I am, I think, finally ready to write
WRITING — CREATING OF ANY KIND — TAKES COURAGE.
Because of that, it is hard. We writers know this, whether we are currently in or out of the habit of writing. I am writing this to you as a blocked writer. I am admitting it because I do not want to watch another year of my life pass by in which I haven’t written the things that tug at my consciousness, asking to be written. Asking to be written by me.
Over the weekend, I sat in a coffee shop with my 2020 “goals” journal and noticed a new kind of feeling arise from within me. In previous years, I have set goals because I knew it was the thing to do, but I have rarely committed myself to the one thing that I want to do with my life. When I have, it has been in service of other people’s books (I’ve ghost written or contributed to nine or ten by now) or bodies of work. But writing my own stuff? Daring to admit to the dream of building my own body of work, and committing to making that happen? I have avoided it pretty masterfully, if I say so myself, building a wonderful life and even a burgeoning career full of meaningful projects (more on that another day).
YET WRITING IS ONE OF THE FEW THINGS WITHIN THIS REALM OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE THAT WILL NOT LET ME GO.
And at the weekend, as that feeling arose within me, I recognised it as something that I have not been able to manufacture or catalyse for myself in around half a decade. And believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve spent a lot of money and time trying to mobilise myself into action. Yet somehow, of its own accord, as if it existed completely independently of my will, there it was on Sunday 5th January in the morning, alive and fresh and awaiting my response. A feeling of readiness, a quiet sense of commitment that propelled me to mark in ink the goals I am going to work towards this year. Headphones on, I felt something as I wrote my goals down that I never normally feel when I do ‘forced’ goal setting: a quiet feeling of certainty. A confidence that, probably for a multitude of reasons, something in me is ready to commit to this. I’m not going to spend ages explaining the backstory. Instead, I want to tell you what I’m going to do here in this space:
My goal is to write and publish 500 words a day (at least) for the rest of January.
I’M DOING THIS SO I CAN GET UNBLOCKED. I’M DOING THIS SO I CAN BE A WRITER WHO WRITES.
I’ve taken this approach before, with yoga. Nothing too drastic; just 15–20 minutes a day. Within a year, I had notched up hundreds of practices and yoga had become a part of my life. It didn’t last forever — right now, I am massively out of practice — but little and often is key for me to building a habit into my life.
At the end of January, if I write 500 words a day, I’ll have racked up 12,000 or so words. They may not be good. They may not be worth reading (although I hope some of them are). The point, however, is that they will be mine. They will have come from me and through me and out into the world. It is hard and painful to be a blocked writer, just as it is hard and painful to be a runner who doesn’t run or a painter who doesn’t paint. It is easier, in my experience, to be a writer who writes than one who doesn’t. Resistance is exhausting. A life lived in resistance — even if it is in one area — is a life in which there is a constant nagging sense that you’re not quite doing what you’re here to do.
So here I am. After years of talking and envy and self-compassion and waiting, I am, I think, finally ready. I often think of Steven Pressfield’s description of resistance:
“From age twenty-four to thirty-two, Resistance kicked my ass from East Coast to West Coast and back thirteen times and I never knew it existed.”
If I do not act, I am at risk of turning forty years old in a few years’ time and having no body of work to call my own. I do not want that. I am desperate to let all the stuff that is within me out. The world is full of people’s creations. Some are good, others are, let’s face it, pretty crap (I’m particularly thinking of all the consumerist tat that fills many a shop shelf, things humans somewhere spent minutes or hours creating which serve little to no useful purpose at all).
If I can give myself permission to create, I am pretty sure that, like most people with bodies of work, there will be some things that are better than others — but there will definitely be more than if I just do nothing.
So here’s to the journey. To showing up, making time for what matters, and finding the courage to press publish. If you read this, thank you, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
(My latest posts are shared first and foremost on my website, elloaphoenixbarbour.com. A week later they’ll appear here).
