Hi, loves. šæ
It all comes back to the process.
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Last week I had one of those no-good, very-bad days. Absolutely nothing major went wrong, which felt like yet another reason why it should not actually be a bad day, why I should not be sinking into any kind of despair. Nothing was truly wrong! Nothing! We are getting by just fine, managing, living a fun and challenging and lovely and frustrating life, like everyone else, and yet, everywhere I looked ā last week, but truly every single week, every single day ā someone was telling me to lose weight, write more, take a nap! Publish a book, go to a party, buy some pants, cut my hair, fix my marriage, end my marriage, fix my eyebrows, work on my skin, work out more (or at all)! Intermittent fast, cut out gluten, talk it out, walk it out, take another nap, work more, get up earlier, stop drinking caffeine, drink more! Buy this app, buy this subscription, join us! I have the answer!
Itās so noisy out there, on the internet.
Why is there so much advice out there about how to live? And why do I feel compelled to listen to any of it?
Itās almost March, which means weāve been here more than two months, we are more than a quarter way through this British adventure. Every day I wake up feeling the pressure of time. I am wholly cognisant of the fact that I will not have all these hours to write when life returns to its normal Los Angeles shape and pace in August and I should take up every single one of them with full force, I shouldnāt waste a single one onā¦a nap, an afternoon spent reading, a long walk, a coffee with a friend, a saunter into town for a book or a pastry. But the truth is that I need all those things, and I need them desperately, to feel like a whole, sane person.
Iām working on a long project, and part of my bad mood last week had to do with the (quite obvious) realization that this will take years. Years! Of course. You can suddenly have so many more hours in your week and have written, oh, 40,000 words and still be nowhere near clear on what it is youāre doing. (Iām an overwriter rather than an underwriter.) It hit me how unrealistic it was to assume that, come July, Iād have a draft of this thing.
Now, I could have pieces of a draft, or I could have a very messy, unformed thing by July, that is true. I could have the shape? A sense of the characters? I could have enough to feel like I have some sort of grip so I donāt lose it all when I have fewer hours to write? But doing a daily word count for me is useless. I wrote something like 40,000 words and grasped that the story was going nowhere (at least I did grasp that?). I was, still, so many words in, at the very, very beginning phases of this process.
When I decided to attempt this new project, one of my biggest fears was that Iād spend ten or so years, on and off, on something that never got published (again). The idea of repeating that slog felt like a supremely depressing endeavour. When I want to soak in the misery of it, I simply click onto Instagram to see all the people with their shiny book sales and cover reveals and book tours ā even while I know, I KNOW! that they, too, spent years and years and years in the dark, not really knowing what they were doing. This isnāt new territory; itās the story of our age. Donāt compare your insides to other peopleās outsides, etc. Applies to lots more than book writing.
And yet, I knew I wanted to try again, because how else did I really want to spend my time? My brainspace? My creative juices? My intelligence? My heart? My one wild and precious ā you know, you know.
And perhaps what I (still!) know is that the creation part is the best part. It really is! I mean, Iām sure if I ever sell a book Iāll look back at the moment it happened and find that pretty thrilling, too, no doubt, but of course I know that it is the mornings I am now tucked into my secret corner of the library, absorbed in this new world Iām building, that will, eventually, emerge as the most satisfying. Remember when you figured out that something would happen between those two characters? Or when it turned out the story needed to be told from twenty years on? Is there anything better than witnessing things cohere? And God knows how it all happened?! Magic, really.
This isnāt another piece about the creative process and how we should revere it above all else, or at least above āsuccess.ā I will never give up my anti-goals stance, in part because the joy of being inside the art youāre making feels different than ticking off accomplishments. It feels like being underwater, like not needing to bob up to the surface to check on things, you know? It feels like swimming around in the depths and seeing whatās there for us. The minute we swim up and look around and see how far from shore we might be, we are done for ā or at least I am, or at least done for the day (see above).
I want, above all else, for these next few months, to stay underwater. To feel and sense and see the shape of things down there, not the rewards on land, which may or may not come. This might mean making some changes to my daily life (not checking Instagram, for instance? Does it all come back to that!?). It might mean not worrying about the rest of the noisy world and its stupid imperatives ā lose weight, work out, wax my eyebrows, track my steps. It might mean just trusting the process, pushing a little at the edges (going to the library even when I donāt want to) and relaxing in other ways (knowing a day lost is only that: a day). Perhaps it means weighing things differently: this sounds interesting and also Iām not sure what it might look like or really what it means, but maybe itās worth a shot?
Sending love,
Abs xo
Find myself agreeing with so much here! Iām an over writer too I think. Have never thought of it in those terms, more like āone who struggles.ā Lol. Iām really leaning into process more lately and it does hold so much more joy. I think itās where the power is? And I am HERE for long walks. That squirrelly mind needs a very long leash and lots of fresh air.
This captures so much of what I feel lately (just ask my journal). I love the idea of being underwater and staying there. As to all the noiseāsadly, I find getting off Instagram really quiets that for me. I say sadly because thereās a lot I do enjoy about the sm experience. Rooting for you, Abby!!