Stef Is Writing

Don’t get me wrong, I love an inspirational quote. They make me feel INSPIRED. Sometimes, I write them down! I always listen and nod when someone reads one to me, like I’m already feeling its effect when in actuality, what I’m really thinking is: is this the one? Is this the one that will cut through and speak to me and change my life and pick me up and force the thing I want to happen, to happen? Well, is it?

I have books of them, if you add up all the scraps of paper, scraps of paper that I commit to as thoroughly as I have to any religious screed. Also as fleetingly as I have any to any religious screed. I struggle. I do. I just want the mega-maxim that will instantly (and without any effort on my part) re-jig my life till it makes sense. I want it more than a I want a sportsbra that fits and a printer that works.

But in the meantime, I’ve dithered. In the past year, I have started two novels, a short story that I hoped would turn into a TV series (somehow) and a kind of flash fiction/character study hybrid. Let’s not talk about how many of these I’ve completed. It’s not important right now.

Okay, I’ve completed none of them – mainly because I realised while I was writing that I no longer sounded like me and instead of trying to write a book, I was actually just more concerned with sounding like someone else, someone who has already written a book and then I was hating it, really hating writing. So, and not for the first time, I stopped for a bit. Then felt sad, then wondered why I felt sad and unfulfilled and then went ‘ah’.

I feel sad when I don’t write. I feel sad when I don’t write like myself. So I’m going to write like myself. And I guess in that way, I’ve found my current inspirational quote to live by. I’m ashamed to say it’s one of the old chestnuts the one gets pulled out from the back of the couch when the person charged with inspiring the other can think of nothing else to offer and is possibly trying to get out of the role they find themselves in. It is a bit of a session-ender and allows for a graceful and sage like exit by the inspirer but could feel like a bit of a dull thud for the inspiree. Nonetheless, it works for me right now and it’s from my favourite play and is delivered, ironically, by one of my favourite theatrical dickheads:

Polonius: This, above all: to thine own self be true.

How did he fail to heed his own advice? This is what makes him great and realistic – like me, he doesn’t actually do what the inspirational quote is asking him to. Up until now, that is. So how am I gong to be true to myself and not end up sounding like anyone else and then getting sad and lary?

Here’s a few ideas:

I’m going to limit what I read/watch, especially before I write, so that I don’t carry the ‘ghost of another (whhoooo) into my own writing.

I’m going to keep this blog going as a space to monitor my progress; for accountability, but also to come back to my own writing voice if I think it’s going astray.

I understand that not every writing session will involve writing – the well has been dry for a while and so some of this time will be spent doing things that are writing adjacent. There will be no word count targets.

I might use a template (Plottr, anyone?) so that I can focus on writing and not get lost in plot holes – something simple, plausible – I struggle with structure and I think it is the most common reason for me developing self-doubt and sacking a project off before its time.

I will just kept writing. Not reading back. but ask myself at the end of each session: is this still me? Is this still my voice that’s speaking? Or a tribute band bid at Marian Keyes/Zadie Smith/whoever else I have just read?

Well, that’s the plan. And I lay it down here like a founding stone.