Why write?
I’ve been trying to remember when I started writing, like properly. I always had the idea of myself as a writer, but felt like the least writer version of myself when it was my job. Maybe because I worked online so my words didn’t carry the sacred weight that the boys in print had, but maybe because I was writing reviews of trainers and races that I ultimately didn’t care about. I am not a technical person and I am not a precise person, so unless I was touching on things with some emotional weight, I’m looking out the window swinging my legs. So I could always do a completely fine average job. Fact checking bored me, finding experts felt like banging my head against a wall, reading studies made me want to scream into a pillow WHO CARES? WHO CARES WHY IF IT FEELS NICE. Would have made a bad laboratory scientist.
I’ve been thinking about what it is. Why I have a compulsion to say stuff? Why I need to share it? Why I felt it appropriate to write a thought piece on my blog after Brexit? Why I sometimes have to hold myself back from more think pieces about other political moments I have very top layer understanding of but definitely riding some big emotionally finite response to :). Progressing from political commentary and blogs about body hair to my first novel that I assumed would take off, to a daily practice, which I came to realise was research for the memoir era, which evolved into something else, which became a weekly Substack, which became part of my flesh. It isn’t overnight but you can open the door and begin to embody it, gradually.
I have noticed a couple of things from the people who enquire about and come to my creative writing courses. Two polars. Column number one:
What if I'm bad?
I’m not a writer.
I’m not very creative.
Column number two:
Will this help me get published?
Will this help me get an agent?
What will I come out of this with?
These lists are such a perfect example of our conditioning. And I don’t want to make false promises or crush people’s dreams, but what I guess I am saying is that writing and being a writer is sort of nothing to do with either list. My hope is that this is more liberating than demoralising, but getting an agent, a book deal, a career in journalism is something else and yeah if that’s what you want, go get it babe. But it’s not the point of this. And the first list, well, it’s neither here nor there. Literally anyone can be, you just may not have made the space for it, and if there is that little wondering about writing, it might be something that is for you after all.
I have come to think it’s about developing your own relationship with writing and that this is a long-term project, a life’s work, no end to the race. And accepting this piece of it has changed my life and helped me realise how impactful it can be for other people. I also think it takes the heat out of it. Yeah, literally start a Substack tomorrow, it’s for you, sharing feels good. Yeah, start using writing as a tool to help you cope with life. Yeah, have a big idea but don’t worry too much about it. Yeah, it’s simple.
I suppose the question doesn’t have to be, what can writing do for me? Or where will this get me? But how can writing be in my life? Things immediately feel different. And Possible. I have literally written my way through and out of the depths of dark and the depths of desperation. I have created beautiful fragments from spells of anxiety and madness. I have found ways to understand things that my mind alone could not understand. I have created connections with people I don’t even know from writing the truth. I have shown myself I have commitment and discipline that I didn’t know I had by writing books. I have covered dark corners in light. I have made peace with parts of me that have been ignored and silenced. I have embraced all the endless grey area. And every single word is part of something bigger. Yeah so what my books haven’t been published yet, it doesn’t mean they were for nothing. Look at what I have learnt, how I have improved, my confidence and clarity, look at this soil so much richer than before.
And also, remember Ally McBeal.