My daughter's fox letting me know I should be writing
Between Christmas and New Year 2023, I was on a writing high. I'd just received an acceptance from one of my dream publications and on rounding up my year’s achievements I had a list of publications that was much longer than I ever could have dreamt of. I waltzed into 2024 with my head held high in the belief that this would be my year. I would be published in all the big name journals, maybe submit to the Threepenny Review or The New Yorker, I even thought that I would write that darn novel! My optimism lasted for the first quarter of the year, as a few more exciting acceptances popped into my inbox. And then, nothing.
I was submitting so little, my inbox became deathly silent. I missed waiting for rejections, rejections mean you are hustling. My problem was that I had stopped writing. On a few occasions the fear of missing out spurred me to hastily throw words on to the page, without much thought or purpose, but it was as though my writing brain became shrouded in fog and my desire to confront the cowardly procrastinator in me had succumbed to inertia. I still wanted to write, I joined online workshops and tuned in to readings by writers that I admire, but all that disguised the fact that I wasn’t putting in the work.
I love to see other writers flourish. One of my favourite things is to read amazing stories by people I know. I enjoy the social media celebration of a story that has reached a longlist or news of a writer getting an acceptance in a fabulous journal. I am never jealous of success, but I am jealous of productivity. I can summon all the reasons of the day as to why I've not been writing. My caring responsibilities increased during 2024 and that has taken some of my free time, but that is not an excuse.
I have time, more than most people, really. Many writers work full-time jobs but still make sure to carve out that precious hour or two for their writing. Those diligent souls that wake up early to partake in 5am writer’s clubs, and the others who stay up late at night to get that little bit of peace and quiet after their children have gone to bed. I didn’t do any of that. My laptop lay dormant on a side table in a room where a frivolous reality show blared out from the TV.
I couldn’t begin to count the number of times an idea for a story would pop into my head igniting a little spark of excitement, but the words would go unwritten until the idea was only a fragmented tail of smoke lingering in the corner of my subconscious, a translucent wisp of thought without depth or substance. I have hope that there is a little corner of my brain that is choc full of these nuggets of (I’d like to say genius but mid-waking ideas may not translate to anything good, I know) inspiration and they will visit me again like Marley’s ghosts and badger me to be written and that they are not lost forever, my moment for grabbing hold of them lost to The Ultimatum or Married at First Sight.
Objectively, to onlookers, my writing year has been very successful, I’ve been published in some fabulous journals, I’ve been longlisted in a competition and nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best Microfictions but the overwhelming feeling I have looking back is one of disappointment and the feeling that I mustn’t want it enough.
But I do. I want to write. I love to write.
So entering 2025, my new year resolution is to just write, just get words onto a page. It really shouldn’t be that hard, should it?
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