Letting it Flow

My husband is out there surfing - its a blue-skied windless day. He's paddling his little pants off trying to get into the Western Province team. The rather grand sounding "Masters" side, which actually means "the oldies". He had his nose put out of joint yesterday by getting beaten by another guy who is cringeingly amateurish. I opted out of being the rent-a-crowd. The mother in law tried to pull the guilt factor on me "please come" she begged, trying to force me to have some bonding time with them gloating over his success or critiquing his failure. It was the last thing i felt like sitting there with the in-laws. I'd got myself into a black funk. An hour on the ice cold concrete step outside this morning did it. Tears appearing suddenly, sliding down my cheeks like glycerine. My soul alone.

"Just sit" I'd been instructed. Thats what had started it all off. The TV controls snatched out of my hands. "You need to stop always doing something - you are always on your phone, or on the tv, or in your book. Just sit for a while." It caused a flip out on my part. And then I reconciled myself and went to sit alone. And the dreams collapsed in on me. And the thoughts, the moments in the past of home - the huge fig tree down there at the bottom of the garden. "I was listening to an interview of mum yesterday. In the early morning in Ndola, shortly after dad died." I lay in bed telling my husband. "You can't believe the morning chorus in the background. It was glorious." God, soul shatteringly glorious - sending shards splintering in snowflakes fluttering up into the heavens on butterfly wings. Memories. The grief of memories and longing for that past life is sometimes too hard to bear. That is the gift that writing this biography does to me at times. It is encapsulates me, breathing in the photographs, the transcribed words, breathing out the laughter and the touch of the arm, the warmth and love, the loss. Sometimes the pack of cards wobble and come crashing down, the ace of spades next to the queen of hearts and the joker. The trick is to have the courage to hold onto that madness and let it become the words of my book. Thats the trick I have to capture.

I've been immersing myself in my spare time in all these self help writers articles and "growth" coaches recently. I finally managed to tick off The Hare with Amber Eyes and Stephen King's brilliant book On Writing. The Goldfinch is currently being devoured, all books on the "recommended for writers" lists, trying to fast track my writing skill. Of course that is delusional, but still, I feel inspired by their breaking the mould, their honesty with the reader and their creativity. And Stephen's book was just so uplifting.

Earlier on in the year I thought that my writing could really do with "letting go", so I started on The Artist's Way. Actually, it was about 5 months ago and I'm still on exercise number 1 - the daily writing task. Which I manage to do every 10 days odd… ok that is a bit harsh. But something happens to me in those in between days and my mind scatters and i think, oh its only been a day - and then I come back to the word document and its been a week. Its supposed to be transformational. Guess I gotta do it girl. Come on! Where's your staying power! Anyone else had the same experience?!

The problem was that I got overwhelmed with all the tasks that I'd given myself to do - perhaps a little too keen and obsessive - sitting contemplatively and doing my daily reading, doing my Artist's Way writing, researching my book, writing my book, reading books about biography - all hampered by my agonisingly slow reading speed.

Then came the lists of other jobs and the mounds of paperwork piling up on my desk and flowing outwards across the surfaces of my office. Cluttering my mind. Shit. How have we created such a drivel filled world? So here is my promise to myself - its being put in neat piles away from my writing altar. I dunno - am i prepared to give it half an hour a day? I feel resentful that any part of my day has to be taken up by all the excess stuff. So it accumulates and grows like the porridge in that fairytale that keeps flowing and flowing out of the pot and down the road.

My final declaration is something that gives me such calmness but morphs into an ogre not to be touched now that winter is closing in.  Exercise. That is a matter of survival for me. So I'm announcing to you, and to myself that I don't give a damn what I do - just do SOMETHING! Get that head out of its space and go pump some oxygen. :)

Oh, and one last task for the week - to smile each morning and tell myself "I love you". It might sound smarmy, but it's step one of the ebullient Farnoosh Brock's Prolific Living course to a greater, more-confident me.

See you on the bright side, folks!

Agonising through writer's block

It was all flying. Not enough hours in the day - the words fighting to get onto the page. Juggling my research with my writing was a constant battle. The anticipation of finding something interesting amongst the clagging, dust covered papers. The more I dug the pages and chapters and notes grew. I was flying blind, not sure which to prioritise. The fabulous Cathy Presland who had launched me onto this journey at The Guardian Masterclass told me just to write, that I knew it all already. What nonsense. How could I know it all. This wasn't my own life I was writing about. What about all the unknown stories, the minutes of political meetings, the diaries filled with scribbles.

I sit here now.

Was she right?

I'm suffocated by insecurity. Afraid. Insecure. Insignificant. People drift off indifferently when I try to give them my pitch about the book.

I'm afraid that I'll never get another job. That I'll end up with no money. My husband totally at odds with my own outlook on life. He just wants to travel. To let it all "be". To use what money we have and not worry about the future. My fingers ache. I know its arthritis. I know its stress.

It all began one insignificant day when I opened an old plastic container. "Check for obituary" I'd scribbled on a post-it note. The box untouched. Business cards bundled into tight packed piles with elastic bands. I sifted through them. Every imaginable person was there. At the bottom, ontop of a photo of a pretty woman and her kids, was a piece of paper. And a list with stars. I was horrified. Even my worst fears were surpassed. Surely this could not be true. My analysing mind stared at each mark, piecing it all together.  I questioned myself, I questioned our lives. 

I couldn't leave that paper there for someone else to find or for it to be thrown away. I pretend it is nothing, that I'm mistaken. Perhaps that is not a pretence - perhaps it really is nothing. But it was so clear for me. My god.

For days I could do nothing. My researching stopped. I couldn't even open the scanner to place photos there to copy. I just drifted. Confused. Despondent. And it was from there that the self doubts began to creep in and take over my mind. Day by day I began to doubt my whole motive, the story, the viability of it as a book. I'll just write the first half I said to myself. Well, what is it then? Is it still a biography? The liberty I got when I wrote creatively about the very earliest of days. The conversations and the places that happened on the page gave me joy. "Creative non-fiction" she had said to me in that glass walled room high up in the Guardian's castle of journalism. Her response was to my wonderment at how people remembered conversations.  It was like opening the door to find the Christmas tree in the corner of the room with its lights sparkling.  Creative non-fiction. Of course! But how creative can I be if it is to be a biography? Where do I blur the facts with fiction? There is so much fact - overwhelming much fact. My brain says  to be methodically true, my heart wants to sing across the pages. And it does, till it bumps into those ugly things and then the words sink into ruts and bounce along sliding and jerking all over the place. They stick in the recesses of my brain and refuse to come out. Those haunting corridors of family life that weren't perfect. And now this.

So you find me here now. Just writing anything. Just to try to work through this turmoil. Stuck here in the southern tip of Africa. The paradise voted best place to live in the world by Conde Nast. But not my paradise. I curse myself for my self pity that sucks on the blackness and melts time. The hours in front of the screen obsessively checking Facebook, divorcing me from my family and my friends. Hours alone. Hours of non-achievement. They merge with the self doubt and reaffirm my inability to succeed again in life. Heck, get a grip.

Join me, if you will, on this cathartic roller-coaster to success. To that day when the last full stop has been placed. The drafts proofed. The rich, earthy colours of the cover page waiting to play fiddle to the magic of words it holds.