The Marathon tactic

Since I’m not disciplined, but only scrupulous enough to always do what I’m asked and deliver on time, I obviously need a strategy. My strategy is the Marathon tactic. In other words, I start working at time a, and don’t let go or stop thinking about it until I get to point b, ie when what I’m supposed to achieve is achieved. I only eat and sleep to the extent that it can make it possible or more efficient for me to get the job done.

Of course, I can never only work, mainly because I’ve got a job, secondly because I’ve got an injured boyfriend and my dad’s currently in town. But that’s the idea: you’ve got to run the distance and never give up. In an effort to motivate myself as well as check the progress of my work, I’ve created a Tumblr account, which in the long run might become the “non-rambling”, perhaps more personal and scattered counterpart of this blog. Its non-rambling quality is what prompted the title, Life as a Poem.

http://asiamorela.tumblr.com/

There’s this text I found on the Libertines’ forum, back in 2003 when they were a band. I liked it instantly, although it took me years to understand it. The gist of it, I think, is that while prose requires logical connections between everything, sometimes almost demanding that you just “fill in” between the two actually important things that happen, poetry allows you to skip that step and directly go to the heart of the matter. Impressions. Snapshots. An art form which defies common rationality to reach our emotional side unencumbered with logic.

Mind you, I’m personally a prose writer, not a poet. No matter how boggy or oppressing, I am attached to this “trickle-down” method, this “trail of bread crumbs” that lead you from A to B. I know. Even short stories… I’ve tried my hand at short stories, and I know that’s not what I want to write. I want to write novels. Novellas at the very least.

© Pete Doherty

What is your strategy to get the work done? Do you have a Tumblr? And if you write, what form of writing do you favour?

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