Ersatz - Replacement

How ever tempting it may be to select a replacement word today, it won’t happen. Whenever I can’t think of anything to write, scribbling down nonsense about not being able to write anything seems to be my stock reaction. And I get away with it. Not that anyone will or even can pull me up on that anyway, given at time of writing, approximately one fiftieth of this project has been read by a staggering one or two people. It’s two actually. Again it does call into question the point of all this. Why put so much time and effort into something that will probably never be read by anyone? Why not just create a document with thirty thousand of the same word copied and pasted and printed out, hole-punched and put in a nice little folder with bows and ribbons? Well I suppose I’m chasing a writers dream, following the fundamental rule that writing - anything - is what aspiring writers must do. Even if it’s completely irrelevant tosh, it’s still proofread, scrutinised and critiqued by myself, if nobody else right now. It’s all experience in sentence, paragraph and article composition and in this case, some degree of improvisation. There will come a time where I’ll feel compelled to put all of this online, but it’s a scary prospect. The idea of a writer being scared shitless of people reading their work seems absurd, but it’s very real. It’s the fear that what I’m producing right now is not going to be anywhere near as good as what comes out in six months, at which point everyone will have read this stuff and shrugged indifferently, noting my name as one to forget, an instant before forgetting it. Until of course they see it again six months later atop a considerably less shabby article and suddenly remember the ‘meh’ reaction they gave last time, discarding it without a second glance. Clearly a way around this would be to create several alternative identities or pseudonyms, each becoming more plausible than the last, until finally, after I’m almost certain people finally like my work, I’d unleash my actual name. There’s a danger in peaking too early though - I’d hate to become the world-famous Dick Sodsbury. Not only would it be quite undignified, but I’d detest being called Richard for long. Anyway, this has gone on far too long, and the idea of selecting that replacement word is becoming increasingly appealing. It’s therefore best to end this as quickly as possible, but as my linguistic ejector seat has still not been fixed, there’s a good chance I’ll crash land into that building down there - the one full of the world’s most bastardly editors. Well, a hellish firestorm would serve them right for not taking Richard Sodsbury seriously!