Letter to Adam

On breathing life into creative routines + when to knuckle down and don The Shawl

Dear Penfriends, 

I hope you’re having a faaabulous week!

Personally, I’m feeling edgy. By ‘edgy’, I mean a fly might brush my forearm hair and I could scream. Or, the postman might inquire how I am today, with a smidge too much sincerity, and I might come undone before him on the welcome mat. It’s not a placid internal landscape from which I write this blog.

To that I say: ‘oh well!’ Lately, I’ve been thinking that we’re supposed to meet our edges more often than we do and I’ve begun to regard making a spectacle of oneself (or ‘being vulnerable’) as an important and generous act of public service. There are people out there who have done things so outrageously vulnerable and disquieting that I summon their image as I drift off to sleep with the soothing thought: ‘at least I haven’t let go that much.’ So, I am fine to be writing to you in a sensitive mood, even for you to deploy an image of me oversharing to the postman in service of your sleep regimen, because I admit I do that too, that I’m picturing someone crazier and more honest, and from them I draw my strength.

Anyway, here is photo of Puff embodying a heavenly creature in the garden yesterday, and my answer to a recent ‘letter’ that came from Adam, exploring how to keep the creative routine fresh n’ spicy and zinging with life (or something like that)…

Hello Evanna! This Substack was such a nice surprise that made my morning :) I commented on your post, but just so you have it here too:

As someone who also wants to write and also wants to pull a Victor Hugo disappearing act, how do you manage the weepy or unstructured times during an isolated period like that? I have a few playlists that help me, but I love hearing how other people handle their emotions :) Have a wonderful day!

Adam 

Hello, Adam!

Oh my goodness, such warmth and positivity - thank you for that!

Right, I think the first thing we have to admit to ourselves is that we are not the illustrious French novelist, Victor Hugo, that we don’t live in the early 19th century and that we have to approach our creative routines as ourselves. 

(For anyone lost, Adam is referring to the famous anecdote about Victor Hugo where he was struggling to deliver meet a book deadline because he was having such a fabulous time hosting and attending dinners and generally being a beloved literary legend. He procrastinated writing so much that eventually he was pushed to take drastic measures, insisting his assistant lock away his finery - except for a shawl - so that he would be forced to stay indoors and write his damn book. And with these drastic measures, he managed to deliver the manuscript several weeks early and only write the Hunchback of bloody Notre Dame. Icon behaviour!)

As previously mentioned, I became enamoured with this story and tried to retreat from society to write a book, but only ended up really miserable and with reams of unreadable misanthropic word-vomit. However, I gained a key insight from this experiment, which is that I am writing to connect with others, and when I remove connection from writing it becomes pure drudgery. 

It’s a tricky balance, because in order to create something pure you do need hours of silence. You need to step away from the crowds and the cacophony of voices online to be sure you’re writing in a voice that’s yours. It’s a balance I’m still trying to cultivate. So, my creative routine is a work in progress but here is what I try to do to keep the solitude from becoming loneliness and to invite some connection into my routine:

1. Speak it into existence! Writing for me is about communication so I speak out loud a lot while writing, and when that conversations grows stale I need to talk to another person, whether that be going for a walk with a friend or sending a long, wordy voice note. There is something about talking to someone else about the problems with my story that shakes up the energy of the thing and makes me realise it’s not so serious. It’s hard, but it’s not that hard. Sometimes, all it takes for me to break through a problem is a fresh perspective, which is something I can’t offer myself. I shared this quote by Jean Shinoda Bolen in my book, but it’s worth stating again here in relation to the vital support system for manifesting a dream:

   ‘To make a dream come true, one must have a dream, believe in it, and work toward it. Often it is essential that another significant person believe that the dream is possible: that person is a vision carrier, whose faith is often crucial'.’

   I have several ‘vision carriers’ for the story I’m writing at the moment but it’s taken time to know who to trust with this story, and I think finding those people is a huge part of the process. To me, the vision carriers are essential because they take the flame of my idea and hold it aloft on days I’d like to douse it in cold water. And on great days, when I’m feeling enthralled by the story, talking about it to a friend like it’s real makes it become more real. In an ideal creative environment, I think every person I speak to while writing would be a bright, beaming, delightful vision carrier but also…

2. Be careful who you give your counsel to. My previous therapist once set a rule for me that I was not to seek relationship advice from my single friends. ‘What the hell can they teach you about relationships?’ she would say after I’d dramatically altered a relationship on the advice of a single, empowered woman (my weakness!) and I think the same principal applies when writing a book; you mustn’t take writing advice from people who haven’t written books. When I’m working on a project, the idea is like a tiny glowing ember that needs to be fiercely protected from the elements! A raised eyebrow or a casual shrug will snuff out my precious spark. But no, even that is generous because the truth is any response that falls short of rapturous awe and heart-clutching wonder will deflate my excitement and convince me to tear the whole thing up and release it in a fire at the next full moon. At the same time, I’m writing a book because I can’t communicate my idea in an instagram post, or a poem or even a short story, so one can’t blame mere mortals for their lacklustre reactions to a story I can’t yet articulate. You need someone who is trained to recognise the spark, who schools their features into curious intrigue when you tell them about it, and knows what to do to feed that flame. So my rule at the moment is to only share my story with a handful of very trusted allies, and to everyone else I simply say ‘I’m writing a romance set in the circus.’ 🙂 Whether that remains true or not as the story unfolds is irrelevant. That’s the party line for now.

And also…

3. Don’t forget to live your life. There is something amazing that happens when you’re creating something, in that the world around you starts to chime in with synchronistic ideas, images and connections, and everything you do feeds the thing you’re creating. I don’t know how to explain it other than to say 🤗 magic! 🤗, or perhaps on a scientific level you’d call it energy - like attracting like - but truly the deeper you go into your imaginary world, the more your real life starts to support it. You’ll hear a quote that perfectly captures an idea you’re fiddling with, or someone will recommend a book that lends itself to character research. That’s just what happens, and you mustn’t cut yourself off from that channel of inspiration. So, while I believe there comes a time to don the shawl, knuckle down and declare yourself positively indecent to friends and family (probably in the last 2-3 month sprint when the self-doubt has been trumped by the fervour to write?), I think you have to do your best to keep real life ticking alongside your creation. You have to keep attending hen parties (sorry) and book club and welcoming in a degree of uncertainty because that’s often where the magic happens.

Stephen King has a beautiful anecdote for this in his memoir On Writing, where he talks about dreaming of having a huge oak desk that he would station in the middle of his study, but after some time he gave up on this fantasy and downsized to a smaller desk that was set in a corner of the room, and his study became a place where his children would hang out in the evenings, leaving detritus, living life. Here’s his wonderful quote:

‘It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.’

Those are my coping mechanisms at the moment, Adam, and also lots of walks in the park with my dog, and chatting to people on Substack about this mostly dreadful but occasionally satisfying process :)

Now I am doing that thing I swore I wouldn’t do on here, which is to spend more time talking about writing than doing it, sooo next week I’m going to switch it up a bit.

Embrace the blank page, stare into the abyss! Do also have a nice weekend!

Evy xox