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A Writer’s Diary by Toby Litt

On Not Writing

Isn’t it always better to write something rather than nothing?

JAN 7 2024

This morning I thought for some time about not writing.

Initially, it was just about spending the cold sunny hour reading instead of working on the novel. (Which is what I ended up doing.) But soon it turned into another question, broader, scarier.

Maybe I should take Sunday off every week, rather than seeing it as a chance to do rather more writing than I get done on the average Wednesday?

Or maybe, I should stop writing for a month or a year, because — in the longest run — that might be the best thing I could do to get better as a writer?

One of the books I’ve been reading recently (after seeing the great show at Tate Modern) is Philip Guston’s I Paint What I Want To See.

In conversation with the American poet Clark Coolidge, Guston says:

..art is the frustration of the desire not to make art, you know?

Although I agree with this, it’s not a statement I empathise with. My desire, it’s long been clear, is to make art of some sort all the bloody time. Just scribble some notes. Half a page.

Sundays. Christmas Days. Hospital waiting rooms.

With other forms of learning, there’s the chance for the artist to stand back and judge their effect. To compare one period with another.

I got a lot from copying Moby Dick by hand, say. It was a better use of my time than just reading it, or writing another short story. Or at least, that’s how it feels.

With not writing, as a way of productively lying fallow, of allowing deeply buried objects to surface, you’re never going to be sure.

Couldn’t you have just kept going? Isn’t it always better to write something rather than nothing?

Writers are said to be ‘blocked’, as if their blockage was what blues singer Robert Johnson called ‘stones in my passway’ — a painful obstruction, either medical or in the road they hoped to drive.

The ideal, it seems, is to be regular and free flowing.

A few years ago, I’ve forgotten where, I read someone talking about making art. They gave this advice, Don’t treat yourself like a factory.

Yes, I thought, but also, Don’t treat yourself like a museum.

I spent the morning reading, but then I wrote this, and now I’m going to have a very quick look at the novel.

I’ll try not writing another time.

Or maybe I won’t. Too scary.

testing

Reading writers drafts

daybreakwriters:

Age

By Leon Wing

I

What bother my totter

My wandering about

The places that are my mind.

Am I fearful of the devil playing

For some godawful windup toy? Or boy?

I sit myself into the waters

That used to be my tea, spilled.

Like

daybreakwriters:

Ah Kow angled his neck and stretched the skin taut, and a vein like a hidden worm throbbed, and he felt the rough flicking of tongue, then a pricking, more fervid than last night, and his body tensed as something sunk in, and the pain lasted moments, and he suffered a cocktail of pain and pleasure, a mix of his and the thing’s blood surging and receding inside him, like waves breaking over seamen.

From ‘Kwailo’, by Leon Wing

Hi

“I hope that the shield, the mask, the gloves, the protection, all that is enough.”

This line is from ‘Battersea Park’ by Philip Hensher.

There are several elements. You can count how many ‘shields’; same goes for ‘mask’ and ‘glove’. When it comes to ‘protection’, you’d be hard pressed to count ‘protection’ in this way: ‘one protection’, ‘two protections’.

If one element among many is uncountable, you cannot write ‘all those’. You take the singular ‘that’.

“I hope that the shield, the mask, the gloves, the protection, all that is enough.”

This line is from ‘Battersea Park’ by Philip Hensher.

There are several elements. You can count how many ‘shields’; same goes for ‘mask’ and ‘glove’. When it comes to ‘protection’, you’d be hard pressed to count ‘protection’ in this way: ‘one protection’, ‘two protections’.

If one element among many is uncountable, you cannot write ‘all those’. You take the singular ‘that’.

Ah Chun parked his lorry in a space behind the building. He usually feels the need for one - a good time, not a space or a building - after a delivery involving a long haul outside the capital. Probably the boredom with the lengthy to and fro and the heat of the day. The guard stops him, smirks, permits him to enter, when he mentions the flat number he is visiting. He climbs two floors up in the lift. There is no need even to knock, the door opens as soon as he reaches the flat. He looks about for a camera. He gawps at the woman in a red dress. A very tight dress, wrapped around her body, like a rubber suit, stretching over her - thankfully- huge breasts; making her mount above the hem of the dress protrude, well, he thinks - looking down for a moment - rather oddly. Like she hasn’t put in her female stick thing in properly.

As whores go, she is not much different from the others Chun visits. He found her not from any recommendations from friends, acquaintances, or customers needing hauling household stuff to new homes, or clients hiring him to haul merchandise. It was after his lunch time, when he returned from a long haul. Walking back to his lorry, he saw the usual phone numbers stenciled onto some walls of a abandoned shophouse. He was drawn to one he didn’t remember having seen before. He called it and a female voice answered, “Tuala, your lady for a good time.” Surprisingly, in English, and he couldn’t place the accent, there was none. Not Chinese, not Malay, nor Indian.

Now, he stands, unwashed, and he knows, smelly, because he can sniff his own stink, assessing Tuala. Well, she doesn’t look anything like these races, in the flesh (he nearly laughs at this pun). Not matsalleh, either, though the nose is not flat, the eyes round but not white man kind. He guesses she is, everything?

The woman doesn’t return his stare, but there is a beginning of a smile, a condescending one, he feels, as if his dusty clothes and his smell are all part and parcel of a john. He thinks, she won’t expect her john to clean himself up first, course not. The whores he frequents never require it, so why should this one?

As he steps over her threshold he wrinkles his nose at the rich scent of incense. But he cannot see fumes or smoke, and can’t find any joss sticks burning. In anticipation of a new john, she must have sprayed some cheap overpowering perfume from a night market stall making homemade perfumes. He has a beginning of a cough but he suppresses it, pretending to clear his throat.

Ah Chun narrows his eyes, taking in the color about her: no shoes, the toenails red, like the dress, the hair fiery, the makeup, before she turned around, he remembers, is reddish, the eyeliner, the lips. He walks behind her, his cock jumping hard under his pants. He leers, licks his lips, can’t wait for things to start rolling. He checks out her buttocks. Meh, he thinks, they’re OK. If they are round and bouncy, he wouldn’t help reaching down and grabbing a hold. He likes slapping the flesh and feeling the jiggle.

She stops beside a table. It is bare, nothing on it. She looks over her shoulder at it. He doesn’t get what she wants him to do. Face back to the front, hand up in the air, she rubs the forefinger over the thumb, sighs. He hears, “200 dollar”. Understanding now, he takes out the amount in ringgit and places the notes on the table.

The living room is lit from a fluorescent tube on the ceiling, giving things inside a glaring contrast. Nochairs around the table, the room is barely furnished, except for a sofa, and it looks new and seldom sat on. He can see some of the usual items in the kitchen. He recognizes IKEA, he has hauled similar stuff to places. He follows her past these furniture. She opens the door to an enjoining room. She turns on the light. She goes and sits on a bed. It is neat, looks clean, with a red duvet, and a few large pillows leaning on the headboard.

She leans back with her palms on the bedspread. She doesn’t say anything, sighs, looks up the ceiling and then at him, with a squint, as if she can’t see - the room is barely lit, as it is - and has to focus. She sits up, signs with her hand, points to his crotch, wiggles a finger up and down. So she wants him to divest first. He is not used to this, it’s usually the whores who remove their clothing first, those women he pays to fuck.

He tears at the shirt buttons and pulls down the zip, leaves them ruched on the floor, his shirt, pants, and underwear (he locked his phone back in the lorry; no calls when he’s having pleasure). His cock stands up, harder, feels the breeze from a revolving fan. He puts his hands on his hips and looks down at her, grins, no need to say, Go ahead, suck it. He closes his eyes, feels her touch him. He shudders and feels his cock jump from the shock of a finger moving up and down it. The finger stops and dabs at the tip, wet with anticipation. He opens his eyes, see her knuckles, and her head bobbing up and down. He can’t see her lips but he can feel her tongue sliding up and down, all over. He has a sensation of a snake wrapping around him.

He holds the sides of her head, above the ears, pushes her down to take in more of him. He feels the back of her throat. Then he pushes her head and his cock pops of her mouth, with a small sound, like something unplugged. He pushes and pulls, like this, till he feels himself melt.

He remembers he has paid good money for a good time. He doesn’t want to waste it and stop short his pleasure so soon. He pushes the woman off his cock. She still has her dress on. He gestures at her to undress. It takes merely a moment for her to reach behind, unzip, and wriggle out of the garment. But he loses a few moments as she lifts the dress from the floor and folds it neatly, tamps down the folds, places it, slowly, on the dresser table. She comes back and holds his hips.

He doesn’t want to continue this sucking, he wants to penetrate. He pushes her and she falls onto the bed. Her legs lie over the edge and he hovers over her. He nudges towards the bed and holds his hands behind her knees. He pushes her up to the middle of the bed. He climbs in. He lifts her legs up, shuffles in, his cock bouncing.

He watches her face as he pushes his cock between her legs. He brings her legs over his shoulders. He pushes and enters. He goes in more and pulls out and does it again, slowly, rocking her. He watches her indifference to his ardor, and an anger creeps into him when she doesn’t groan nor whimper, like his other whores. It’s only him uttering any sound, mostly grunts as he grits his teeth.

He roars when something grips his cock inside her cunt.

Image by Monica Kozub on Unsplash

When Tuala stepped over the threshold of the shop, she headed straight for the most colorful items. She didn’t swivel her eyes around to check out other alternatives. Dresses, gowns, in the brightest colors, mainly reds and yellows, hung on racks. Her hand shot out and grabbed the reddest of them all. It hung limp and tiny in her hands.

Tuala knew the sales girl had turned her head away from a customer and had thought she imagined a flash of light, instead of an obese female in loose clothing of dull colors. Even so, she had reckoned it had been dim but the thing still stood out within the shop’s bright colorful ambience.

Tuala wasn’t bothered about the girl’s disdain as she weaved past her and the less attractive items and made a beeline towards the clothes rack she was now checking out. Tuala’ s fingers tapered down to long black-painted nails. She simpered expecting the sales girl to be worried they could tear through the fabric of the red dress now suspended between those nails. But Tuala wouldn’t do that, she merely pinched it aloft, between her nails, as she gazed at it, turning it this way and that. She didn’t have to look around to sense the girl had moved swiftly to her side. Or, rather to the red dress, as if afraid Tuala might do some damage. She didn’t have to look to imagine the hands wringing in alarm, the eyes swiveling to the dress. She heard her say, “Can I help you, Madam?”

Madam, indeed, Tuala thought, not answering. Instead, she brushed aside the girl. The changing room was a couple of feet away. But, unlike most changing rooms with solid doors, this one was hanging a curtain from rails. So retro, Tuala thought. It is a vintage store, after all. With her free hand she pulled the curtain to one side, went in, quickly pulled it to, before the girl could come closer and utter another word. Tuala had been listening to the girl’s high heels teeter after her. Now, within, she was aware the girl had stayed and was hovering about, anxious for the safety of the dress. She should be, because it cost RM1500, Tuala could see on the price tag clipped over the Gucci label, a fraction of the original.

Tuala relaxed her nails’ pinch and let the dress fall onto the floor. She almost couldn’t suppress a giggle at a gasp outside the curtain. Tuala pulled her loose top over her enormous head and hung it over a plastic hook on the wall. When she squatted and retrieved the dress, she spotted the heels of the girl had moved closer to the curtain.

The dress was much too small for someone like Tuala, even she had thought so. Tuala ignored the shadowy form of the girl on the other side of the curtain, and looked into the mirror: a rotund female with tiny globes one could hardly call breasts eyed her back. Both Tuala and she made a moue and appeared to suck in the surrounding air, rather than inhale. The woman in the mirror morphed to a number of sizes smaller, and her breasts grew too large for her narrow chest. Tuala raised the little garment over her head, and wriggled about till it slipped down and enveloped her body snugly. She smiled coquettishly as she mirrored the slim woman in the reflection, and brushed down the hem of the dress over slim thighs. Tuala turned around and drew back the changing room curtain.

The sales girl flinched, then righted herself up. Tuala was used to encountering that frown, which meant someone did not remember having seen this slim female before, who surely must have entered the changing room as well. The sales girl wrenched her neck to look over Tuala’s thin shoulders, looking for another occupant, a very much larger one.

Posing with blood-red nails on fingers over a narrow waist, Tuala tilted her head, long glossy hair spilling over a shoulder, and said, “I’ll take the dress.”

If the sales girl had positioned closer and peeked down over Tuala’ s shoulder, she might have found little gossamer wings.

And, she did, all that. But she didn’t have the time, nor the reprieve, to backtrack to save herself, her instinct not in time to warn her that anyone with such adorable little wings was no fairy at all. As she realized too late when Tuala upturned her smile, opened her mouth ever so widely that the lips thinned to nothing, and out lanced a string of phlegm. She couldn’t even scream, as the slime landed and ate into her face. Tuala grabbed her by the shoulders and lunged with that huge orifice previously her mouth, clasping onto her nose, her snake of a tongue darting deep into her head, sucking the moisture from her whole being.

Image by Naman Pandey on Unsplash

Zheng (Moham) Wang is a multilingual artist, poet, novelist, and art historian/critic based in Singapore. He graduated from Rice University in 2020 with a B.A. double-majoring in Art History and Studio Art and from California Institute of the Arts with an M.A. in Aesthetics and Politics (Art Criticism) from the School of Critical Studies in 2022. He is currently a Ph.D. student of Art History and Theory at the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, with an NTU Research Scholarship. His poetry and novels are published in Chinese and Bilingual magazines such as Voice and Verse Poetry (Hong Kong), Vineyard Poetry Quarterly (Taiwan), China Daily (Taiwan), Tsingtao Literature (China), Youth (China), and Rice Magazine (Houston, TX). His poetry has won awards internationally, and he is recently writing in English, Chinese, French, and his ethnic mother tongue, Iu-Mien, a Hmongic language native to the Iu-Mien people living in southwestern China and Southeast Asia.