Mental Bubble Wraps
Mental bubble wraps is a turn of phrase I came across a couple of months ago while reading an essay by Will Self for The Times Literary Supplement. Coined by journalist Elizabeth Young, the expression refers to those pieces of writing that can be popped by bored or anxious readers the way bubble wraps are - whilst being less likely to annoy those who happen to be in the vicinity.
Lifestyle columns and restaurant reviews have been for some time now my mental bubble wraps, something I pop while commuting into work - back in the days when we could - or between reading art and museum stories. As an art history devotee and regular reader of art reviews, I have often contemplated the idea of writing about the exhibitions I visit but, despite jotting down notes and doing some research, I seldom manage to go beyond the ‘ugly first draft’.
Last year, in an attempt to develop a solid writing routine, I attended a two-month course with Sotheby's Institute of Art: Writing for the art World, which is excellent by the way. Because around the same time, whether by accident or design, I had also started to run three times per week I wrote two pieces, Stretching my writing skills and Writing like Running. Unfortunately, sometime after drafting and before polishing them, I closed the laptop, fetched my pruning shears and went out into the garden to prune a plant that, it goes without saying, didn’t need to be pruned. Uh-oh, the infinite loop of procrastination…
For someone who could be awarded a Certificate for Procrastination Excellence honoris causa, I have been using my extra free time in the Covid-19 lock-down quite wisely, and this might be because the thought of using it to achieve ‘great’ deeds has never crossed my mind. So, instead of contemplating reading all seven volumes of Proust’s Recherche, I have started running again and I am now in the seventh week of a running plan that, in just another week, should allow me to run non-stop for thirty minutes. I have also rewritten my PhD proposal, although I may never submit it, and embark on the preparation for the C2 Proficiency examination.
And this brings me to this space that I hope will become a sort of research journal-cum-gym, since I am very well aware of the amount of stretching needed by the muscles of someone who is thinking of writing a PhD thesis. As for my running, I have no intention of training for a marathon after ‘graduating’ from my eight-week course. I’ll be perfectly content staying on track.
