Imagine, if you will, a Rocky VI-type scenario.
Writer, heavily-bearded whilst on retreat in Russian tundra, pins photograph of imagined writing target to mirror and then sets out in wool-lined leather jacket flanked by minders (possibly dramaturgs) who follow said writer up and out across the ever-fiendish terrain of playwriting, struggling to keep up as their weaker pencils and poorly-practiced pens crumble under the pressure, until finally the writer makes a deft turn up a near-sheer mountainside to leave them for dead, topping the summit of their writing target with arms aloft shouting ‘NATIONAL THEATRE PRODUCTIOOOOOON!’ up to the heavens.
Or something.
To get the full effect you can click here and then use your imagination (for me, Dolph Lundgren is probably the second draft: pumped-up, dogged, needs fifteen rounds to finally nail it to the floor. Oh, and I should admit here that I’ve watched that film about fifteen times and used to watch this particular sequence for inspiration before going running as a teenager #EmbarrassingTruthAlert).
None of us have time to write, do we?
There’s too much other work to do.
I can’t afford it.
I need to hoover.
I haven’t had a shower today.
There’s the shopping to do.
My desk needs tidying.
The stationery isn’t right.
My coffee needs topping up.
A six-foot ten blonde Russian trained by the KGB has murdered my great nemesis-turned-mentor Apollo Creed in a boxing ring and I’m busy plotting my revenge and blah blah blah on we go blah blah when we could just sit down and Get The Hell On With It.
Reading the blog post of Christine Entwisle, winner of the BBC Writers Room Radio Drama prize earlier this week, I was reminded of the determination that some of us have / had / are trying to constantly regain, which is propped up with a sometimes shaky scaffold of self-belief. Hers has been a play ten years in the waiting, but she never gave up.
It’s really easy to create the fight around you artificially – to imagine that there are tens and hundreds of other things you should be doing other than writing – but it’s an easy get-out and a one-way ticket to Procrastinationville. I’ve lost count of the number of unfinished projects I’ve got in never-leafed-through foolscap folders on my shelf, which I’m saving for a rainy day ‘just in case’ I need some ideas. Given half an hour – an hour maybe – I’m sure I could start dusting some of those down and rediscover the fire that had them setting me alight when I first began them.
But you know what a real writing fight is?
Being a full-time Mum whilst also fighting off a relentless cold, being heavily pregnant and running a 28-day (no cheating) online blogging course for 28 people, which involves blogging yourself, reading everyone else’s, cheering them on (feedback / encouragement / continuous social media presence) and writing and filming friendly vlogs for them every day too (oh, and writing the full content on how to set up and run a blog in the first place).
All of this you are shoehorning into the 1.5 – 2 hour ‘nap window’ in your own post-lunch-slump-time, or between the hours of 6.00am – 8.30am when your husband can grab the noisy toddler who keeps calling out ‘Mummy not working Mummy needs to give me a cuddle’ and scratching at the study door whilst said Mummy fights off guilt pangs, or in the evening when the large active foetus is repeatedly kicking you in the bladder and your entire body feels like it might explode with exhaustion.
And yet – you keep writing. Creatively, instructively, supportively, digitally.
THAT is fearless and courageous writing. THAT is winning the fight.
I don’t think I’ve ever written with that level of commitment for 28 days.
But my wife has.
I’m not sure how much interest this will be to any of you, but I wanted to share my experience of watching a new writer, full of that unbelievable commitment and dedication to not let herself down: yes, she has people around her who have paid to do her course, but I know she’s doing it just as much to prove to herself that she can do it.
My wife has become what she’d call ‘a proper writer’ in 2015: headlining Mumsnet’s Bloggers Page; receiving 9,000 likes of a piece she wrote for the Huffington Post (the equivalent of selling out a week in the Olivier in terms of audience engagement, I proudly told her a few moments ago) and meeting all her deadlines.
What Lane Learned this week is that there are no excuses. That everybody can win the fight they set themselves. And that – at the end of the day – if you can win the fight against yourself, there’s really nobody else you need to worry about beating.
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