March 25, 2022
Writing does not start at the page. It starts before. Or rather, writing does not begin or end, but diffuses over the topology of time. To press the metaphor, the banks of writing doth overflow (unhelpfully) through sleep, dates, meals, jobs etc. And so, the question is never when does writing begin, but how–when I take the reins back–will I guide its flow?
I am talking about the artform underlying the artform.
Illustration by Aedan Gardill
If someone were to ask me what it is that I do every day (which, gratefully, no one does), I would say I am a manager. I do not manage time (where’d that go?), budgets (whoops…), projects (plural?!), and I most definitely do not manage other people. I manage my mind, and that is demanding enough. Just like conventional managers, the tension writers tread is between encouraging our minds to be creative and impassioned or focused and impervious to passion. For me, this boils down to whether I will force myself to progress with my novel or allow myself to dive briefly into the heap of unfinished stories/essays that I have accidentally accumulated. I feel guilty when doing the latter because the former is (somehow) my day job. But, zoomed out, I know that creativity and passion must win out at least (say) 40% of the time if I am to discover the writer I want to become.
Nevertheless, creative divergences are psychologically taxing, and I do not always feel mentally strong enough to permit them. Writing off-piste requires self-belief, self-respect, and an ability to sustain these feelings while out there on unchartered slopes. I don’t know many other young writers, but I imagine we have this challenge in common. To feel the pressure of making a living/succeeding/having anything to show for all the time we spend in our own heads and to respond by letting ourselves off the focus-leash again. Pre-agent and publishers, all we have to encourage us to go off-piste is an audacious instinct that we have yet more to discover out there inside of us. I love thinking of all the other writers on the proverbial slopes, traversing themselves in the land of Creativity where we are all ultimately and intimately alone.
