It’s been almost a year since I last updated this website. Not because I wasn’t writing, because I was. But maybe because I was burnt out. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time. I first got in the habit of setting myself writing goals, way back in Spring of 2020. Due to the events that followed, I found it quite easy to stick to them.
In about March 2020 I found I had written a lot of pieces, but they had never found their way on to my website. This was probably because in the Autumn of 2019 I had finally moved away from home for good. And as fate would have it I didn’t feel comfortable in my new place, so I moved again in February 2020.
Those big changes meant I was still writing, but not doing anything more than dashing out a first draft. Looking back I guess that should have been my first indication that life gets in the way of writing. Although, looking further, it probably already had so many times before.
The stress of feeling uncomfortable in your home, along with the finding of a new place, and then the inevitable packing and unpacking. It takes a toll. I think I was always writing something, but sitting down and doing some proper work on it wasn’t something I had the energy to do.
When I moved in February 2020 I thought I would be settled for a while. And I was, for about a moment. So, I set myself the task of finishing and posting 52 pieces of work that year. Which I did, even with its pitfalls. Unfortunately, house no. 2 turned into a special kind of hell.
All I can remember is a bunch of people who barely knew each other, fighting over whose mental health problems were the most important, during what was already an extremely stressful time. It was a clusterfuck to say the least, and I wasn’t the only person to run from that place. Which I did in May 2020, only returning to properly move out in June 2020, when restrictions had been loosened up.
In that time between May and September of the same year I lived back at my parents, with all my things still in their packing boxes. The only thing that got proper use, and which I took with me when I first escaped from house no.2, was my laptop and all my writing pads. It was probably then that I realised how important they were to me, second only to my clothes, higher up than my houseplants. (Which also came, I’m not a monster.)
House no.3 came in September 2020 and I managed to hold on there until August 2022, although things went wrong long before that. After successfully completing my 52 pieces in 2020, I had realised I really did want to make a book. A book of poems seemed the most likely option. I gave myself an deadline of my birthday in July 2021, and Strange Times came to pass. That was a steep learning curve. But it gave me confidence, and I quickly figured that since I had made one book, I could make another.
I had a bunch of ghost stories here on the website, I had also been working on a ghost story trilogy. I spent that summer and autumn working on writing, and editing, and re-editing and Feel It All came out just before Christmas 2021, as I had planned. But by the time it was done, I was exhausted.
I had a back injury which wasn’t getting any better. I found spending so much time inside, hunched over a computer, made me miserable. I also gained weight, which I hadn’t done for all of the lockdowns, and it’s never quite gone away. Worse than that, when I’d finished the book I was so tired of it I couldn’t really be bothered to promote it very much. It was not a great moment, I was incredibly disappointed in myself
Despite the exhaustion and disappointment, I (for some reason) thought I would start the new year finally getting down to writing my first novella. Which did. Well, I started, but then quickly got distracted. In Spring of 2022 I finally got published in a place where people could see me, in a local magazine called Lucent Dreaming. So ecstatic I was to have some sort of acceptance I got distracted by competitions, and submissions, and the novella fell by the wayside.
Then, of course, house no.3 became an issue. Unlike house no.2 it wasn’t an explosion, but a slow destruction. I shouldn’t say more than that, because it’s wrong to rage about people on the internet when they can’t defend themselves, or worse, sue you. But I kind of don’t want to talk about them anyway. Because, like so many bad house shares and flatmates before, memories of them make me stressed, sad, and even a little scared.
So what happened after that? I finally got my own place. All alone, just me, in my own flat. I’ve been here since last August and it’s been a steep learning curve, but I think I’ve finally learned how to be something like a grown-up. I think I got to the point where I’d finally gotten sick of living with other people.
That being said, I’ve lived with some lovely people who have been respectful and kind, and something about them finds its way into all my writing. If you’re reading this and you have ever had cause to hate me or get on the wrong side of me, don’t worry, I will never be writing about you. I say that, a lot of them are so vain, they probably think this blog is about them.
So, I was finally free, of all the emotional upheavals. I had, to quote Virginia Woolf, a room of my own. But what to do with it? I did start getting into a habit with the website, then I badly burned my right hand last autumn, so writing went out the window for a while. Finally, in Spring of this year, I got down to writing my novella. And, I actually finished it. In May, to be precise.
Of course, after that I meant to edit it. To set myself a whole new goal, but it didn’t work out that way. My error was in that my goal was non-specific and, like the year before, I hadn’t set myself much of a deadline. Then summer suddenly came and I wanted to be outside, doing everything, and I did! I swam, and I hiked, and it was sunny, and green, and amazing. I even renewed my lease so I could have the safety of knowing where I would be for another year
I trained up, and walked a Macmillan Mighty Hike. That’s 26 miles in a day. I had done two before Covid, but felt it would be the prompt I needed to get me to strengthen my back. Which is always an ongoing project. The hike was at the beginning of September, about the same time my annual WordPress charge came in. Which jolted me, and left me wondering – what the hell are you doing?
I was paying good money for a website I was neglecting. More than that I was neglecting my writing, which I had also done during training for the hike before. But which had given me the prompt to write more, even before I really got going in Spring 2020. (And which is probably also the reason I’m writing this blog now.)
I love to write. I beat myself up, and tear myself down about it. But I still love it all the same. It’s like breathing or swimming, it feels so natural, and freeing, and automatic. It makes you wonder why I don’t do it more. But then I do sort of do it all the time.
Even though I berate myself for not finishing projects, or meeting my goals, I haven’t done too badly for someone who is in full time work. More than that, I do actually write a considerable deal. In the last month I’ve been going through all my accumulated paperwork from the past five months (and then some) and I found about 80 unedited and unpublished pieces of work. Of course, that’s not all good work. 30 or so pieces have already gone into the brown box I laughingly call an archive, but is just where I put things because I can’t bear to throw them away.
So, what I have now are about 50 pieces of work that need to be edited, a list of about 30 ideas for pieces I have yet to start, and an un-edited handwritten novella. And all of it is standing in the way of the four book outlines I want to get started on. But most importantly, it’s the work I need to do so I can get to the future me. Who, I hope, is a better writer for the work she’s done.
All this seems like a lot of work, and it got me worrying. It also got me thinking, about how I’ve been approaching this. I’ve certainly been putting the work in. But if I’m ever actually going to have a shot at doing this properly, either as a career or, at the least, a serious sideline I have to get, well, serious. So far I’ve been doing the equivalent of moving house one armful of stuff at a time, and only ever when I felt like I was strong enough to do it. What I need to do is pack everything up, rent a moving van, and make proper plans.
50 is a nice round number. Something like 52. 52 weeks to be precise. I could post something every week for a year. But then I’ve done something like that before, that’s not the real challenge. That would be to edit my novella too. It’s time to play the numbers game. The more I write the more I will learn, the more of an audience I may reach.
I would also like to start writing on here, for its own sake. I’ve been wanting to write so much about the city, and the lives I see from my flat windows. This is writing which can’t be contained to poems and short stories, or even essays, which just is for its own sake.
I have a lot of work to do. I turn 42 next July and as my great hero, Douglas Adams, wrote, 42 is the answer to the universe. It would be cool if I could find it for myself. I like to believe I could. A lot can change in a year, and I would like to be the one changing it. I’m sick of being dragged along by outside forces and doubting myself all the time.
If you are one of the few people who follow this website I want to say thank you for taking an interest. For those of you who found this blog to be an unpleasant, and perhaps boring, surprise, that’s cool. I know I can’t entertain all of the people all of the time. But for those of you who plan on sticking around I hope to offer a year of entertainment, and maybe some nonsense. I also promise to work hard, and try my best, to be a proper writer.
Unstuck Monsters 