The good cop and bad cop duke it out

I am a walking, talking good-cop bad-cop routine at the moment. Having one on each shoulder is tiring me out. They're heavy – must be the doughnuts. So I'm shaking them off onto my desk and I'm going to let them duke it out in front of me whilst I write this post.

They're dressed like New York beat cops. I have no idea why, seeing as I am very British – there is a steaming cup of tea beside me right now in fact, so that must be true. Perhaps it was all those hours of watching NYPD Blue as a student, that part of my brain has been altered to fit.

They are overweight (oh, sub-conscious, I am disappointed by your stereotyping) and they swagger, but – oh – their voices fluctuate between broad New York drawl and clipped Queen's English. How odd. It seems my auditory imagination is struggling here, though the visuals are great. Their cheeks are reddened and they are constantly pulling at the collars of their uniforms, freeing the flabby fold of skin caught there. They are flushed from the constant arguing, they've been at it for days and no progress has been made.

I'm amused by them, standing ten inches tall on my untidy office desk, as the good cop lifts his heavy cap to mop sweat from his brow. The handkerchief he uses was once white. He sits heavily, watching my fingers hammering the keys. "I think it's great you're writing this!" he enthuses.

The bad cop storms over to read the text. "Crap!" he snorts. "This isn't the book! This is just some crap she'll publish on her crappy little blog, and then she'll tell herself she's done good."

"But any writing is better than no writing," the good cop replies evenly. "It all contributes to her skills; here she's polishing dialogue – that's got to be good, right?"

"You sap!" The bad cop spits. "Stop making her feel she's accomplishing something – until that damn book is started, and all the paperwork is done for book one, there's no good gonna come of making her feel like a goddamn writer, just cos she's writing a blog post. Sheesh!"

"I hate paperwork," the good cop mutters, and for the first time in days, the bad cop nods in agreement.

"Ain't that the truth," he sighs. "Paperwork sucks, we should be out there! Writing! Not stuck behind some desk trying to fill out forms about what book 1 is about, who was there, what they did… seems pointless." He turns and looks at me, shakes a fist. "That's what you've turned into! A pen-pusher!"

"No she hasn't!" The other leaps to my defence. "Look, she's just started a business, and she's finding it hard to write submission material, and-"

"Crap! All crap! Started a business? So what? There are times she ain't working on that, times when she could be writing!"

"But what about her family, and the other –"

"Crap!"

The good cop scowls. "If that's the only way that you're going to respond to my explanations –"

"Explanations?!"

"Yes, explanations, then I refuse to talk with you any longer."

"They're not explanations, they're excuses." The bad cop turns and looks right at me, interrupting my typing for a moment. "Look lady, you wanna be a writer or not?"

"Yes," I reply, blinking.

"Then write!" He throws his hands up in the air, looks up as if appealing to some God.

I look away, out the window. The sun is shining but there is a cold wind abusing the chestnut trees outside.

"It's not that easy," the good cop says gently. "But I'm not going to get into another slanging match." He gets up, sits next to my mouse. "Why don't we come up with some sort of schedule?"

I frown. "I don't like writing like that."

"But if you set aside a sacred time each day to write, or at least try, perhaps you will get some writing done, and stop avoiding it. It's so easy to find other things to do, isn't it? Especially at the moment."

I nod, defeated. "You're right," I say, slightly puzzled by a New York cop's use of the word sacred.

"Don't say that now and then forget about this!" The bad cop points an accusatory finger.

"Yes," the other agrees, but when I look back over to him, he isn't dressed like a New York cop any more, he's an old man dressed in brown clothes like beggar rags. "Make a commitment to this like you have in the past. You know what works."

I know what I have to do. I leave my desk.

I return with a string of purple embroidery silk tied around my right wrist. The colour of emperors. I know that tonight, I will write.

Tagged as: sub-conscious, Writing