This belated post is all about writing, and how other things have a habit of getting in the way. It makes me understand why writers I respect talk about making some space, physically and mentally, exiling yourself from the daily routine for an hour or two to focus solely on writing. I would, but it just doesn’t work for me, and I’ve been wondering why.
Perhaps, because I’m a strongly visual learner, I need some sort of visual stimulus to set my creativity in motion. This usually comes from places I have visited, or characters I have seen in life, in films on the stage, or even on tv. I remember seeing a performance of the ballet Mayerling and being so involved and absorbed that I had to sit and write about it immediately it had finished. In a similar, but less dramatic way, interesting scenes like a country fair or a historic re-enactment stimulate the imagination. Sitting at my desk looking at the wall, or across the street at the line of suburban houses doesn’t set me on fire, though occasionally a passer-by makes you wonder about their life.
I don’t find cafe writing works very well either. In my small town most cafes front the busy main road, and whilst there is a steady stream of pedestrians passing the window, they are there for just a moment before they disappear from view.
What I do find helpful is attending workshops. I belong to several self-help groups who prepare stimulus materials and work through them companionably, producing perhaps three pieces of writing in a couple of hours. Not finished pieces, but ideas to work on. Keep working like this, week by week or month by month, and by the end of the year another notebook is full of ideas.
I’m also a fan of taught courses by published poets. There’s always something to learn – new poets you haven’t come across before, like Ilya Kaminsky – and fellow poets who share their responses during the sessions. Not all courses are equally good, but in part that’s to do with me as much as the poet provider. Perhaps the course isn’t quite what I expected, so I don’t fully engage. Sometimes it just happens at a bad time, when other things are taking up my free mind space.
So, I’m not knocking those writers who make an hour for their writing every day, or who find their journal a source of inspiration. If it works for you, that’s great. I’ve come to the conclusion it doesn’t really work for me, and I’m going to stop seeing myself as a failure because I don’t do it.
Keeping writing, however you do it, is what matters.
Keep writing 