“I bet you can’t wait til they are all back at school!”
People have been saying that to me everywhere I go since about late July. I get the sentiment, they are trying to show solidarity to a mum with her hands full. I have three children, and although they are getting a bit bigger and can all put on their own pants (most of the time), being with all three of them at once is still a kind of intense whirlwind, like being trapped inside a washing machine on the spin cycle. They all talk to me at once, they never stop moving, they are never all three completely content at the same time. As an only child, I find myself longing for solitude, and sometimes I lock myself in the loo, just for a few minutes of it.
As a writer, I have had to find ways to write amidst some of that chaos. One of the topics I’m going to cover here in the coming weeks is just how to do that. There is something about the fantasy of writing that always involves ‘a room of one’s own’. People put photos on instagram of their perfectly curated desk, empty save for a posy of garden flowers, a scented candle, a top dollar laptop, and a view of the sea. My desk is not like that. In fact, I don’t have a desk. I’m writing this under my duvet, but most often, you can find me at the kitchen table in what used to be the forge. Surrounded by pots of slime, odd socks, dirty dishes, and nerf bullets.
The psychology of writing, or indeed creating anything, is a funny one. We procrastinate, we put off making a start. And we almost always tell ourselves there’s a practical reason for this. “I would get SO much done if the kids were at school and I had some time.” “I have ‘real’ work to get done first.” “That kitchen cupboard needs reorganising urgently”, and so on. But the fact is, even if the kids are at school and you’ve got an insta-worthy desk, writing is hard. It never, or hardly ever, ‘just flows’. It’s usually a stilted, agonising process, involving repeated battles with your army of inner critics.
Sitting down to write is an act of self belief, a two finger salute to everyone who has ever told you you are not up to the task, including yourself. Sitting down to write is a risk, because what you come up with may well be absolute shite. Sitting down to write takes you from the fantasy place in your mind of ‘perhaps I will be a writer one day’ to the real, uncomfortable place of ‘today I am a writer and I am not very good at it’, or worse still, ‘I have written a whole book and it’s so appalling I need to burn it in case I die suddenly’.
Sitting down to write is therefore an ending as well as a beginning. The end of arguably the best bit of being a writer, the ‘dream’, and the beginning of the really crunchy, gnarly bit, the harsh reality. The bit where you fail.
“What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from…. Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, Every poem an epitaph. And any action Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.”
Don’t panic, I won’t be quoting T.S.Eliot on the regular, but, ‘any action is a step to to the block…to an illegible stone’? You really nailed it there Thomas. Good job you stopped colour coding your bookshelves, dealt with your addiction to @tribunaltweets, and got on with some writing that day.
‘What we call the beginning is often the end’. The new fresh start of September, that holds so much promise - ‘Now I can finally get some writing done!’ - is also an end. I’m missing my kids. The house is so silent. I’m mourning the end of another summer, and the way their childhood, and my childhood, and time, slips rapidly through our fingers. Call me a sentimental old fool but I actually don’t spend all my time with them wishing they were at school instead, and it’s curious how our culture constantly frames parenting in this way. Imagine if people kept coming up to our kids in supermarkets or at the beach and saying to them, ‘Wow, I bet you can’t wait to get back to school, eh, and get away from these guys!’, gesturing at we parents with an exaggerated eye-roll. That would be super weird - but the other way round is supposed to be funny.
Anyway. The dream of having acres of time to write each day, child-free, is now a reality, and so I’m in that place of finding reasons why, even though I have all this time and it’s so painfully fricking quiet, I am not yet quite ready to make a start on book four. I am also working on a children’s fiction book (not commissioned by anyone, just as an experiment) that I am over ten thousand words into. And so I’m actually finding myself using the process of faffing around and failing to get on with the children’s book as part of my excuses for faffing around and failing to get on with on book four. It’s a complex process and also, my shoe rack needs alphabetising.
And here we are at the end of this first proper post from The Book Forge. Is it good? That’s debatable. Is it good enough? Probably. Even if it isn’t, at least I’ve got something down, at least I’ve made a start. The fine polishing can come later, when I have more time.
This post is for all subscribers, paid and unpaid. But if you want to receive ALL posts from The Book Forge, and be able to join chat threads, view videos and more, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Next week, I’ll be talking about my own journey into getting published, and coming up I’ll be doing practical posts on topics like ‘How do I know if my book idea is a good one?’, ‘Your book elevator pitch’, and ‘Writing a book proposal for agents and publishers’. Most of this content will be for paid subscribers only. See you soon! x
I loved this, your writing style really makes me laugh. I hope to find my authentic style too. 🙏
As a writer (of sorts) too, I empathise completely. You put me in mind of a book I reviewed recently ‘The Baby on the Fire Escape’ https://www.midwifery.org.uk/blog/reports-reviews/the-baby-on-the-fire-escape-a-review/ all about ‘creativity, motherhood, and the mind-baby problem’ - I highly recommend this... if you can find time to read as well as write?
Looking forward to following your writing journey.