d’. And that has to be true for 99.9% of us. Surely.

In addition to all the normal stuff — how you live your life, how much you love your family, ensuring you leave your affairs in good order, how kind you are to strangers and dogs etc. — in my case the controllable must also include my writing life: what I write, when I write, who I write for, and so forth.

Maybe I fret more than I should about my writing, all to eager to dive headlong into the angst that accompanies the decision-making process as it relates to the next project, the next story, the next competition, the next post. But I also think that’s an entirely reasonable thing to do given the imperative implied by the context above — extreme though it may be.

Not everyone will have had that ‘insight’ yet; the very real sense of a ‘ticking clock’.

And let’s face it, when oblivion comes there will be no more words.

So what I do now/next is important to me. Having people read what I write is important too. Validation — in whatever form — is critical. You can easily argue that a ‘like’ or a ‘follow’ or a subscription or a comment carries more weight than you might imagine; certainly more import than a few simple clicks on a keyboard or mouse. And a sale is priceless — not because of the money, but because of what it represents…

Bill Shankly, who used to manage the Liverpool Football team (1959-74), said this:

Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.

He could easily have been talking about writing, couldn’t he?

You can talk about your work somehow ‘transcending’ death or about ‘leaving something behind’, but writing is actually all about the here-and-now, feeding the beast of your addiction, trying to do the best you can, maximise what talent (little or otherwise) you may have. The act of writing satisfies the practical aspects of this compulsion — and surely the what feeds its fulfilment i.e. if you are a superb poet but spend your time writing nothing but prose, is that maximising talent? You’ll have a view.

the most heinous sin is, of course, not writing at all…

I confess that ‘Writing until the light goes out’ felt like nothing more than a ‘snappy’ title for this blog when I started it two years ago. I have a feeling the phrase may have been kicking around in my head a while before then. But now, given the revised context against which my writing is being crafted, that strap-line feels much more profound, pertinent, accurate.

And now, back to the angst…

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