Writing Practice - What I'm taking into 2025
The Practical and the Magical
Happy New Year!
Last year I wrote a post about the things I did in 2023 to prioritise my writing practice. You can read about it here:
I have often in the past focused only on a boot camp style GET WRITING IN THE NEW YEAR push to meet my goals, but over the years I’ve come to realise that the real key to being able to write with authenticity and craft is to make sure I am open to both sides of the writer life coin - the practical and the magical, for want of a better word. Learning how to be open to inspiration, to place myself in the way of experience , to use my body as an interface between the external and internal narrative of the world is as important to me as improving skills in dialogue and scene setting etc.
I’m taking forward all of the things I had built up way back in 2023, when I was deep in the territory of writing The Ghost Lake, but alongside that, because my writing project/s are in a different stage, I’m also adapting my practice to give myself permission to not have my nose to the grindstone of writing.
Here are the things I have switched up and the things I am carrying over the bridge into the new year.
Early Starts
On Monday I will be back to my routine of early work hours of 6am - 11am. After 11am it is up to my body and brain whether I will do a few more hours of work or whether I will go for a walk, read a book or curl up in bed. The early hours are by far my most productive hours; the time when I can feel through a slightly dream-like thought process to get to the writing. I watch the sun come up, I watch the jackdaws arrive in the village and it feels like being connected on some sort of magnetic, creative plumb line to something good and worthy. This practice combines a solid routine with listening to the way my body and brain feel, and that also works well for the way my brain works and my energy levels.
The Email System
At the end of 2024 I emptied my gmail inbox. Oh, glorious day. The process of filing and deleting my emails which were a thick sludge of anxiety and guilt turned out to be a genuinely nourishing experience - it felt like revisiting past versions of myself - walking back through several years of my life and reminding me where I have been, what I have done. I had 9000 + unread emails which I slowly whittled down over a couple of months to empty. I set up a new system which involved fielding new emails into different files - facilitating, work in progress, published books etc, and a big red file for ‘immediate response’ which gets emptied every day. The other files are emptied depending on the work I am doing on that day, meaning that no email ever goes more than a week without answer. This is an excellent system for me. In 2025 I will be attempting to completely shut down my other, Yahoo account, which currently has 9690 unread emails in it and is so out of hand that I have pretty much shut the door on it, like a room of shame within one’s house. Sometimes I dream of a life where someone else does this for me. Success to me, in the future, will look like having someone to field emails. But right now I earn a pittance and must do the hard grind of email sorting for myself. Poor me.
Flexibility
This is one for the neurodiverse out there. Flexibility is one of my key words for 2025 and is the thing I find hardest as I am a slave to rigid thinking. If it’s not on my To Do list I find it very difficult to do a thing. This sometimes means my To Do list is ridiculous and unachievable. If my plans change suddenly and I have to change my planner, it takes me a while to stop feeling like everything is spoiled somehow. However, to survive the year ahead I’m going to need to change plans regularly, be flexible with my work, adapt and absorb. What can I do about it? I am trying to create fluid To Do lists, the 6am early starts - with option for more work after 11am or not - are one example, but so too is having a range of work levels within my week - what needs doing, what can wait if needed. It’s an ongoing change of working practice for me, but just holding the word ‘flexibility’ in my mind helps. In fact I’ve written it on a post it note and stuck it on my computer.
Psychological Fire Fighting
With a great book contract comes great imposter syndrome. I have loved everything about having The Ghost lake published, but perhaps because of the nature of the book - memoir- it leaves me feeling a little but vulnerable: waiting on reviews, watching sales etc. It plays on my imposter syndrome. It is an active battle. I’ve noticed as I have reached the end of the year feeling a bit burnt out that my confidence has wained and I am comparing myself with those who seem to effortlessly make and accomplish plans, are social, are good at networking and social media and all of the stuff that I am so acutely aware that I am not so great at. Anxiety, social anxiety absolutely rules my life. Though I do try and work with that. At times like this I try to remember my worth is individual, it cannot be compared. I might not be great at networking or making the sort of contacts that lead to well paid work, but I am good at helping people to find their own way into writing, I am good at providing quiet space, and I have always been OK at making my own way in the world - finding the paths and creating the doors for my peculiar shape of existence. I also think I’m good at what I do, as a writer. I am a good writer. Why is that so hard to say without wanting to dissolve into a puddle of cringe? I wouldn’t be putting myself out there and writing books and sending them into the world of other people’s judgement, if I didn’t think they stood up well among the work of other writers who I admire. I’m trying to hold that thought too, like carrying a very fragile egg on a spoon.
When I see the successes of others, in particular those where I can see that success is at least in part because they are so good at the interconnectedness of the writing world, I say to myself ‘it takes nothing away from me’ I am just on a different path, I’m woking with who I am, not trying to be anyone different and while I will never be well off doing things this way, I am actually very very happy with my slow, artistic, creative life. Good.
The Magical Bit
Which brings me to the other bit of the writing practice, the bit you can’t get from a good planner, or from a how-to guide: the magical part of creativity.
I am making sure that I include this part of the process going forward. I’ll be placing myself in the way of experiences - visiting museums, art galleries, watching films, reading books but also, because so much of what I do comes from my connection to the natural world, I’ll be taking daily walks.
Walking has been part of my writing practice for a long time. When I say ‘writing practice’ I’m taking about the space between where you put your pen to paper, or your finger tips to keyboard. The gaps in which creativity sits. I’ll be making sure to slow myself down, to notice the details of the world around me, and allowing that too to form part of my practice.
Osmosis
I’m in a place of deep research for a new project right now, but what I’m noticing is that I’m losing the ‘feel’ of the project by writing it all down and making brilliant, complex note taking systems. I am going to have a few weeks of ‘osmosis’ practice: reading, immersing, allowing myself to capture the feel of the world that I’m building, rather than the facts. I need to find a way in which I don’t lose reference points too because that will bite me on the arse when I come to write a bibliography for the project, but i’ll cross that bridge when I have settled into the new project and can see the route to take.
Future Wendy screams from the hell of lost references.
I don’t know how relevant any of this is to you and your writing practice, but there might be something in here that is helpful, and my advice, as ever, is to do what is right for you, not what is prescribed to you by what others are doing.
What are the writing practices you’ll be taking forward? What’s working for you? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Coming Up
The new online course for paid subscribers begins Friday 10th. I can’t wait to feel nourished by the work! You can read about it here:
The Ghost Lake
If you have Christmas book vouchers or Amazon vouchers burning a hole in your pocket, my nature/lamdscape memoir, The Ghost Lake is currently on sale at Amazon.
And my newly released poetry collection, Blackbird Singing at Dusk is available from Nine Arches Press.
Until next time
x
Ahh, the knotted, gnarly, tangle of hawthorn scrub. Is what your description of your email inbox had me thinking of. I feel SEEN !!!! I cracked my Macmail work inbox last year; my gmail still looms dark like the nigh impassable forest surrounding Sleeping Beauty’s castle.
😬😬🤓
I have been thinking a lot recently about needing to hold onto the ‘magical’ bit, which I usually refer to as wandering and wondering, as well as the ‘practical’ stuff. The neurodivergent parts of me need the practical, but also end up focusing on that to the detriment of the magic and wonder.
I have your book on the ‘to read very soon’ pile next to me. Often I find the more I want to read a book the harder I find it to start reading, which is what is happening with your book (and several others)! Sorry - I can’t explain it, but the right moment will come, I know.