Burning the midnight oil
It’s 21.30 [last night, at time of posting - ed], dark outside like only the African night can be, and raining as if Cape Town were God’s personal window box and today was watering day. I wouldn’t be surprised if I woke up tomorrow with my slippers bobbing past my bed and the mountain in my back garden having turned into an island. Not that it will change anything. Decked out in scuba gear or not, tomorrow I’m going to press.
I don’t know whether to laugh, or to faint, or do both, although it might be hard to achieve both to satisfaction simultaneously. So I’ll just keep typing. Yesterday, I worked. I worked until late at night. Today, I’ve worked. And panicked. And now I’m working some more. Tomorrow night there will be no more ‘more’. There will either be a magazine. Or there will not.
I’m meant to be writing the editorial. I hate editorials. There’s a reason. You may not think it from the way I’m going on here, but I’m actually pretty lazy. I don’t like using my whole brain if I can get away with using half.
News articles, now, they are like IKEA furniture. You collect the pieces, and with a little bit of luck and the odd forceful nudge if there’s a particularly stubborn joint, hey presto, a wardrobe! You can write news stories in any state of mind – death in the family, team sucks at the world cup (yeah, what’s up with you Ibrahimovic, the ball goes IN the net!), your favourite jumper has just been eaten by your cat – it’s all right, you’ll still get there.
Editorials are a bit like that, except where the flatpack box was before there is now a lump of wood and an axe. If you’re lucky, the nails will be included and you won’t have to smelt your own.
With editorials, you have to start someplace and, using your own sorry-ass mind, end up somewhere that makes sense. And not just in cloud cuckoo land where you’ve just spent the past six hours writing an editorial.
Editorials are prime targets for plagiarism. In fact, a successful Guardian reporter once told me that editorials were the easiest thing in the world. “You just talk to someone sensible, and then you go back and write that opinion as your own.”
My problem is that I was blessed and cursed with a preternatural ability to see both sides of an argument. Nice trait, you might say. I guess, if you work at the UN. But you try to argue a point in text when the half of your brain that is not currently ruling your fingers is busy constructing a pretty convincing counter-argument.
Now, for fear of sounding a drama queen - I’m still doing ok. Nothing has happened since the last post to really bugger up the timeline for tomorrow. It’s just that today vanished in a puff of mis-sent emails and layout issues. And tomorrow, well, tomorrow just can’t. That Tema woman can’t get back to me and say she’s not happy with the second way I’ve edited her comment piece. The interview with Monsieur Siegler at the European Commission can’t not happen at 11.30. The tape on which I’ll record said interview (a veteran in the game as I can’t [read haven’t bothered to] find a shop that sells the type of tape I need) can’t pick that particular time to kick the bucket.
Nor can there be a problem with the cover story, or with the funny (well as funny as Research Africa goes) bits on the back page, or – god forbid – with the software I’m working on. And email CAN’T pick tomorrow to conk out. It can’t, it can’t, it can’t! And tonight I can’t go to bed. No matter how much I’d like to.
At this point it’s fear, pure fear, that’s keeping me awake and typing. The fear of that place tomorrow night, which know I won’t find myself in – but still, that place where I have to admit that I just wasn’t up to the challenge.
But that won’t happen. I’ll climb the mountain, as usual, because there’s no going round, and no going back down. That’s the thing. If you’re lazy but ambitious like me, you need to make sure you’re high enough when you get to this point that you just keep going.
And, of course, I know how high I will feel after it’s all over. It’s like that guy said: - Why do you keep hitting yourself with that hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop.
I don’t know whether to laugh, or to faint, or do both, although it might be hard to achieve both to satisfaction simultaneously. So I’ll just keep typing. Yesterday, I worked. I worked until late at night. Today, I’ve worked. And panicked. And now I’m working some more. Tomorrow night there will be no more ‘more’. There will either be a magazine. Or there will not.
I’m meant to be writing the editorial. I hate editorials. There’s a reason. You may not think it from the way I’m going on here, but I’m actually pretty lazy. I don’t like using my whole brain if I can get away with using half.
News articles, now, they are like IKEA furniture. You collect the pieces, and with a little bit of luck and the odd forceful nudge if there’s a particularly stubborn joint, hey presto, a wardrobe! You can write news stories in any state of mind – death in the family, team sucks at the world cup (yeah, what’s up with you Ibrahimovic, the ball goes IN the net!), your favourite jumper has just been eaten by your cat – it’s all right, you’ll still get there.
Editorials are a bit like that, except where the flatpack box was before there is now a lump of wood and an axe. If you’re lucky, the nails will be included and you won’t have to smelt your own.
With editorials, you have to start someplace and, using your own sorry-ass mind, end up somewhere that makes sense. And not just in cloud cuckoo land where you’ve just spent the past six hours writing an editorial.
Editorials are prime targets for plagiarism. In fact, a successful Guardian reporter once told me that editorials were the easiest thing in the world. “You just talk to someone sensible, and then you go back and write that opinion as your own.”
My problem is that I was blessed and cursed with a preternatural ability to see both sides of an argument. Nice trait, you might say. I guess, if you work at the UN. But you try to argue a point in text when the half of your brain that is not currently ruling your fingers is busy constructing a pretty convincing counter-argument.
Now, for fear of sounding a drama queen - I’m still doing ok. Nothing has happened since the last post to really bugger up the timeline for tomorrow. It’s just that today vanished in a puff of mis-sent emails and layout issues. And tomorrow, well, tomorrow just can’t. That Tema woman can’t get back to me and say she’s not happy with the second way I’ve edited her comment piece. The interview with Monsieur Siegler at the European Commission can’t not happen at 11.30. The tape on which I’ll record said interview (a veteran in the game as I can’t [read haven’t bothered to] find a shop that sells the type of tape I need) can’t pick that particular time to kick the bucket.
Nor can there be a problem with the cover story, or with the funny (well as funny as Research Africa goes) bits on the back page, or – god forbid – with the software I’m working on. And email CAN’T pick tomorrow to conk out. It can’t, it can’t, it can’t! And tonight I can’t go to bed. No matter how much I’d like to.
At this point it’s fear, pure fear, that’s keeping me awake and typing. The fear of that place tomorrow night, which know I won’t find myself in – but still, that place where I have to admit that I just wasn’t up to the challenge.
But that won’t happen. I’ll climb the mountain, as usual, because there’s no going round, and no going back down. That’s the thing. If you’re lazy but ambitious like me, you need to make sure you’re high enough when you get to this point that you just keep going.
And, of course, I know how high I will feel after it’s all over. It’s like that guy said: - Why do you keep hitting yourself with that hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop.
posted by Linda at 08:31
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