Turning on the tap
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In the last year, I've done relatively little writing. Granted, I have perhaps rattled off somewhere in the region of a hundred thousand words across several minor, personal projects, none of which will ever see the light of day, but I've done next to nothing on my (hopefully) more commercial works. I have several novel ideas that I want to pursue at the moment. But for one, they're all in their early stages, and not all will make it to a full draft. I'm in a weird phase where I have multiple ideas competing for attention, but none of them are yet quite fully fledged enough to make a concerted sprint for the finish line. I've also had a number of setbacks this year that have caused me to lose both time, motivation and focus. I'm only just starting to 'recover' a little of each now, and the one thing it's made me realise is how much I've missed writing.
Writing isn't a job for me. I don't see it as a chore. I don't earn a living from it, nor do I have the added pressure of needing it to pay the bills. It's a hobby. I can do it as and when I like and have no obligation to do anything at all if I choose not to, or—as has been the case this year—I am unable to. Sometimes having no pressure to write can be a problem in itself. Without the discipline to do so, it's easy to step away from a project and not go back to it. But lately that's less of a concern.
I say it's a hobby, but in reality, it's more than that. It's a passion. I do it for pleasure, certainly, but I also do it out of compulsion too. It's not always fun. At times, it's a genuine struggle, and one I have to force myself through. If it was a hobby, I'd stop at that point. I don't. Okay, sometimes I do. But when I need to get something written, I keep writing. Because, for every one of those difficult days where I'm struggling to hit my one-thousand-word minimum quota, there are dozens of others where things just click and flow, and I get the genuine buzz of creating something new. Then, of course, there's that feeling you get, often many months, or even years, after you originally started, when you finish that first draft of a novel. I can't describe the sense of achievement that comes with it, but I'm not ashamed to admit there have been tears each time.
There is, however, another level to it that I'm growing more and more aware of. I need to write. I've wanted to write since I was a teenager. It was only in my late twenties that, encouraged by a friend, I started to do so seriously. But there is, and has for some time been, something within me now that craves it. Not just for mere enjoyment, but out of a kind of compulsion. When I don't write for any length of time, I start to feel odd. My mind is constantly active. It always has been. I never switch off. Even when I'm utterly drained, at the end of a taxing day, and want nothing more than to sit in a chair and do nothing, my mind is off doing something else. It's concocting ideas. It's making plans. It's deconstructing something. It's figuring out how something else works. I think it's one of the reasons I don’t really watch television. If something isn't well-written enough to draw me in, I'll quickly get distracted and end up not paying attention. I can stare at a television screen and not take in a single thing that happens on it if it doesn't hold my interest, because my mind is doing something else—including sometimes mentally rewriting the screenplay in a way that would have held my attention. But it's this constant mental activity that, I think, is responsible for my story ideas.
In any given situation, I am unwittingly aware of a number of things that might serve as the inspiration for another story. It could be an action, a turn of phrase or just the way something looks. My mind adds in the 'what ifs' and creates situations in which that magical 'twist' or 'maybe' will turn them into a story. In most cases, thankfully, I won't make the connection. Some writers might think me mad for suggesting that I'd rather not receive such inspiration all the time, but hear me out. Because, more often than not, inspiration is all I have. Sometimes I have so many ideas, they give me headaches.
My desire, when an idea strikes, is to write it. It's not a bad desire, of course. It helps to capture these things while they're fresh, rather than letting them stagnate, then later trying to recall whatever it was that had you so excited. That never works. But sometimes there isn't anything I can do with it. Maybe I'm working on another project. Maybe I'm just not in a position to advance it. But that idea will sit, and it will fester. It will build and grow, and spawn other ideas. The only way I can think to describe it is that it creates a kind of backlog. Maybe it's a to-do list that's too long. Maybe it's a box that's too full. It builds like a pressure, until I start to feel uncomfortable—both physically and mentally. And the only way I can cure it is to write.
I can't get every idea down. There are too many. But writing turns on the tap and relieves some of the pressure. By letting some of those ideas pour out onto the page, I'm making the space I need to achieve some level of calm. No doubt, that space will soon fill up again, but so long as I keep writing, that's okay. It's this desire that fuels everything I write and keeps me plugging away towards the next goal. One day, when I'm ready, I'll start submitting my growing portfolio of work to agents in the hope of getting published. Ultimately, that's the dream: to walk into a bookshop and see the product of my labours on a shelf. With that will come deadlines and other pressures that I can look forward to for different reasons. But, right now, I just need to write again. And as scary as that compulsion can be, I'm also excited to see where it will take me next.