2013 so far has been, I can categorically state, the worst
year of my life. But that’s good for writers, yeah? It’s all material. That’s what I told myself, at the start of
the year, when I found out that I had to leave the flat I’d lived in for 11
years and was plunged into a property market that seemed to have gone insane
when I wasn’t looking. When I developed, out of the blue, a medical condition
called TMJ, which for about three months left me in fairly constant pain (in my
face! Which is as delightful as it sounds). When my mum was repeatedly
hospitalised with vague diagnoses that never quite equated to effective
treatment. I’ll get through this, I
said, and it’ll all be great material.
Then two days after I moved out of my flat (having
spectacularly failed to find a new place to live), my mum’s health took a turn
for the worse, and she died, and suddenly it didn’t feel like just material any
more. I was homeless, and grieving, and, as an only child, faced with the
burden of clearing out my mum’s council flat and sorting her estate alone, all
the while (theoretically) house hunting and doing enough freelance work to pay
for the roof that I would eventually, hopefully have over my head again. Juggling
these demands, while shuttling my belongings between those friends who were
kind enough to put me up and dealing with the emotional fall out exhausted me.
I was numb, and in shock, not only at how I felt but how others reacted:
overwhelmed by the kindness of some, but dumbfounded by the absence of others –
of all those messages from people who said things like ‘if there’s anything I can
do, let me know’, ‘anything’ clearly not extending to replying to text messages
or emails that dared to express any sentiments but the stoic Britishism ‘I’m
fine’. And then, just when I thought I was finding a foothold in the new,
shifting landscape of my life, a close friend died unexpectedly, and I was
abruptly plunged into a community of grief, all of us stunned and staggering
with shock, the unique bombshell of a life ended far too soon, and I was back
among the people on the other side of those texts and emails, struggling to
find the right words to soothe someone who cannot be consoled. What chance does
creativity have in amongst all that?
And yet writing isn’t a hobby for me. It’s not something I
can afford to shelve until I feel better or have more time – it’s a big part of
what I do for a living. True, with no publisher breathing down my neck I have a
certain amount of leeway where my new
book is concerned (in the outline stages when the first storms broke, and
currently sitting in a pile of notebooks in a friend’s spare bedroom – not,
alas, the spare bedroom where I currently am) but I still need to bring in
royalties, and to do that I need to promote my books, and I need to maintain
that momentum by keeping the series going, because in a competitive market,
it’s all too easy to be forgotten. The magazine I write for can’t change its
print deadline, and the websites I create content for still expect that regular
stream of articles. The world doesn’t stop, however much I might want it to.
Writing might seem a trivial activity in the midst of all this chaos, but
anyone who writes – because it puts a roof over their heads or just because it
lets them be a little saner amongst all the craziness – will tell you that it’s
not. So how do you hold onto it? How do you keep going? Here are some things
that helped me. Maybe they’ll help you.
Pare back to the
essentials – as a freelancer, my main priority had to be the clients I
already had, so I concentrated my efforts on hitting the necessary deadlines,
and focusing on the work that was in front of me, as it was important to me
that I didn’t let anyone down, especially as I rely on repeat business and word
of mouth recommendations. This isn’t ideal – I really should have spent the
last three months out there generating new work as well, so I may well have a
nice little financial crisis looming to add to my woes – but sometimes you have
to recognise your limitations. Sure, it was frustrating to have to put my book
and other big projects on hold, but when getting out of bed in the morning
becomes one of the day’s biggest achievements, you need to marshal your energy.
Likewise, if you’re doing a nine-to-five (or, let’s face it, these days, more
likely an 8.30 to somewhere after 6ish) you may need to scale back other
projects, no matter how important they feel to you. Grief is bloody exhausting
– don’t set yourself up for disappointment by expecting to achieve too much.
Think small, think
different – one writer friend of mine put her book on hold in the aftermath
of a relationship break up, but channelled her creative energy through a blog,
which felt like a more manageable commitment. Another novelist friend
recommends journaling, and I must admit I have started to find it helpful. You’re
still actually putting pen to paper, so it feels vaguely productive, but since
it’s totally private, you can be completely unfiltered and self-indulgent, and
basically write any old rubbish that you like without having to worry about
anyone else judging you for it. If that sounds too airy fairy, think snippets:
make notes of ideas without thinking that you have to follow them up or develop
them, write character scenes, or sketches. For once, allow yourself to think
small.
Don’t feel guilty
– let yourself off the hook however you feel, whether it’s good or bad.
Sometimes a crisis can be a spur for creativity (I finished my first novel in
the aftermath of a massive break up; while the rest of my life fell to pieces, the
words fell into place), so don’t feel like you are indulging something trivial or
insignificant if you do get the urge to write. I did a couple of pieces
recently – snippets, really, that I produced to promote my book – and I found
myself feeling guilty for writing them, guilty for enjoying them, then guilty
for putting them out there and promoting them. My God, my mum just died! How
could I be faffing about on Twitter? But loss brings plenty of misery – don’t
begrudge yourself any bright spots when they happen.
Ask for support (but
be prepared not always to get it) – some people will amaze you with their
supportiveness, others…won’t. They might have their own stuff to deal with (you’d
be amazed what’s happening behind the scenes in other people’s lives that you
often only find out in retrospect), or they might just be thoughtless pricks,
but either way you need to not stress about other people’s reactions. Seek out
whoever you find it easiest to be with. I’ve been making my living from writing
of one sort or another for 20 years now (alright, generally not the glamorous
sort, but still) and some of my friends even now don’t understand how much a
part of me it is – and that’s fine. I’m sure there are plenty of blindspots in
my own empathy (and god knows I can’t even begin to count the amount of times I
have had my own tact bypass when to comes to the lives and crises of others) so
I can’t expect everyone to always understand how my priorities work. For instance, I recently told a friend I had
written an article on my mother’s death for a magazine, and she was properly ,
genuinely appalled, as if I’d stuck the coffin on eBay or something. Don’t feel
bad for avoiding people who make you feel worse for caring about what you care
about; you can always pick up with them again later down the line when you feel
stronger, or realise this is an opportunity to shed some people who no longer
belong in your life.
Write about it, or don’t
write about it, either is fine –
You may feel your situation is the germs of some great creative masterpiece, or
it may make you want to write about kittens and romance and shopping. You can
feel disappointed in yourself for not tackling big issues in your work when you’re
confronted with them in your life, but do whatever works for you.
Have faith – even
if your crisis has plunged you into a massive writer’s block (or your current
crisis is a massive writer’s block), the words will come back. I’m already
finding my character’s voices popping back into my head again, and snippets of
ideas are starting to come to me. It may be a while before I get to develop any
of them, but the creative crisis I envisaged has so far failed to emerge, though
for a month or so I feared that, on top of everything else I’d lost, the
ability to write a decent sentence had vanished too. It may take longer for you
– life might just get in the way for a while – but it’ll come back. Trust me on
this one; it’ll be ready when you are.
 |
| This is how the inside of my mind currently feels |
Tracey Sinclair is the author of 4 books including the Dark
Dates series, the latest of which is Wolf Night (see Darkdates.org). She’s also
currently still looking for a nice little one bedroom flat in Brighton to rent,
so if you know of anywhere…
