Why I haven't been writing (here, or anywhere else). And a few recommendations.

In which I have to follow my own advice: guard your time and trust the process.

I’ve been meaning to write for a while and yet somehow four weeks have gone by. And I don’t just mean write on Substack. First, having decided to go ‘unpaid’, I was preoccupied by the business of returning everyone’s pro-rata subs, a manoeuvre which Stripe - predictably perhaps - does not make particularly easy. But hopefully we are done now. I would love to know if removing subs meant that my archived paywalled pieces are now opened up to everyone. Could anyone let me know? And if not how I can un-paywall them?

So, yes, lots of admin. But mostly I realised today I haven’t written because I’ve been a bit stuck on my work in progress. Some of it is just run of the mill life-getting-in-the-way. There has been an awful lot of the big, important stuff recently; friends needing help, family needing time, lots of logistical things that eat up an entire day before you know it; and added to that there were the things Yesterday-Me promised to other people some months previously : time, resources, events (I slightly want to kick her for not saying a firm ‘no’ but she never seems to learn).

But mostly, honestly, it is because I just haven’t quite ‘felt’ this part of the novel that I’m working on. I wrote the first 45,000 words in a heady rush before I went on tour. I plotted it out on white cards, doodled around my characters’ traits, felt confident that I knew where everything was headed. The few people I told the idea to were really excited. A director friend announced that this was ‘theirs’ to direct when it was done and seemed to be only half joking. And then I had three months away from what I’d done and came back from touring, re-read it, felt pretty good about it (never a given) and then… I kind of sputtered to a halt. It just hasn’t really been motoring since.

It’s been a bit disconcerting because as I have discussed here before, my writer’s neural pathways are basically made of reinforced girders. The myelin sheaths that surround those pathways are the consistency of a Glaswegian welder’s glove. I sit down and I write. That’s what I do. And if I’m honest I think over the past few weeks my subconscious brain decided that if I couldn’t write easily, I should be VERY BUSY instead, far too busy to think about sitting at my desk for any real length of time. So now my elderly dog is booked in for a dental appointment, I’m fixing the flickering lights in my kitchen, I have assembled a truckle bed from scratch and there is a man currently gluing felt to the roof of my shed. My admin folders are immaculate, and all the bills that needed paying are paid.

It’s all a way of avoiding it, of course. But I’ve decided to be gentle on myself, and, as I’m fond of telling others, trust the process. It’s never got sticky at 40,000 words before (it’s usually 20-30) but hey, why shouldn’t it? Every book is different, and presents its own challenges. So I’ve moved away from trying to write, and I’m trying to ‘see’ this book more clearly in my head, instead. I’ve decided to dig into my characters to the point where their company becomes irresistible again. nI’ve decided to think my way into this story and around it so comprehensively that hopefully there will be be nothing I can do BUT to write it.

I’m sitting at my desk now surrounded by large sheets of A2 paper on which I’ve scribbled things like: IS THIS TOO MUCH or WHY WOULD CORA DO THIS or paragraphs of notes that I’ve then struck through. There are scraps of dialogue (to help me build up an idea of how the characters relate to each other). There are graphs to show where the climactic moments take place, ideas that have been picked up and discarded (why yes, it would be too much for A to try to poison B against her fiance) Basically it looks like the kind of thing you see when the cop goes down to the basement and discovers the serial killer’s obsession laid out in scraps on a wall. I would post a picture but I don’t want you to know what’s going to happen (especially as right now I don’t know what’s going to happen).

If this doesn’t move things forward, I’ll try something else. Skipping a few scenes, or moving my note cards around to see if that shakes things up. I’ll change the tenses, or the viewpoints. Or I’ll perform radical surgery. Or I’ll go somewhere for a couple of days and do absolutely nothing but wrestle with this story until I’ve got it in a headlock and I’m back in that glorious state where really the thing is writing itself.

I’m posting this really because I hope it’s a useful reminder that even the stories you can see clearly in your head, and think are going to be straightforward can somehow trip you up. That you can sometimes feel a stubborn gap between the novel you have imagined and the one that resolutely fails to set light on your page. There is only one way to fix it - and that is, as with all bear hunts, to dig deep and plough through it. No writer is immune. I suspect if there are, that their books are not something I’d really want to read.

So thank you for your patience. I’ll be plugging away until I’m confidently throwing out 1000 words a day again.

In the meantime: a few recommendations:

Please please if you haven’t watched Dying For Sex line it up this weekend. I started watching thinking it was a tragicomedy about sex. Instead it was the most profound and moving piece of television I’ve watched in years. It’s about love, and understanding your own happiness; it’s about having agency and what it takes to claim it. It’s glorious and messy and Michelle Williams is incandescently good, as is Jenny Slate and Rob Delaney, and I sobbed my way through the final two episodes but not for the reasons you might think. I then watched it all the way through again with my best friend and enjoyed it even more. And it’s all through the female gaze, so that it feels quite startling to imagine a programme about sex doing it any other way.

It’s on Disney Plus, but may be on one of those other streamers that scrape up loads of good things.

I had the good fortune to read Esther Freud’s upcoming novel My Sister And Other Lovers. God she’s good. It is written with a sparse, dreamy quality and yet her observations on human behaviour are scalpel-sharp and accurate. It’s a follow up to her bestselling Hideous Kinky which became a movie with Kate Winslet.

I’m sure you have all watched Love On The Spectrum on Netflix, but I’m new to it and so have only watched Season Three. Oh Conner. Oh Georgie. If we could all approach love the way these two do - direct and compassionate, kind and occasionally overwhelmed with wonder at it all. I can’t be the only person who was swept up in their happiness when they found each other (or loved their shared sense of humour). I’ve never been on a dating app but from what I hear this is its absolute opposite.

Happy Writing!

Jojo xx