Image: this is not me, but it’s how
I sit and I love her boots.
This May, for the first time in a decade, I have time to write. I want to create a portfolio of new short fiction, generate a longer work (and submit it), and help someone in my family write their memoir. Usually, my time is gobbled up by the day job and supporting a large family — which is good, but doesn’t help my fiction — so this feels like a “once in a lifetime” opportunity!
I’ve done some prep work. Last summer, I enjoyed Tom Vowler’s 6-week short fiction course which I would recommend (lots of great content, challenges, and a solid reading list). I have some drafts from that course still waiting for my editorial attention.
In February, I spent a productive hour watching Kirsty Logan’s W&A masterclass: Writing Memoir: Where to Start and Where to End — I’ve included the link in case it runs again. This course challenged the spread of the memoir, and completing even just a couple of short exercises gave me new paragraphs and a renewed sense of focus. (I’m not writing a memoir, but I’m trying to help someone who is, and wanted to be present with constructive ideas.)
In March, my son introduced me to Forest, a cute timer app. If I sit at my desk, write, take a call from a business partner, answer the door, bandage someone’s hurt finger, make a coffee and start writing again, I can’t expect the output to be the same as if I simply sit and write.
Forest is really just a cute stopwatch, but I like planting little trees and I think I’ll find it useful. Like many professionals, a lot of my interruptions are “real” — important, urgent, and worthwhile — but nevertheless, they are interruptions from the purist (and not always realistic) perspective of professional output. In the coming weeks, Forest will tell me how much time I’ve spent writing, versus prep/training/planning, finding publications, or brewing espresso… I hope I’ll always be there with the finger bandage, but many of the other distractions can and should wait.
In April, just a couple of weeks ago, I woke up in the wee small hours with a story idea, and tapped it into Whatsapp. At 1am, it felt like the best idea in the world, by morning it felt stupid, and by the next afternoon, it looked like something I could work with. Writing’s like turning eggs into cakes — you go through some weird, inedible-looking stages, and it’s best not to over-think.
And now, it’s May, and I have two months to get productive. I’ll posts updates here… wish me luck?
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