Of Haircuts, Writing and Tony Soprano

I remember a scene from The Sopranos where someone tells Tony that if he keeps going back to the Asian masseuse, sooner or later he’d end up doing her. Like going to the barber’s, if you keep going back there even if you’re not getting a haircut, sooner or later you will end up getting one. Ditto what Dr Melfi’s husband tells her about having Tony over for his sessions, “sooner or later, you’re going to get beyond psychotherapy.”

Does the same hold true for writing? If I persist with blogging and writing piecemeal about daily mundane things, is it a case of “sooner or later, ya gonna end up writing a book?”

Tony fantasizes about Dr Melfi and I dream about the day when I do finally write a book. I’ve got a few plots in my mind one of which I’ve started work on in a note pad. A few pages of scribbles describing characters, places and time but nothing beyond that. It’s not easy writing, especially for someone like me. I’m a stickler for perfect word processing, eg. margins, fonts, format, etc. I spend more time adjusting font sizes and font types than I do worrying about the contents. And if the composition does not look pleasing, nevermind the story, I’d just scrap the whole thing. Delete. Close. New document.

The same problem applies to my work. Legal submissions, written arguments take the longest time with me because of this irritating behaviour. I’d spend the longest time on snazzy headlines, on crafting that great opening line, on the right type of font to make the whole document look so ‘learned’ or ‘professional’. I envy those who can get straight into the thick of things and make their arguments straight away. If this were a race track event, I’d be the contestant fretting over the color of his running shorts and totally missing the crack of the starting pistol.

I’d be writing one whole paragraph (finally!) and then mistype a word. Instead of deleting that one word, I’d delete the whole paragraph and start all over again. And halfway through restarting, I’d get sidetracked by my own irritation at myself for doing that.Is this some kind of obsessive compulsive behaviour albeit on a milder scale?

Am I the only one suffering this way? God, this is downright irritating.