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.
No comments:
Post a Comment