I’m not sure if I have any words left for you today. Maybe the well is dry, maybe I’ve drained it all into the document that produced the word cloud you see above. But let’s see, shall we?
I was going to wait to submit until this coming Monday, and then I was going to move it up to this coming Friday, and then I realised I had to get it off of my virtual desk now. I read a quote from Annie Dillard for the Words of Wisdom today in Writer’s Hour advising writers to ‘spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time.’ So that’s what I did. I may lose or win, but I’ve played it now.
Appropriately, the title of the essay from which the quote was drawn is ‘Write ‘Til You Drop,’ published in The New York Times in 1989. Writing until the point of dropping is something I’m familiar with by now. Since the middle of July, when I realised that I had to get serious or it wasn’t going to happen, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. Between then and today, I wrote 60 thousand more words than I’d had before. The glow of finishing an 80,000-word manuscript lasted five minutes before I set about destroying the whole thing.
In the eleventh hour, anticipating that Monday submission, I went into the document with the intention of copy-editing. Right on cue, my perfectionism resurged, although let’s face it - it never really ebbed, did it? Examining this document I’d knitted together with the sometimes literal sweat of my brow, I found actual loose threads, possible loose threads, and imagined loose threads. I began pulling on everything that a week earlier I hadn’t questioned. The integrity of the whole thing was on the brink of collapse. It would have collapsed, had I carried on.
Luckily, I have more instinct for self preservation than that. I wrote to my editor, like somebody in a 12-step programme rings their sponsor. I told her what I was up to, and she got on the phone with me right away. She reminded me that the title of ‘editor’ was not honorary but functional, and begged me to submit.
So I did, Annie Dillard. I spent it, shot it, played it, lost it - and only hope, eventually, it will feel like a win.
When I say it wasn’t going to happen, I meant it. I nearly reneged on my contract dozens of times. I didn’t have any reason to think it would be a problem, signing a book near the beginning of the pandemic, but I didn’t know how long it would last, the way it would sap my creativity for a time. Having managed to juggle imposter syndrome with genuine confidence for years, I believed I’d be able to complete it on time. Not having a crystal ball, I didn’t know I would have a bicycle accident and hurt my knee so badly that the rehab continues to this day, that it would change so much about how I felt about my body, and that the whole experience would affect my mind.
I would say that the words refused to come for a long time, but that doesn’t feel accurate to me. I wasn’t showing up. I wasn’t preparing a landing strip for the muse. If I’d spent as much time writing as I spent giving myself harsh critical talking-tos about how rubbish I was, this book would have been in the bag a year ago. But that, in what Autocrit would tell me is a redundant collection of words, is past history.
I hate climbing, but for a while I tried to like it. On one particularly memorable occasion, having been lured into the situation by a man I was keen to impress or at least please, I found myself stuck halfway up a sea cliff on the south English coast. When I initially rappelled to the base of the climb, the sea had been out. By the time I became stuck, realising the climb was way above my abilities, the sea had rolled in. I clung to the spot, unable to see or feel a toehold or foothold or handhold. Although it sounds mad, I genuinely believed that I would be stuck there the rest of my life, eventually becoming a desiccated skeleton swinging from a climbing rope, picked at by seagulls, my bones rattling against the rocks.
What was remarkable about it to me was that as long as I said to myself, literally said to myself ‘I can’t do this,’ I couldn’t. My muscles refused to move. But then I spoke out loud - quietly and tremulously, but out loud - and instead said, ‘I can do this, and I have to, and I want to.’ At that moment, the horizon of possibility shifted. It wasn’t some newfound skill or someone else’s dragging me that got me to the top. It was my willingness to take a leap of faith and do what had to be done.
When I joined London Writers Salon in July of 2022, on the cusp of emailing my editor and telling her I was out, that I couldn’t do it, that was the equivalent of ‘I can do this, and I have to, and I want to.’ Every day there was doubt, but every day I moved my muscles, and found toeholds and handholds, and pushed off and pushed up and oftentimes didn’t even know where I was going. But eventually, I found myself at the top.
I know it’s a cliche, but when people say that I’ve done it, I can only say I didn’t do it alone. There are the folks that have always been there, my husband and daughter, my wider family, my best friends, one of whom was such a stalwart, uncompromising support in the face of my relentless and annoying self-doubt that he deserves a medal. But beyond that, and most crucially, I felt supported by literally hundreds of people in Writer’s Hour every day.
I don’t know what to say about that, what I can possibly say, other than I am so grateful for the presence, for the spoken and silent being-with, for the community. All those writers show up to do their own thing, but it was so instrumental for my getting unstuck that it felt like generosity, like they were there for me. And I hope so much that I was able to do and be that for others too.
I’ve got my issues with Thanksgiving. I often don’t know how to feel about it, how to frame it, or what precisely I should aim to be celebrating. This year, I’m very clear.
Thank you. In the best possible way, not in a sea-cliff way, you are my rock.
You are an inspiration! Congratulations on submitting and well done. I see you.
I too am grateful to LWS. You've got this! Keep going!