MURGATROYD ON THE WHEEL Or One man in front of his screen ..

Murgatroyd sat at his computer, sighing and musing on the problem of writer’s block, which, with his over enthusiastic use of words, he called ‘cholesterol of the creative artery’. It didn’t solve anything, but it did make it sound as if one day someone would find a medical cure.  As he dwelt on this, he began to imagine how he could describe a writer suffering from ‘uncreative saturated fatty acids’. Perhaps it would pass the time and relieve the monotony. So, with this in mind, he poised his finger and began to compose.  “Fergie Lloyd”, he tapped out, “sat at his desk and reflected on the difficulty of getting started. He posed the question, “Where does the first breath of a writer’s craft come from? Whence comes the first breeze that catches the sails of his imagination?”  Murgatroyd quite liked what he had written, and he looked at it for some time, musing on the power of words, and admiring the mystery of captured meaning, until he recalled that musing does not get the job done. He prized himself, once more, out of his complacent reflection and continued to compose the following, -  “While Fergie was waiting for the first sign of a breeze to flutter the pennant of his creative powers, it occurred to him to suppose that he could write about a character who wrestled within his mind to find a headwind that would take him out of the creative doldrums. Fergie opened a new page and strove to compose the following words on the screen”, “Dougie Floyd”, he wrote, “ sat at his computer, ruminating on the barriers that rose up to obstruct an artist’s flow. He asked himself what these barriers could signify, and came up with nothing convincing. “Perhaps”, he reflected, “a writer’s mind rocks back and forth between his conscious and unconscious thoughts, during which time a period is needed to give a shape to them. Dougie savoured that thought”,wrote Fergie, “and held on to it, contemplating how he might re-shape this verbal jewel to make it sparkle even more.  “Ideas are like precious gems”, he said to himself. “They shine out of the untilled earth of our thoughts, and it is our duty to pick them up, cut them into a form that gathers light, so that they can be amplified and radiate to all who will receive them.” In a blinding flash, it came to him to illustrate how a writer struggled to discover the uncut jewel and cut and polish its many facets.  “I will create a character who personifies the struggle writers have to hone the rough hewn diamond into the finished jewel”, he said to himself. He raked the fertile ground of his imagination for the opening phrase, and glimpsing it peering out of his psyche’s terrain, and wrote the following:- “Murgatroyd sat at his computer, sighing and musing on the problem of writers’ block, which, with his over-enthusiastic use of words, he called “cholesterol of the creative artery” Dougie suddenly halted: “Haven’t I seen these words before? They don’t belong to me. It’s as if someone is invading my thoughts.”  “Funny you should say that”, interrupted Fergie, “because I’m not sure where my words are coming from, either.”  Dougie resented Fergie’s intrusion into his creative territory, and said, “You can’t enter my personal creative domain. You’re a figment of my imagination”.  Fergie asked Dougie what personal creative domain he was referring to.  “Are you suggesting I don’t have one?” challenged Dougie.  “I’ll go further. I wonder if you really exist”” retorted Fergie.  “Don’t be ridiculous..”, spluttered Dougie, “..how else do you explain what we are doing this minute, exchanging words?!”  “Maybe someone is planting words in our minds before we are even conscious of them”, said Fergie, with a mysterious smile on his lips.  It was then that Murgatroyd decided he had had enough and intervened to put a stop to the whole thing, by shouting at the screen, -  “I am not having figments of my imagination writing about me! That way I can get swallowed up by my own inventions.  He logged off, closed own, wiped his brow and was thankful they had all been erased. © Trevor Danby 2008