An open letter …
How life gets in the way
Uh… well… let’s just say it’s, er, going. It was my stock answer. I had it down pat. Over the last 18 months when anyone’s asked how my novel is coming along, I’ve reeled that same reply off with practised pause and a handsome measure of self- deprecation. I imagined it painted a pretty picture. I fancied the tableau of me, struggling valiantly in my writer’s garret, overcoming blocks, surmounting obstacles, battling fatigue in a humble effort to yield some glorious masterpiece. But these past few months have made a liar of me. My novel not so much going as stopped. There is neither dramatic nor even good reason why. I wish there was. That I’d hit a wall, written myself into a grim hole, driven myself into the unforgiving ground. All that happened, though, is after a brief period of profuse output, I decided I’d earned a welldeserved break. And before I knew it, one week had become three, three weeks six, six weeks two months. In truth, life just got in the way.
Oh I know all the wise counsel. Don’t wait to be inspired! Get your arse in that chair! In his infinitely helpful book, The Theatre Writer’s
Guide, Roger Hall advises, “You have to finish. Amateurs stop; professionals finish. It’s up to you which one you are. Statistics say you’ll stop.” A friend with almost three decades in the advertising industry under his belt tells the young things he mentors, “Just keep going.” In reality, he admits, you could apply this edict to any creative project. Actually, I would argue, you could apply it to anything at all. You could apply it to closing bank accounts.
For two long years this very task floundered on my to- do list. It migrated from list to list, never to be crossed off. Until one day recently, the day I happened to have spelled out in my diary in capital letters would be the day I resumed WRITING! I decided to tackle it. Given the choice of picking up where I had left off, 50,000- odd words into my tour de force, or ringing the gym, the power company and the health insurer to request that from now on they deduct their monthly payment from the 00 account rather than the 01, suddenly the prospect of spending 27 minutes on the phone to Watercare listening to Michael Buble seemed wildly attractive.
Not dissimilar to KFC, procrastination is one of those things that seems like a really great idea in the heat of the moment, but ultimately leaves you bloated with dissatisfaction, the fatty, stodginess of guilt lining your mouth. Commiserating with a friend who is tr ying to fit in a PhD around work and children, she said, it must be do- able. That even people with hugely chaotic lives manage to finish their book/ doctorate.
But perhaps that’s the answer. Perhaps it’s precisely because they don’t care that none of the lids match any of the bottoms in the Tupperware drawer or they haven’t yet signed the children up for KiwiSaver that they are so creatively productive. The other day I read an interview with the over- achiever J. K. Rowling. When asked how she fits everything in, she said, “I find it makes life a lot easier if you just forget a lot of the stuff you’re supposed to be doing.” Apparently she prioritises her writing over pretty much everything else. So that’s it. That’s the secret. From now on: children, husband, parents, brother, friends, dog, housework, gym, be dammed.
FOLLOWING ON
After articulating in last week’s column the feeling I have of fading as I age, Deb took me to task for “propagating this myth that women are over the hill when they hit 40”. At 44, she says she is feeling “FANTASTIC!” Apparently she has never been fitter, and keeps “getting checked out all the time by men, including men much younger than me”. Val is 85 years old and confessed she is still attracted to rugby players’ bodies. As for Alan, well he had a question. “Why do you women of a certain age need to supply so much info?”