10 Reasons/Lame Excuses for Not Writing

1. I've just moved countries and am unsettled (can milk this one for months and months...)
2. The cats are in quarantine and I can't possibly write without them (another 5 months' shelf life for this excuse)
3. My new study is an unfamiliar place, I can't write here until I feel totally comfortable (Yes, right, I can write in any cafe but not my own workspace?)
   
4. I've got far too much to do with the Short Review (I have a great deputy editor, so really can't use this one)
5. I do lots of writing-related things (Hmm, this old one...)
6. I am in a fallow period and should be gentle with myself (ah, this is good, can use this one a lot)
7. I'm still working on promoting my book (Oh, come on, it's been 13 months, get over it...)
8. I write very very short stories so don't need very long to do it, I can always do one later (Yes, but I want to write longer stories, so I need to get down to it...)
9. I don't know what I want to write (If I wait for this, I'll never write again...)
10. Because it's the thing I most want to do and so, being contrary, I'm not going to do it. (I don't get this at all....but it's a strong one)

Hard to concentrate

It's hard to get anything done when you can hear warplanes flying over. When you keep being pulled to the news pages to see about the hell that's breaking loose a few hundred miles away, if that. So, what do you do? You write about it. You let all the sadness and the despair out in your fiction, in an odd way, backwards and sideways, with other people, not you, and other war and violence. Does it help? Not really, because this thing is still going on. But it's all I can do. That is what there is. And this is how I process it. Or escape from it. What a terrible world we live in. And what an awful thing to have to say. May the New Year bring something else, something better, calmer.

Here's what makes me happy

Thinking about happiness, what it means for me, it's not the hourly check on Amazon UK to see where I am ranked. It's not reading the few reviews of my book that have said lovely things. It's not submitting stories to magazines and competitions.

No.

It's reading my own writing. That makes me so happy. Maybe because it shows me I can. Maybe because I write mostly for myself, I write the sorts of things I want to read, and so my writing is tailor-made for me and I love it, love all my "children", even if they are a little bent and squished.

I haven't written anything for a while (see earlier Distraction post), and have been very reluctant to even visit my works-in-progress. A real physical reluctance, stemming from a "What if they are really actually awful?" But I just managed to fight all procrastination and take a look at the one work-in-progress that I am the most excited about, a piece of writing that is undefined, a novelty for me. I have been trying to write a film script, I have a great idea for a beginning, but no more. So instead of plotting it out etc.., I thought I would get to know my protagonist a bit better, follow her around. This is what this "piece of writing" is, me "riffing". And because I hadn't defined it with any weighty titles like "short story" or "plot synopsis", I let myself go, I wrote loosely, I had fun.

I just read what I've written, 2880 words, which (as those of you who know me will appreciate) is very very long! And I have just got to, in screenplay terms, the "inciting incident". And I love it. The voice is different from anything I've done before, it's not my protagonist's voice, it's a fairly sarky omniscient narrator who is hopping around into various people's heads. It's fun. But it's also got what I was trying to get at, a kind of darkly comic aspect. To me, anyway. This makes me very happy. And I didn't put any pressure on myself to write. Just read it.

Lovely. I feel all warm and fuzzy now. Why don't I do this more often? (ahhh, the nagging voice....)

Not taking it all too seriously

In latest news, my book is currently out of stock in the UK (copies are frantically being printed) and therefore I have slipped to number 15 and been overtaken by that sneaky clock radio in the Amazon Bestselling Short Stories list!

I am actually very grateful to whoever mis-categorized the Sony ICFC318S Clock Radio as a Japanese short story collection because it has meant that I just laugh at the whole thing and can not take seriously whatever this bestselling stuff means. Because otherwise, I might start thinking things about me and about my writing. And I'd rather not. So that's good.

On the subject of laughing and of distraction, I giggled out loud at the comment made by Annie Clarkson, (whose beautiful collection, Winter Hands, I reviewed here) on my previous post that "distraction is the new black". And then I remembered: I had pretty much said this myself, in my post a few months ago entitled "Focus, Insight and Creativity, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Scrabulous". My thesis, backed up by the New Yorker, was something to do with not focussing on what you're trying to do. My blog post ended with a quote:

"If you want to encourage insight, they you've also got to encourage people to relax."

Thanks, Annie, for reminding me about what I, apparently, already knew!

Giving up and going with the distraction

OK, so today has been crazy, what with the LA Times blog mention and the Amazon Bestseller list (currently holding at No 10, above the alarm clock, finally), and a query to my publisher from a radio producer who might want to interview me. I've decided I am not going to fight it anymore. I'm not going to try and pretend that life is normal, and feeling appalling guilty for not writing anything new - or working on my stories at all.

I am going to fully and utterly: BE DISTRACTED

From now on I am officially: distracted.

Not one foot in distraction and one foot swinging wildly around trying to find a place to land. Both feet in. I have committed.

It takes a year, they tell me, after your book comes out, before you can get down to work again - what with the constant thoughts of "How do I sell? How do I persuade people to buy it?", the reviews - whether they be positive, balanced or negative - the updating of the websites, the checking of Sitemeter to see who has visited the website, the answering of the questions on Virtual Book Tours, the complaining on my blog.... Time-consuming!

It feels good to have given in to it instead of fighting it. Maybe I will write something. But that will be a bonus. I have plenty to do - The Short Review is always there, and now I have 12 students who will shortly be sending work for critique, which is a wonderful new challenge, both of those being short-story related without involving me writing stories. I am in the field I want to be in, with the most exciting things happening on a daily basis. I just received a card from a friend with wishes for a great and successful 2009, and I thought, well, 2009 is going to have to try very hard to beat 2008!

Officially Distracted Writer Signs Off.

Short review guest blog post: Sarah Salway On Doing Nothing

(Cross-posted with The Short Review blog)
I am delighted to be hosting the wonderful Sarah Salway today on this and The Short Review blog, with her inspiring thoughts about writing & Doing Nothing.

To drift = to trust

To get lost = to discover new things

To do nothing = to recharge

Let’s take your average writer. OK, let’s take me. I am an A* worrier, a textbook Virgo, and more than slightly driven. I love deadlines, daily writing practice, word counts, goals. I take on too many projects and like nothing better than ticking items off my to-do list.

And, from conversations I’ve had with other writers, I’m not alone. The myth of us all sitting alone in our rooms day after day communing only with the page is, I’m convinced, exactly that. A myth. Just hearing about most other writers’ timetables exhausts me but mine is just as bad. When I started writing fiction, I was also juggling bringing up two small children and a part time job. I remember being asked at a reading whether I had any writing rituals, and going completely blank because, at that time, having the iron will and self-discipline to get to the computer was celebration enough. Sharpening three pencils before I started writing, or going for a long walk would have tipped me over the edge, let alone picking fleas from my cat (Colette) and finding a lover who would strip naked so I could use his back as my writing desk (Voltaire).

But, surprise, surprise, I’ve discovered recently that I can’t keep up the pace forever. The well runs dry. And so I’ve discovered the joy of stopping. Not for ever, of course, but just two or three days of doing nothing is enough to sort me out. Not sitting at my desk doing nothing (I do a lot of that anyway). Or reading on the beach (lovely as that may be). Or even the residencies, or retreats, or writing courses, which all have a structure and are infinitely valuable, but are different. No, what’s seems to work for me is that I go somewhere I don’t know, where I’m not known and where I don’t need to make an effort so I can fall into a state of mild gloominess without anyone trying to cheer me up.

A city is best for this kind of anonymity. Drizzly Dublin was my first illicit do-nothing break, although it didn’t start as such. In fact, I had a busy timetable of networking arranged, but hours after I arrived, I developed a strange puffiness around the eyes which carried on puffing up until it took over my whole face. Really. I tried to ignore it, but when a woman in a café took one glance at me and moved quickly to another table, I cancelled all my plans and instead lurked in the corners of art galleries, the dusty shelves of second hand bookshops, the back row of a lecture. I avoided eye contact and barely spoke. I seemed to be using as little energy as possible, spending more than an hour scribbling notes in my journal about just one painting, rather than racing round the whole gallery. Then I walked slowly, in a funk of self-induced self-pity (is there any other kind?), round the park, watching happy couples, and formulated a story about the painting in my head. Back at my hotel room, I wrote this up in longhand.

Slowly, slowly.

By the next day, at one of those free talks all museums seem to offer, I had become so much part of the background that the speaker skipped over me when he went round the room asking everyone where they were from. But from under my invisible cloak, I watched a father laugh with his two teenage daughters throughout the whole lecture and spent lunchtime making notes abut them in my journal. I wandered round shops where I brought nothing, barely looked at anything because I was thinking about who those girls’ mother might be. And then walking, walking, walking the streets, I started a conversation with her in my head. Back in my hotel room, once again, I wrote it all up in longhand.

Back at home, it took much longer to click back into my everyday life than if I’d rushed around as I normally did. Weeks later, I was still thinking about my mood in Dublin and what was it that had inspired me so much. Because on the surface, I must have looked miserable, I actually felt pretty miserable much of the time. I definitely mooched rather than stepped out purposefully with an agenda and guidebook in hand, but something was happening underneath. I left Dublin after three days with three stories in my notebook which, for me, is pretty spectacular. It felt as if I’d stopped the world for a while.

In Rebecca Solnit’s collection of essays, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, she quotes Walter Benjamin. ‘Not to find one’s way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance – nothing more,’ he says. ‘But to lose oneself in a city – as one loses oneself in a forest – that calls for quite a different schooling.’ She goes on to say that, under Benjamin’s definition, to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery.

I think this is it. I surrendered to, rather than trying to organise, the experience. I gave myself up to a state of suspension I can’t normally achieve even when I put time aside for writing. This year, I’ve been on a two-week residency with nothing to do but write and that was an amazing experience. However, I still had people to speak to in the evenings. There was no way I got lost in the same way.

My trip to Dublin was three years ago, and in my mind I still flick back to my bank of images from those few day. It was something I remembered all over again this summer, where I found myself unexpectedly in Minneapolis with two and a half days to kill, and absolutely nothing to do.

I’d been taking part in an arts project in Iowa, a state I hadn’t expected to like but found beautiful. It made me want to see more of the mid-west, and as I couldn’t see myself coming back there any time soon, I decided to base myself in Minneapolis – my stop-over point – for my last few days in America, and organise some day trips to explore new areas. I would do this, and this, and this, and that. I looked over maps on the internet, searched out travel times and asked for recommendations.

But when I got to my anonymous hotel room, I wasn’t sure if this was the best use of my unexpected free time. Could I be brave enough to do nothing again?

‘Order room service and write, write, write,’ a friend suggested via email. But remembering Dublin, I set out to get lost in the city again. This time, luckily, my skin didn’t puff up alarmingly but I still became happily invisible.

And, as with Dublin, I felt my internal clock shift. I woke late, and went to bed late. What I would fit into an average half hour at home, having a cup of coffee say, took hours. I walked everywhere whereas at home I might cycle or take a bus to save time. Within a frighteningly short time, I got used to not talking, not least because I didn’t have anything to say. My mind hadn’t exactly shut down, but it had turned inside.

If I hadn’t have known I was going to be catching a plane back, then I might have got worried at how easily I adapted to silence and anonymity, but as it was, I was safe dropping into a temporary chrysalis.

The work I’d brought with me to edit and work on stayed in my suitcase. After a day I didn’t even take notes in my journal. I watched couples and groups sitting outside bars, having food, coffee, conversation almost as if they were another breed. I wandered aimlessly, got lost in back streets and found myself again almost by accident.

On the plane home, I sat next to a man from Minneapolis. ‘So what did you see?’ he asked enthusiastically. ‘Did you go to St Pauls? See the shopping mall? The Modern art gallery?’ I shook my head so many times, I started to wonder if I should lie just to please him. I’m still not sure why I didn’t just tell him the truth. ‘I did nothing. I mooched around like one of those teenagers you want to tell to snap out of it. And it was wonderful.’

OK, as a way of life, it’s not terrific. Even as an artist’s date, I’m not sure it would come up to scratch, and I definitely wasn’t good company - sullen, silent, mouse-like, lacking in all initiative and avoiding all the coolest bars to hang out in, but I know now that getting lost, doing nothing, allowing myself to get gloomy, is as much a part of my writing process as setting word counts and deadlines. As Vladimir Nabokov writes in Pale Fire: The lost glove can be happy too.

Sarah Salway blogs at Sarah's Writing Journal. Read The Short Review's review of her short story collection, Leading the Dance.

6 days to go...and I have found Wordscraper!

My most heartfelt gratitude and undying love to Sara, who introduced me to Wordscraper on Facebook, basically the Scrabulous' creators dodgy way to keep Scrabulous by another name, and slightly alter the rules. Yay! Distraction is back! Now I can write....I feel so relieved.

Just had an email from my lovely publisher, Jen, at Salt. The books arrive today, and she'll zip me over a copy so I can wake up with it on Sept 1st. Can't wait. It's real. It's really real. Ok, shut up.

I also sent her the list of 15 or so very wonderful people who have asked for/agreed to receive review copies in order for them to say something about my book, including the already-mentioned and always-fabulous Sara (Sara, today's blog post is all you you you). I am deeply thrilled at the prospect of reviews, but also curious and nervous to see what they might say. I don't expect all of them to like all of it, or even some of them to like all of it... I think I'd even be disappointed if the reviews weren't in some way less than positive. I encourage my Short Reviewers to be honest, fair, balanced, and several authors who have received these sorts of reviews have written to thank me, and the reviewer, for the honesty. I believe myself - pre-review - to be one of this kind of author, and would like the chance to find out. Bring it on!

7 days to go... and no distractions...help!!

Ok, this is a disaster. After I come up with my amazing theory about the power of Scrabulous on Facebook to help me with my writing by distracting my demons, it's gone. Scrabulous. Shut down. Suddenly, Saturday night, I log in to carry on the games I was playing. Nothing. My fingers are itching and twitching, and there's nothing I can do!

So, ok, I decide to turn to other distractions... namely, Prison Break. I had just started Season 3. I really enjoyed the first two seasons. Then, this morning, a few episodes in, the love interest is suddenly killed. Beheaded, in fact. And I thought, Oh come on! That's it for me. I can't watch any more. It was preposterous anyway, but this was just plain ridiculous. It was done so badly, no lead up, nothing. I really liked her. So, no more Prison Break.

What's a girl to do now? I am trying for a sugar-free week, so chocolate is out. Blogging, thankfully, is still an option. I need some escapism, I can't just write and think about writing ALL day... and this week, with 7 days to go til P-Day, I was going to take it easy, not put too much pressure on myself to work. Now what?

Can't write, won't write

I can't write today. Nothing. Not a word. I don't think it has anything to do with the unpleasant episode of last week, because thankfully and with exquisite timing it was followed swiftly by the acceptances of four of my flash stories by two different magazines. And when, due to previously mentioned unpleasant episode, I wrote back to make sure I would be able to see the final versions of the stories before being printed or put up on the web, both editors were so understanding (one, the delightful Colin of the Ranfurly Review, making my week by saying that "no, I won't be altering your work. It's too fine to tamper with. :-)") that I immediately realized that what had happened to me was, thankfully, an aberration. That most literary magazines have an ethical code that dictates that a writer will always be asked for approval of edits.

I want to be clear here: I am not saying that my work is untouchable, perfect. I am not saying that it does not need editing, would not benefit from editing. I have had some amazing editors who have suggested edits that most definitely improved the stories. And I have welcomed - and do welcome - this wholeheartedly. But it is, as someone mentioned in a comment below, a partnership, writer and editor together.

Ok, enough. I am trying to put this behind me. But, nevertheless, I can't write right now. I don't get writer's block. Never have. It's just laziness, really. Laziness and Scrabulous. Or the weather - a storm is whipping up outside my window. Or the lack of chocolate. Or many many reasons. Not all beyond my control. So I should pull myself together. I should. OK. I am going to. Yes I am. Here I go. Bye. I'm going now.

Podcasts, the gym, and other distractions

Why am I not writing as much as I want to? Well, here are a few reasons:

Podcasts

Yes, I may be the last person in the Western World, but finally I too am the proud owner of a cute little just-bigger-than-an-aspirin iPod Nano 3G. I resisted for so long, but then succumbed because I realised that working out in the new gym I just joined (more on that later) would be a lot more bearable with my own music rather than the booming soundtrack the gym favours. Little did I know that it wouldn't be music that I would be listening to but... Podcasts. How amazing they are! In a few days I have found the BBC Radio 5 Book Panel with Simon Mayo, Guardian Books Podcast, the NewYorker Fiction podcasts, Radio 4 Front Row Highlights,, the NY Times Book update, the NewScientist podcast,
, Ny Times Talks, and the The BBC World service World Book Club!

Heaven... There I am on the treadmill, pounding away, an interview with Phillip Pullman going on in my head, or giggling to Simon Mayo and friends reviewing a book about Genghis Khan, or Jumpa Lahiri reading and discussing a William Trevor short story that was published in the NewYorker thirty years ago.

The thing is, I pretend that this is all research. It's book talk, isn't it? Writers, readers, reviews.... But when does it become all research and no writing? This is dangerous stuff, this podcasting business. Will the novelty wear off?

The Gym

This is also dangerous, and not because I might pull something. No... it's dangerous because that little voice in my head says, Oh no, you can't write now, you have to go and get fit, nothing more important than that. Well, actually, there is something that is just as important to me. Going to the gym might make me feel good, boost my mood, take a few cms off the hips, but it wears me out, doesn't exactly ready me for a good hour or two's writing. It's distraction, wrapped up as something else.

Yes, writing this blog is also distraction, but I only allowed myself to do it after I had written the beginning of something new (that I then deleted by mistake but actually was quite happy about, since it wasn't going anywhere, but it served its purpose by getting the juices flowing), edited one story and submitted it, and started rewriting another story as a flash (love doing this... it really helps). Discipline. I need more of it.

What stops you from writing?

OK, back to it.

magazines that make me happy

Ok, so I can't write right now. I haven't really been able to write anything since the news about my collection. V says that's normal. I don't call it writer's block. I'm not fighting it. I left the house a few hours ago with my laptop, thinking that I might try something. But then I found my letterbox full of goodies... and that was the end of that!

Here's what I got (not in order of preference):

Bravissimo's latest catalogue: bras, bras and more! This is heaven for the, err, more well-endowed of us who were fed up of heavy-duty scaffolding underwear. Lovely colours, all sorts of styles, tops with built in bras - even a raincoat customized to your bra size. Ahhhhhh, makes me very happy.

Bomb magazine: I entered this mag's short story comp and for my entry fee got a year's subscription. My first issue - Issue 100 - landed in the post box today, and what a beautiful looking mag it is. Lots of stunning artwork, articles about artists interviewed by artists, and a literary supplement with short stories and poems. I read a short short, very quirky, not at all what I would call "typical American short fiction", which thrills me! I am saving the rest of it for the 'plane ride on Monday to NY.

Seed magazine: So, if the first two speak to my shopping and literary sides, Seed talks to the scientist in me. But it's no ordinary science magazine, it's attempting hip & cool science and I think it's doing very well. Features on Roboethics, the meaning of life ( no less) and a review of the Museum of Time in France. Will be saving this for the plane, too.

Bitterness, Guilt and Shame

Part of me is ashamed to even write this blog, but I think it may help so I will get it onto the page. I went out for some fresh air and ended up sitting in a local cafe with a cup of tea and the latest issue of the Stinging Fly. As is my wont, I turned first to the Contributors Page, and took a look at where the 22 writers were coming from and who'd done what. One writer's name was familiar from something else I had read today, so I decided to Google her on my cellphone (yes, fancy one with Internet, just adds to time wasted). Through various digressions from this author etc.., I ended up on Fish Publishing's Alumni page, where they have followed up on those who have won or being finalists in their competitions, to see where the accolade took them next.

As I read the descriptions of how each writer had gone on to win more, to be published, to release collections, etc.. etc..., I found to my disgust that a wave of bitterness was rising up inside me. It swelled until I became, frankly, distressed. I desperately didn't want to read of other writers' achievements and feel bitter, so my ensuing guilt and shame compounded the feeling. I stopped, switched off the phone, and sat there with my tea, thinking about why I was feeling this way.

I quickly realised that it was not that I was reading about their success and thinking

"Why them??"

but that what was buzzing through my brain was:

"When me? When me??"

The mere asking of that question then opened the floodgates and what came rushing through was "you, you'll never get there, you'll never make it, they're great writers, who do you think you are, why do you even bother", a whole stream of self-doubt and flagellation.

I paid for my tea and walked slowly home, forming this blog post in my head, knowing I needed to get it all out there. What do I make of this? On the one hand, I definitely do not want to write in order to win things, to see my name on a myriad of publications, to make money. I want to write because I need to write, because I feel ill if I don't, because what I write makes me laugh, moves me.

Yet.

Yet, I have a Word document on my hard drive, a table with a list of everything I have submitted stories to, and all the upcoming deadlines, and that list is growing, I add to it daily, and daily I check through the publications, the competitions, to see if they've announced, I check several times a day, I constantly refresh the pages to make sure they are up to date, I click and click - and it is making me crazy. This isn't what it is about. It isn't, is it?

And I have an agent. Well, I have been in touch with an agent for a few years. But nothing is moving on that front. I know it is because she believes I am not ready, my material isn't ready. And I know she's right. I don't have enough stories I love passionately to put in a collection. But still... I feel a rush, I want it now, I want it all.

So, do I delete this document? Do I forget about the agent? Do I stop sending off stories? Do I shut myself off from potential readers and just write?

I feel I am in a real transition period now - a few months ago, three or so, I stopped working as a journalist to try and write short stories full time. I am now a full time short story writer. This means I write for two hours a day, on the good days, but the joy of it is that I don't have a head full of editors clamouring for articles, of people I have to phone and interview, of technologies I have to look up on the Internet and try to understand. No, all that is in my head are stories, characters, ideas. And it's bliss.

So perhaps I need the bitterness and the guilt and the self-doubt to push me, because no-one else is pushing me. Perhaps in moderation the negativity will keep prodding me to do it. Moderation, that is the key. I have to keep positive. I have to have other writers around me, physically and spiritually, in person and on line.

I feel a little better now. Not fully. It's still inside me, all of it. It will take a while to dissipate. Maybe I can turn it into something, maybe I can work with it. We will see.

I imagine I am not the only writer who feels this way. Of course not. If anyone is out there and has some words of advice, wants to tell me to quit whining and just get on with it, be my guest! I need it!