On writing: the dream that won't let me go

I’m ten days into the process of trying to unblock myself as a writer and a creative in general. A week ago, I went to an abstract painting class, and yesterday, I went to a pole fitness class for the first time ever. I left class last night shaking and euphoric; I had tried something that I have been curious about off and on for a while, something with an incredible friend of mine shared a video of herself doing at the end of 2019, which I wrote down as an activity I’d like to try this year.

Just fourteen days into the new year and I made it happen! I’m kind of impressed with myself, but I also feel like some form of grace has visited me. This doesn’t all feel like my doing. Wherever this momentum is coming from (it may have something to do with the Pig year coming to an end and me wanting to ride the last wave of Piggy energy, the way a kid frantically climbs the stairs to the water flume one last time before they close for the day), I am grateful.

Today, I have decided to publish a piece of writing which I did in my phone a couple of months ago on Tuesday 29th October 2019. I went to a local Starbucks feeling incredibly restless and anxious, knowing that I had to write. I had to break through the inertia somehow. Today I am sharing this as part of the ongoing process of reflecting on what it means to me to be a writer, to be in ‘creative recovery’, if you want to call it that. I have a feeling that this topic – writing – is one I’m going to come back to over and over. When i read the words I wrote in October, they resonate. I hope they do for you, too.

* * *

This is something I have been wrestling with for a long time: wanting to use my voice to fill online space and, in my wildest dreams, printed pages, with words written by me, expressing something from the very depths of my soul. I want to be a writer.

In my dream life, I also stand at an easel. My fingers are stained with paint. In this version of my life, the world has dances in it danced by me, books and essays written by me, maybe even performances performed by me. Over and over again, I see other people taking up space, their essays in my inbox, their books on my shelves, their podcasts in my feed. I have a history of putting my words and voice into the ether, where other people welcome it. But I have not been massively consistent and in the last few years I have done very little. 

The scary thing is realising that it really is down to me to make this happen. 

I have a fantasy that there is another way, that somehow I won’t have to be the proactive agent but can somehow ride the wave and allow this thing to just flow through me. The story in my mind is as follows: one day I will become so absolutely consumed with urgency, the way that I was so absolutely brought to my knees when I hit rock bottom aged 18, that I will be unable hold myself back from creating. I know that there are people in the world for whom this is the case (side note: I really love that prepositional phrase. “For whom.” It has such a lovely ring to it). I just don’t think that I am one of them. 

* * *

Lately I have taken to writing on my phone. There is something about the smallness of the screen that lessens the fear of the overwhelming white space that can rise up when sitting in front of a word document. I am convinced my writing is better when done in a confined space.

Today, I am writing. I don’t know if I will keep this up. But I do feel something bubbling away within me. Like a small child tugging at my arm, repeating my name over and over. Elloa, Elloa, Elloa, Elloa, Elloa! The child who will not leave me alone. The unborn creations, waiting for the space to exist. 

I spend so much time obsessing and pessimistically deciding that the world is so full already of books and articles and newsletters that there cannot possibly be room for more, then noticing the familiar twisting churn of envy in my stomach when I see new books in the bookshops, new newsletters in my inbox, new articles making their way around social media. I obsess so much about whether there is space “out there” for my work that I do not make space to even create my work. It’s lunacy, really. I use the very real, unavoidable truth that we are drowning in information and “content” as an excuse to excuse me from the hard, anxiety-inducing, painful, rewarding, fulfilling work of showing up and creating stuff.

Over and over, I come back to the same dream. I want to write. I want to be a writer. I want to write what feels true. I want to contribute my voice, experience and perspective. Over and over, I circle around the same monotonous dialogue. I’ve been having this conversation with myself for years. From time to time, and indeed recently, Steven Pressfield’s opening refrain from The War of Art goes around in my head:

Are you a writer who doesn’t write? A painter who doesn’t paint? 

Yes, Steven. Yes I am. 

I think it’s time to stop expecting that a mystical fork in the road is going to appear, to stop waiting for something to happen to me, something beyond my control, some divine intervention, something I literally cannot resist. I have been waiting a long time for that and honestly, even though I used to be in multiple twelve step addiction recovery programs, have only ever experienced that depth of spiritual intervention once.

Instead, I need to get really honest. If I want to write, then write I must. If I choose not to, it doesn’t mean that this thing isn’t important enough to me. It IS important to me. There are a lot of reasons why I avoid it. Despite what the aggressive life coaches tell us about prioritising (that if you don’t prioritise it, it mustn’t actually matter to you that much), the truth for me at least is that it’s scary to have a dream. It’s scary to allow myself to feel the longing I carry to see my name on the front of a book. It’s scarier still to let my imagination wonder what it might be like to have that book reach a wide audience or land on some sort of bestseller list. The ultimate dream I suppose would be to hit the New York Times list. Can you even imagine?! I can, but only just - and I’m not lying when I say that it really feels like it would only ever be a fantasy. [Today - 15th January 2020 - it feels very vulnerable to share this dream with you. I’m not sure I should. It is so fragile still, like a tiny baby bird who hasn’t learned to use its wings or even stand on its spindly little legs yet.]

No. Despite what the life coaches say - that “If you’re not making it happen then it really isn’t your priority” - I am coming to see this conundrum from a different perspective. That’s the thing about life. You can ask all the clever, powerful questions you like, but certain insights only arise from or land in the depths of our being with the passing of time. I am 36 years old now, and I am starting to become aware that regret is a very real possibility on my horizon. I’m thinking less about waiting for a moment of divine intervention, and more about how it will feel to be fifty and to know that I created a fraction of what was in my heart. Just today, I have had four ideas for articles. Over the years, I have had hundreds, and most of those, I never wrote. 

Time passes, and the idea moves on. Or I do. Either way, there is a missed opportunity. 

Another roadblock I bump up against is the idea that I need to write something that will change the world. No pressure! The truth of course is that we are all always changing the world, and that some people - Greta Thunberg, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Ellen DeGeneres, Beyoncé, Meghan Markle - find themselves household names across the globe for their contributions, however welcome or unwanted those contributions are. But today, when I bought a tea in Starbucks, I asked the barista what his dream is. He told me. It was beautiful. His eyes lit up. He wasn’t just a barista in that moment. He was a young man, studying architecture in a foreign country because in his heart there is a dream. That conversation, just like the ones happening all over the world, change it. 

So as much as I dream of hitting some mythical bestseller list with a book written by me, and all the accompanying ideas and fantasies I have about how that will feel, the real thing I want is to keep doing this. To keep showing up. Today, I have. The mystery is how to get myself to do it tomorrow. I’m grateful for the child tugging internally on my arm. “Elloa. Elloa. Elloa. Elloa. Elloa.” For the dream that won’t let me go. Perhaps one day I will look back and see that this, like that fateful day when I was 18, was indeed a turning point.  

Perhaps. 

(Image by Aaron Burden, via Unsplash. Thank you, Aaron.)