dancingthroughchaos

‘You’ll be amazed how much you have in common with Edith Wharton (who struggled to feel worthy of success), Louisa May Alcott (who badly needed money), Madaleine L’Engle (who could have papered an entire house with her rejection letters) and other writers…’ – Nava Atlas: The Literary Ladies’ Guide to the Writing Life

They say that if you never know failure then you’ll never know success.  This is much like John Keats telling us that we’ll never understand loss unless we’ve understood love; or vice versa.  I’m not a huge fan of either of these observations, but I appreciate the comparative and relative feelings they may engender.  The range of emotions between their polar opposite can certainly enhance or diminish what you feel along your own particular journey.

Right now, I’m caught between two such contrary emotions: elation that, despite hitting a creative blank and wrestling to come to terms with the fact that I would never have a half decent idea ever again, I have submitted a new collection of humorous (I hope) children’s stories to the same publisher of the previous collection (The Magnificent Moustache and other stories).

Extra kudos to me for: 

1. having thought I’d written the required number of stories, and then discovering I hadn’t (how hard can it be to count to 6, Jennifer – it’s basic maths for goodness sake!).
2. clawing an original idea from the debris at the bottom of my creative well and shaping it into something I finally enjoyed.
3. for discarding (after the fourth attempt) the story that kept turning inexplicably dark, and therefore unsuitable for either a children’s book or a collection of funny stories
4. realising that one story was significantly weaker than the other five and therefore needed to be replaced entirely, which required another dive into the absurd and imaginative in order to craft a worthy giggle-engendering substitute.

So far, so cheery.

However, along comes the thought – unbidden, of course – that perhaps this book won’t be anything like as good as the last one (which would be especially excruciating, as I am delighted with how that one has both turned out and been received).  Perhaps the publisher will reject it before I even get as far as commissioning any illustrations, and even if it does become available before the year is out, there will be inevitable comparisons which may keep me awake for the rest of my life.

When my guard is down, it’s 3am and sleep has left the premises, these are the niggles that push their way into consciousness from the mental black bog where they dwell, lurking threateningly, waiting to pounce.  

It has taken a considerable amount of will power to say that I am a writer.  To begin with, it seemed boastful, wildly ambitious and probably the biggest fat lie of the last ten years or more.  A quick flick through the Sunday supplements, literary ads and social media posts reveal some heavy duty writers with serious track records who actually, if fantastically, manage to make a living entirely from stringing words together on a page or screen.  It seems impertinent to pretend to mix in their circles, or join their tribe.

I’m certainly not amongst those illustrious and enviable few.  However, the majority of my writing day is taken up composing, shaping and crafting words to the point that I am frequently exhausted by the evening.  None of those words have been spoken aloud, you understand, but they have run through my head with a slickness of speed that has the same effect as if they had all been verbalised.

So, while nervously pacing the borders of the world of real writers, like a demented polar bear in a zoo, I am slowly gaining the confidence to say it out loud:  I am a writer.