This post is part of a series in which I want to be completely open, honest and authentic about the process of writing books, the life of the professional author; the sacrifices, the frustrations, the joys, the privilege, the pain. Some of these diary entries will be without a paywall, some of them will be with a paywall, because being a writer is how I make my living.
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Work Notes
Come and see me at York Literary festival on Tuesday 10th March, 6-8pm, where I’ll be talking about ‘the environment as stimuli for personal and creative research. it’s a free event but please book: Tickets
Come and see me at Filey Literary festival on Wednesday 13th May, 7pm, where I’ll be giving a talk on the mysteries of the Wold Newton Triangle. Tickets
Buy my memoir: The Ghost Lake
Buy my poetry collection: Blackbird Singing at Dusk
Monday
6.45 - Bed.
Listening to the first birds singing tentatively in the garden. Pulling my brain out of the cosy pit of sleep. A quick scroll through my socials and the news and the weather to see what is happening in the world, then the first of many To Do lists. Today is a writing day and I must put all other stuff to one side if I am to get back on track. I use my phone notes app to rough out a plan - the scenes I want to tackle this week, the extra research, any research emails, and a word count target. The novel is not a book I can write quickly. The scenes I’m writing tend to flow, but the structure holding those scenes up is one of dates and details, and the research around that takes time.
Coffee. Lamp on in my writing room. Window open a crack to hear the garden coming to life, to hear the world coming to life. I like to hear people getting up and going to work around me because I still get a thrill knowing that I have chosen not to work in a traditional roll. I have chosen to live a different sort of life. I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot, since I read Ruth Allen, PhD (MNCPS) brilliant birthday post. After me and my husband decided to not continue with IVF and not to pursue adoption or surrogacy or donor embryos or any of the things that might have led to a different sort of life - a life with family front and centre - after we chose to embrace childlessness, I looked at my life and examined what I wanted for the future and decided to use this place of being slightly outside of the norm as a launchpad for a life that would have more meaning for me. I did not want to exist in a story of loss, making do with the leftovers of a previous life. This was the moment that I jumped towards myself. I took the first of many, many risks to ultimately have a life that was about living, not just existing. I wanted to make art in the form of writing books that did more than just tell stories. I wanted to write about how we exist in the world. I wanted to explore my own existence here, on this tiny rock hurtling through space, in which I was also made up of the rock and the space in which the rock was hurtling. Big thoughts for a Monday Morning.
On Monday mornings I post my writing week to my instagram stories. So often that week looks nothing like a writer writing, it looks like a writer working to support their writing. This is the reality of the life at this level. There is a lot of portfolio work done to build time to exist and live as a writer. But this week is a writing week. I’m dipping into my savings for this week, and the next, to get my book thirty thousand words forward. No pressure then.
At my desk I drink my coffee, check my diary again and work out how many hours I need for the other non writerly stuff in the week. This week I have emails to answer, a small pitch to put together and a meeting bout a future work project that I am trying to pull together. I also have a couple of requests for brain picking sessions from emerging writers who want advice because they are writing in similar fields. I do these when I can, but I can’t always do them because it sacrifices time from my own work. I always feel guilty turning down endorsements and blurbs for exactly the same reason, and invitations to read at events from tiny organisations who don’t have a budget. I do them when I can, but I can’ always do them.
Then to work. I have to put my phone in a drawer otherwise every time I get frustrated I will look at it for the quick dopamine hit of watching cats do stuff. I am addicted. I cannot stop at one cat video.
On my notice board I have this quote by Hilary Mantel - my notice board is a shrine to this god of writing whose wise words have gotten me through some awful blocks:
“If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.”
In my case other people include cat videos.
The day does not go as planned. I haven’t slept well because my brain feels under pressure to get some writing done, because I’m borrowing money from our savings to do this so I had better have something to show for it. I beat 200 words out of my head throughout the day and they are not good words. Where is the thread? Where is the story? Why are these people not talking to me anymore? My characters are lifeless dolls in my head. I fish and fish for them to come back, for the door to the book to open again, but it doesn’t.
This is how it is sometimes.
By 3pm I can see I am getting nowhere and not even switching to a short story I’ve been working on works to get me writing again. I get changed and get outside and walk the lanes round my home, walking up to the field behind the mushroom farm from where I can see Seamer Beacon, and the site of the Ghost Lake and the markers of the world I spent so many years writing about in my memoir. This is cleansing. It reminds me I have been here, in this place of writing blocks, before. As I walk I am thinking about the novel and why I cannot get it going. I am wrangling one specific scene, which is about menstruation and first periods. I’ve actually been looking forward to write this scene which feels genuine and moving, but it keeps evading me. I wonder if it is because I can’t speak the language around it, which is a 17th century version of the understanding of menstruation. This is a lightbulb moment. I am trying to speak in a language I don’t understand, yet.
The walk is good, but cold. I come back, save my work, shut down my computer and read for the rest of the day, knowing my brain won’t come back to the novel in a way that works.
Tuesday
I sleep well. I get up at 6.45, make coffee and by 7am I am working. I spend a couple of hours researching, diving into the archives I can access online and finding inventive ways to access paywalled research papers, mostly successfully. A word jumps out at me. I can hear it in my character’s voice and see how her brain would work with it, how she would understand this thing, and I have learned enough of her language to move on. The words then flow, uninterrupted for hours until I realise I have worked through lunch and out the other side and I have 4000 words under my belt, the scene written and some connective tissue written around it that joins that scene to earlier scenes. I am exhausted in a brain-tired way and at 2pm I stop for the day. I am happy. I remember why I dipped into the savings and feel confident that this is all going to work out after all. I go for a walk down to the river, looking for the kingfisher, but it’s not there. The day is too grey. I do see SIX herons all standing round a small lake - what’s left of a bigger body of water that used to be here - and I wonder what meeting they are having, hunched over as they are, all so focussed on the water. A mewling buzzard on the way back, a female common kestrel hovering, geese in a V. I light the fire, I move my stack of research books onto the table next to me and spend the rest of the day reading.
This is how it is sometimes.
Wednesday
A non writing day. I attack my email inbox, send out a couple of invoices, accept an offer of a festival appearance, two in fact, which is nice. I get tagged in a social media post in which the tagger has mistaken me for a much more well known author and, god, how embarrassing. I accept an offer to appear at a stanza meeting, unpaid, but on zoom so no travel involved. I message a mentee to see how she is getting on (really well) with her goals, and set up another mentoring session with my other long term mentee. Then I start gathering for my substack post for the week. Then I drive to Filey for a meeting about a new venture I’m setting up. Two in fact. Which is nice, and I can’t wait to tell you about it. On the same day I find out that my Filey festival event is selling well, (details at the top of this post) which is nice. While I’m in Filey I take a walk along the sea front but it is icy cold and raining and I come back numb in the face, hands and feet. Home to heating and working on my substack post until the light goes.
Thursday
This is a mum day and I decide to not put work in the diary at all today but instead I catch up on some housework in the morning, while listening to an audio book - The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper, which is utterly brilliant. Then I go over to mum’s pick up some shopping for her, and we head off to Hull for blood tests and a consultant appointment. She’s frail, but in a good place and chats happily as we drive along. I’m learning quite a lot about my mum’s side of the family on these long-ish drives. Her face is swollen and we’re a bit worried it’s an infection, she’s on antibiotics but it doesn’t seem to be doing much to reduce the swelling. The phlebotomy department is running bang on time, but that means we have an hour to kill before our next appointment so we grab tea and cake in the little cafe. I over hear this comment while sitting I the phlebotomy waiting room and can’t stop thinking about the context of it for the rest of the day.
I bet you bloody love a saveloy.
We get to the consultant appointment on time, but they are running an hour late so we sit in the waiting room full of other cancer patients and I watch people emerging having heard good news and people emerging having heard terrible news and people emerging who have heard the same news over and over again. The consultant is a lovely person who my mum likes too. She can’t get her hearing aid in so it’s all a bit woolly for her but the upshot is we’ve to go back next week. By the time we get home it is dark and mum is tired. I settle her and head home myself.
Friday
Coffee, lamp, substack, socials, emails. Then back to the book, which does not flow as well today. But nor does it drag. I am trying to find a specific reference to a specific person from a moment in the late 1500s and I have not written down my source and I am my own worst enemy for doing this. KEEP RECORDS. I should tattoo this on my head. An email arrives asking me to re jig a proposal, and then my afternoon is gone. I have a short existential crisis knowing I’m not going to make my target this week. I receive news that a short story didn’t place in a competition and it doesn’t help my mood. The short is one that has been rejected a few times and I think it’s probably time to look at it again with fresh eyes. I try to boost my mood by proactively searching for other opportunities, competitions and magazines I might send the short to, but find instead that another competition I’d entered has announced a short list which means I haven’t placed there either. I’m cross because I felt sure it said they’d let individuals know if they’d not been successful weeks ago. I angrily search my inbox for proof they didn’t do this and then find the email they sent weeks ago and remember receiving it when I was in a good place writing-wise and it barely registered. I ring mum, pop round, see her face is still swollen. The worry is increasing. Should we be doing something else. Who do we ask? She asks me how the novel is going and I try to explain how I am struggling to pull threads together cohesively. She looks at her battered old Catherine Cookson novel by her side and says
‘Who’d have thought writing stories took such a lot of work.’
And she’s right. Every book you see takes such a lot of work. I get her some shopping in. We talk about the garden. I come home and get into a brief, heady flow and manage to bash 500 words out which are bad words, awful words, but they are place holding the good words which I will come back to later and reshape. I am close to finishing a section of the book, a storyline that links to another story line and that is a huge mood boost. Who would have thought putting one word after another would work.
I spend the rest of the day finding costs and quotes for the future project I had the meeting about and by three I feel I have done enough work to justify starting the weekend. I read a chapter of the memoir I am reading, which is Susanna Crossman ‘s brilliant Home is Where We Start, which I will come back and tell you more about at some point, but you should all read it.
By bed time I’m thinking about our childhood bookshelves, the Catherine Cookson’s and Steven Kings and Wilbur Smiths, and feeling grateful for a home in which reading was normalised. We went to the library for books and we all liked different things in our house and non of it was high brow. There was no snobbery. Just enjoyment. I am reminded that I am meant to be enjoying the process of writing too, that it doesn’t have to always be about creating something world shattering.
Am I doing what I set out to do? Am I living the meaningful life I chose? Am I exploring my place in the world? Am I writing stories that are full of thoughtfulness and observation? Yes, I think I am. But it never looks like that up close. If I step back, step away, even imagine looking at myself from some future, or past, point, yes I am doing it, I am living the life. You cannot see your choices working out when you are in the middle of working them out.
It was the right path to choose, I think to myself as I shut my computer down and switch my lamp off.
Until next time
x
I like the birds singing to keep you company. Richard
This is an absorbing and daunting portrait, of you the writer Wendy.
"I did not want to exist in a story of loss, making do with the leftovers of a previous life. This was the moment that I jumped towards myself."
On the above quote, it's the point where realisation hits. a lightbulb dazzles, and you know that something profound has been gifted to you. Change becomes feasible, something to move towards.
Excuse me if I say that we are like dogs. We come alive when we move, which is why going out for a walk changes that stuckness. There's an unconscious dream processing going on that gets us out of stuck states. The same with that 3am wakeful rumination. Our bodies are stuck, horizontal, lifeless. Movement is key.
I wish you well with your novel. Some of it you will write while you are not looking and thinking. That flow state. 💚