Writer’s block: Part One
My initial plan when I started this substack was for it to be somewhere between a public scribble pad, some “here’s what I reckon” pieces, somewhere to talk about the records I’ve been listening to as part of my album-a-day project (now in its third year), and somewhere to publish short stories I’d like people to read but which don’t have an obvious home. The last thing I had intended was to write about writing, or God forbid attempt to give writing advice.
However! I have basically realised that while I’m working on something big that I’m finding it difficult to think about anything else, and anything I try to write that’s about something else fails to hold my energy and interest. If you like, it’s writer’s block. I have in the past few weeks started pieces about types of guy, John Mulaney and being funny about addiction, why comedy isn’t funny any more, a deliberately late series of thoughts about Tar, my birthday trip to Lisbon, technology in Succession, part two of the bird post mainly about peacocks, online linguistics, Plutarch and Elon Musk, how I’m now a Psychedelics Person, and I have not finished any of them. So with every possible apology, and with promises that the aforementioned will get finished soon, here I am, writing about writing.
I started writing the book I am currently working on in 2013, and a few weeks ago was in the stage of polishing it up for submission. I obviously haven’t been writing it solidly for a decade – I think that would be fairly communicative that something isn’t working. It started life as a short story, and then I wrote a bit more, then a bit more, then it was finished in a rough sort of way, and I put it in a drawer and worked on other things. Lots happened in that time, but the short version is I took it back out of its drawer in 2020 and rewrote it. I then, for a number of reasons, parted ways with my then agent, developed a phobia about ever writing anything again, then everything went dark and when I woke up it was 2022 and I made myself a (mad) bargain. I would query one agent and one agent only, and if it was a no then that was a sign from the universe that I should quit entirely and focus on other work.
Then as now I had two more-or-less full-time jobs already so finding time to write was a luxury anyway, so going without wasn’t the sacrifice it could have been. You couldn’t make a living doing it anyway, and the reason so much stock is placed on winning short story awards is that it’s pretty much the only way you will be paid non-risibly for your work, until you get a book deal which is also no guarantee. Several people tried to talk me out of my (mad! I must keep reminding you that this plan I came up with was extremely mad!) one and done plan, which didn’t work, and I went ahead and sent the manuscript to the agent who had been on the panel that had given me a short story award a few years ago. She was pleased to hear from me, and thanked me for thinking of her to send it to; however, after about a month she said that having thought long and hard she had concluded that she wasn’t really able to take on more authors. So that was that, decision made – I will leave you to imagine the emotional response this generated, but you can be pretty sure it was not dignified. The day after the rejection she emailed again, and I refused to open it, having decided (madly) that it must contain the information that the agency was now charging for full manuscript reads, and this was my invoice*. I let slip my conviction to my boyfriend, who offered to read it for me and relay any information. Fine, I said, but it can only say something bad.
When I was a young teenager I became briefly convinced that I was either psychic or able to contact strangers telepathically, after a series of coincidences and vivid dreams; as it turns out, I am not psychic at all, or even apparently that perceptive. The email said that even though she wasn’t currently able to take on new clients, my work was just up one of her colleague’s streets, and would I give permission to pass it to her. I said yes, fairly dully, since getting jazzed up about the idea seemed to have the potential to be even more emotionally destructive than all of my bargaining and guesswork. Two days later, her colleague contacted me asking if we could meet to discuss the book. I signed with her a month later, and she is wonderful. She is also a very brilliant and rigorous editor, and since so much has changed in publishing over the last decade or so, she wants the book to be in fine sparkling shape before submission. Fine fine fine – you can’t say fairer!
Just after Hilary Mantel died, the TLS republished a piece she had written for them about the process and craft of writing. There’s a part where she says (paraphrasing) that the problem with trying to give advice about writing is that you can’t jostle a novel along, and entire plots or ways of untangling knotty problems can just unfold themselves, divine revelation-fashion, while you’re doing something else. I read this, and thought “well thanks a bloody million, once-in-a-generation genius Hilary Mantel (may your memory be a blessing), that’s alright for you, isn’t it, Hilary Mantel”. However! A few days ago I was laughing at a nice round duck that I saw by a reservoir and I suddenly out of nowhere knew how to fix the nagging thorny issue that had plagued me ever since I started working with my agent a year ago. So it’s a step back, because I’m again back to redrafting, but an optimistic one, and I feel energised about the work for the first time in a while and a lot less hunted and sick of the whole thing. It does mean however that at the moment the book is what I think about and write about, although mercifully enough for my friends and family I don’t talk very much about it. So that’s the good news! In part two, the complaints. If you’ve noticed that I have written a lot of part ones and not a lot of part twos, I will thank you to keep this observation to yourself.
*This is not even remotely the case, by the way, and any agency that charges to read is scamming you.