So I go for a walk.
I always go for a walk whenever I need to think something over.
I DO have a fertile imagination, that's not the problem. For instance, the other day in our writing group I invented a little blue man who can make himself invisible. To anyone but me.
I leave the houses behind me and enter the not so very dense woods in the North of Munich. I'm not wearing my glasses so I jump with shock when all of a sudden a blue streak comes zig-zagging from behind a truck which is parked on a small car park near the Autobahn, and a booming voice is heard:
'Aha, so it's you again. Can you see me? Can you see where I am right now?'
I don't believe it! This wee bloke I invented is running circles all around me, booming at me, taunting me and having a real good laugh at my expense.
'Jesus, you gave me a fright! Why are you here? I thought you'd gone back to your planet?'
'Aye fer sure,' booms he, 'but who say I got to stay there?'
'Ah well,' I try to taunt him back, 'mission not so well accomplished after all then? What was it again? To find a truly innocent soul so you could try and reduce the malignity level of your fine bretheren up there? For which reason I was left behind because I wasn't good enough company for you and the two old blokes you deigned to take with you?'
'I WAS watching you, you know, and I wondered if you'd like some help with your life. Direction of, so to say.'
'That's mighty kind of you,' I manage not to sound TOO condescending, 'but ...'
'Hah,' quoth he, 'you think it's a prank, right? It isn't, though. I'm trying to help you in your best interest. So let me give you this little piece of advice: In your book, don't just focus on your feelings and thoughts when writing about your experience with the clinic personnel. It's boring. People want stories. They want juicy bits, they want ACTION!'
As if on cue, the big lorry behind us starts his engine and comes rolling towards us so quickly, that we have to jump aside in order not to find ourselves flattened to the tarmac.
' You mean I ought to invent a bit of a clandestine love story that went on there and build everything around it? But what I was after was to criticise the German Health System, wasn't I?'
'Ah, you're such a nag-bag. Always complaining, always putting things into a negative light ... it's boring! No one wants to read your going on and on about how you couldn't sleep and you'd rather go outside instead of sitting in your room being tired.'
'Ah. But - what do you suggest? Other than trying to invent a love story?'
'Never mind your thoughts, we need something people can identify with. A common determinator. Write about FEAR, about LONELINESS, about the feeling of being a LOSER. Which can't be all that difficult, seeing as how you are ...'
To this day, the Munich hikers are wondering where the large blue smudge comes from that suddenly appeared in the middle of the parking space between the Autobahn and Oberschleißheim Flughafen.
They might wonder why someone dropped a bucket full of blue paint in the woods?
Little do they know it's all that's left of a preposterous blue dwarf who thought he could just come back to haunt and criticise me. After all, I'm not writing to please others. I write, therefore I am. And I definitely am NOT a loser!
