‘Sometimes you surprise yourself with what you do under pressure.’ – Chris Bosh (former professional basketball player)
Some people work very well under pressure.
I didn’t think I did, until this last week.
As you know, I spend a great deal of time in front of my laptop, stringing words together into stories in various genres, articles, and the like. If I know there’s a deadline approaching, then my usual approach is to crack on and pull out all the stops to complete the project well in advance. The idea of things coming down to the wire conjures sweat-inducing images in my ind which merely serve to exacerbate the pressure, causing panic and rendering creativity almost null and void. I’ve always worked this way, even back at school and university.
Diamonds may be formed under excessive pressure, but it’s not my preferred way of operating. Besides it’s not always possible to make a silk purse from the proverbial pig’s ear so I have to allow time for that. Just this week I made four valiant attempts at a comedic story which insisted on turning rather dark; not at all suitable for a children’s collection of stories. I had to reluctantly but realistically discard them all, and explore other ideas.
Back in September and October, I worked like a Trojan in order to free up a chunk of time when I had a friend visiting. I wanted us to have uninterrupted time for chatting, exploring and enjoying precious time together. That plan worked out well and was definitely worth the hours invested.
November saw me back in the UK, rushing around completing admin jobs and running errands to ensure I was up to date with a flu jab, Covid jab, and asthma review, as well as ensure I had new batches of medication to cover my next season of travel. A visit to my bank was met with a locked door and a notice that, not very helpfully, told me that they were closed for refurbishment and would reopen exactly one day after I had left the country again. Thank goodness there are other branches in other towns;!
We celebrated Christmas with our children and I spent some time with my ninety year-old mum, as well as seeing my sisters and visiting friends. All very jolly but, inevitably, not a great deal of writing was done.
Come December, there was a flurry of activity as I prepared a complicated presentation which required a computer overhaul and update before I began. (Thank goodness [again] for IT savvy friends.) This also involved time-consuming trawling through archives of photographs, followed by editing, formatting etc. Time will tell whether all of that pays off.
I’m in several writers’ groups and, just before Christmas, a friend tipped me off about a competition for 3-minute Christmas stories, hosted by a presenter on north Manchester Radio. There was a forty-eight hour deadline for that and, while circumstances meant I couldn’t get stuck into any of my larger projects, I thought I could find a small gap to produce something that might fit the bill.
It proved to be a great tip: mine was one of the stories chosen for broadcast on the Christmas special, as was hers. Result. In that instance, pressure worked in my favour.
I’ve spent much of the post-Christmas period writing and editing to complete a second collection of children’s stories. So much so, that I was starting to see little dots in front of my eyes from too much screen time.
Just as I was beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel, I received and SOS from the new editor of the online magazine for which I’ve written this past calendar year. What with one thing and another, their submissions for the month were rather low. Could I contribute anything?
With just twenty-four hours to complete something, and having submitted one piece of flash fiction the previous day, I took a deep breath and re-engaged. I’d just finished a long day at the laptop, but referring back to past submissions managed to spark something in my mind and, it turned out that there was enough left in the creative juice tank to complete 1,500 words.
I never post or submit something which hasn’t had that crucial twenty-four hours to percolate and rest. When I come back to it, inevitably there are typos, punctuation omissions, or perhaps the flow isn’t quite right. A bit of tinkering is always necessary.
With very little time to spare, I submitted the piece and received a note of thanks, which was very kind considering the stress everyone must have been under at that end. It will be published in the magazine on 1st February.
So, it seems that I can work under pressure. I suppose we all did back in the day in that frenetic period before crucial exams; cramming in those last snippets of information; hoovering up facts which were hidden away in our hastily taken classroom notes.
However, it’s not the way I prefer to work.
This past week has also seen me crafting lesson plans for the four year groups that make up Key Stage 2 in our UK primary schools, in readiness for a full day of sessions exploring poetry in the spring. Is it ages away, or just around the corner? It depends how you look at it, but the sleepless nights and feeling of panic in my stomach strongly suggested that corralling all the ideas into a workable whole, would be a good idea.
That second collection of humorous children’s stories is almost ready to submit to the publisher. They may only take twenty to thirty minutes to read out loud but, trust me, they take a great deal longer to write. I had some stressful moments recently when I seemed to have run out of ideas completely. Taking a break helps!
I think this is the nature of creative writing: ideas come and go. Some are captured on paper or the screen, others never make it. But pressure? I’ll continue to avoid it where I can but the reality is that it’s part of life. Knowing that it can be the accelerator pedal to creativity rather than the ton of bricks that brings everything to a grinding halt as I head to A & E with chronic palpitations, should help.
Image by Gerd Altmann and Gino Crescoli; all from Pixabay
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