SCABs

Scabbing is to writing what scamping is to drawing

Tom Espezel-Bentley

 

 

 

 

 

 

By @TomEspezel

 

‘Scabbing is to writing what scamping is to drawing.’

                                        Tom Espadrille – Just now

I realise this as I sit here, staring at a blank pages document. I feel the same sense of nervous anticipation welling up inside of me as I do in the instant before I tarnish a crisp A4 page with terrible drawings of stickmen, all with no fingers or toes (sorry Ian).

Whilst I hope this SCAB will not be the literary equivalent of those strange stickymen, it’s not the end of the world if it is. The reason being, that the purpose of scamping is to take that important first step in transferring your ideas from brainwaves into some semblance of reality. In order to reach the game changing idea you have to splurge all the random crap out first. It’s really satisfying to see all the crazy ideas you can generate and how they improve the more you scamp. I think the same can be said for SCABS. The more words spill onto the page, the more interesting and coherent my writing becomes. 

I spoke to Alex and he said that he tries to write for 20 minutes everyday. Whether it be a completely unstructured flow of consciousness or a story about alien probing. He writes because he knows that the more he does, the more rubbish he is getting rid of and therefore the more likely he is to striking mental gold.

Why then have I not been writing every day? After some pondering I think its because for me, writing seems so much more personal than my scamps. It’s the one thing I feel I can do and so every time I actively write something it has to be good. An empty page is terrifying.The longer it stays blank, the more pressure there is to cover it with the best ideas in the world and the harder it becomes to get rid of all that rubbish.

I think what I’m trying to say is that I’m going to try and use these SCABS in the same way I use scamping. I never worry about how many likes my scamps will get and how badly executed they are. Its all about the idea and perfecting the craft. 

So just bear in mind if you start reading some truly terrible SCABS from me, that the worse my writing is, the better it’s getting… 

…or something like that.

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