Under the covers

Accentuating the positive

This may surprise you, but I’m not known for my relentless positivity. Sometimes I think all the humour I have is sucked out into my writing, so that what’s left for my friends and family to enjoy is a grumpy, paranoid husk of a woman – the kind of person you’d probably cross the street to avoid.

I’m also prone to a bit of overthinking. Why have a mild worry when you can have a panic attack? Why have a panic attack when you can have a full-scale nervous breakdown? I mean, if you’re going to do something, you should do it wholeheartedly, right?

That said, since climbing out of the quagmire of anxiety a few years ago (somewhere I’d hung about for about a decade, like an overweight hippo in a too-deep swamp) I do everything in my power to – as the song suggests – accentuate the positive. Because for me, letting a worrying thought enter

my susceptible brain is like allowing a toddler to sit at the top of a fast-moving waterslide and expecting him to remain in place.

You can probably imagine how my 2020 went. It wasn’t exactly the best year was it? Not one we’d like to repeat, or we’ll think back to fondly. So far the only positives I can draw from this annus crapilis are that 1. My rust-heap of a car might actually last another year since I’ve barely had to use it and 2. Wearing a mask means never having to worry when I have a spot. Which I frequently do. Despite being

42. And no, that’s not a poem.

On the plus side, I may not be the best when it comes to positive mindset, but I am a problem solver (sometimes referred to as a busybody or try-hard). I’m good at picking myself up, dusting myself off and finding a way to restart on a better track.

This month – as I continue to wait for a decision on novel 3 – I’ve been taking practical steps to get myself back in the game, and back in the write mindset (see what I did there?).

I’m reading a lot. Novels, but also books about writing.

I’m scribbling ideas into a notebook, but not allowing myself to progress them at this stage. I’m thinking about the kind of writer I want to be, the kind of book I want to write next.

I’m trying to take myself out of the ‘this will definitely be published’ mindset and back to the ‘I just want to write whatever happens’ one that got me here in the first place. Because that’s where my creativity lives.

And despite the continuous curveballs 2020 threw at all of us, I’m beginning to feel uncharacteristically upbeat.