PhiNoWriMo Update #1
Or: How I Learned It's OK Not To Do The Thing Sometimes
If you’re just tuning in, PhiNoWriMo is short for “Phil’s Novel Writing Month” — when I challenged myself to write as many words as I could over the course of November. Last year, by the end of the first week I had written about 6,500 words.
This year, I’ve written about 500 so far.
I could probably come up with a load of excuses about how work and fatherhood have left me without any writing time this month, and while that’s partly true the honest truth is that my brain and my heart just aren’t in it at the moment.
A big part of the problem is that I’m suffering from a touch of the ol’ seasonal affective disorder; I forgot, in the halcyon days of last month, quite how much the changing of the clocks can scramble my brain. This year in particular it knocked me for a loop, and I never really recovered from it.
The real problem isn’t the lack of words, though. It’s the guilt. I’ve mentioned before that trying to get back into writing is like remembering I haven’t called my mum in a while. I get embarrassed, and in my embarrassment I shove the thought to the back of my mind, and there it stays until another week goes by and I remember that I still haven’t called her, and try to push the even larger pile of guilt further into the back of my mind.
But what makes it even more frustrating is the knowledge that unlike forgetting to call my mum, I’m not actually letting anybody down by not writing. I’m not rushing for a deadline. I didn’t promise anyone a draft. I’m not under contract to write a book; it’s just a thing that I’d like to do. Which makes it all the more frustrating that I can’t.
It’s a vicious cycle, to be sure. And I can’t seem to stop pedalling.
Whenever I think about writer’s block, I am reminded of a quote from Stephen King’s On Writing, which is both a great memoir and a fascinating dive into the creative process:
“Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.”
It’s good, solid advice: the only way to get anywhere with writing is to sit down every day and actually write. But the more I think about it, the more I see some of the flaws in that metaphor.
What King doesn’t mention is that, for the most part, it’s your own shit that you’re shovelling. Every novel is an autobiography, as the old saying goes, and as you write you’re inevitably bound to turn over some clod of muck and send God knows what flying into the air. It’s a messy business. Keep digging in the shit for too long, and you’re bound to make yourself ill. Which seems especially silly when nobody forced you to pick up a shovel in the first place.
I’m still going to try shovelling a little bit of shit every single day. It’s the only way the work will ever get done, after all. But I’m also giving myself permission to put it down and step away when I need to. Eventually, my arms will stop aching, and picking it up again will be easier.
A good set of nose plugs probably wouldn’t go amiss, either.
And now… a poem.
This one was inspired by something I saw written on the window of a derelict pub down a side street in Sheffield late one evening.
Don’t forget to remember
Tie a string
around your finger
til it’s purple and numb
reminding you to stick a Post-It
to your forehead
so the next time you look in a mirror
the inverted letters will prompt you
to finally book an appointment
with a tattoo artist
who will take his needle
and carve into your chest
whatever the hell it was
you needed to remember
not to forget
in the first place.