Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
This Christmas, my partner, Leslie, gifted me the ultimate expression of love in the form of a firm and not-very-subtle kick up the arse. It was wrapped beautifully, with ribbons and flourishes and unusual attention to detail that disguised the firm, uncompromising message it contained inside. It appeared the time for gentle encouragement and soothing support of my writing aspirations was about to be over quicker than I could say ‘Deck the Halls’. He’d brought in the big guns to re-educate this recalcitrant writer – inside was a gift voucher to attend Catherine Deveny’s acclaimed Gunnas Writing Masterclass. I simultaneously loved and hated him so much in that moment that I’ve no idea what kind of expression crossed my face when I realised what he’d done, and what I’d have to do now.
It seemed Santa’s elves had been watching me these past few months and they were, quite frankly, fucking sick of what they saw – a crabby unfulfilled, hypocritical sycophant who built her small child’s dreams by day (‘you can do anything you set your mind to, you just have to try!’) while systemically destroying her own by night (‘don’t try anything because you will FAIL so it is POINTLESS’)
“This is too much – you’ve spent too much,” I started.
“Please. It’s all I want”.
“It’s all you want?”
“For the love of that sweet baby Jesus lying in his manger, I don’t want any other gift. All I want for Christmas is for you to stop torturing yourself and just fucking write!”
I knew this wasn’t entirely true. What he really wanted was a copy of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and seven expectation-free days to play it, but he’d called my bluff and invested $290 doing it. I had to put out or shut up. He’d stitched me up with love, support and financial obligation. ‘God I love this clever, scheming bastard,” I thought. “He’s really played me this time and there’s only one way I’m going to get off the hook.”
Attending the master class would be just the first step in Dev’s patented two-step program to actually getting ‘off the hook’, of course – the second being the very small fact that you had to actually just write some stuff. This, obviously, should not have been real news to me, but still, the delivery of this magic bullet, when it inevitably comes, is like a miraculous revelation every single time! This time I would write that shit down with my good fountain pen in my best notebook as unassailable fact to slap myself in the face as often as necessary.
There are a thousand reasons I do not or cannot write, even when it is the thing I want most in the world to have done. Some of them are valid, but none hold up when subjected to any real kind of outside scrutiny – by best friends, professional mentors or probing therapists. There are a million holes letting the air out of all of my excuses and they’re all so obvious I’m sure there are astronauts in space rolling their eyes at my predictability as they look down upon me.