A gift to cheerlead you through your project

I've made something for you to download, because there's always a moment when things get a bit bleak.

Paid subscribers can hear me read this aloud here or on your podcast app.

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Hello! It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written something substantial for this newsletter – my manuscript is due at the beginning of January, so please excuse my sporadic updates, as my brain is full to bursting with book stuff.

That said, I do have thoughts (AND A GIFT, wait for it) to share with you today. Last week, I had dinner with a wonderful friend who is working on a memoir, and had hit a wall on a particular chapter. She’d been working on it for weeks; she couldn’t find the right words for what she felt in her heart; and she was losing confidence in her own ability to do the work.

The great thing about this moment was that I could see immediately that her ability was not the problem – she had simply hit stage four of the creative process. She hadn’t heard of the six stages, so I shared them with her, and now I’m sharing them with you.

The creative process

1. This is amazing

2. This is tricky

3. This is shit

4. I am shit

5. This might be OK

6. This is amazing

I got this from

Tor Freeman

, who has many wise things to say about creativity and is one of the most consistent creators I know – and I believe she had first seen it pinned to a noticeboard at a comic-making course in Florida (if you know who came up with it, do tell me so I can credit them).

She sent it to me in 2019 when I was making the first series of the In Writing podcast, and had really lost confidence in the project – and it hugely helped. It’s not sophisticated information, but god is it accurate. If you’re making something that stretches your abilities (and those are the only really satisfying things to make), then there is going to be a period, after the initial enthusiasm, when you will feel very disheartened by how difficult it is, and you will be tempted to draw the conclusion that the problem is you.

The following year, my sister started a business venture, and I noticed she was going through the same ups and downs of morale – the cycle of progress and setbacks that comes every time we step outside our comfort zone. For her birthday, then, I shared the above list with the illustrator Emma Winterschladen and asked her to design something that would remind my sister, during the toughest moments, that the pain was just part of the process. Emma came up with the idea of a map, and this was the result:

I know that for some, the version we landed on might be labouring the analogy too much – but I found that funny, and I knew my sister would too, so the slight ridiculousness of the concept was a plus. She loved it and hung it on her office wall, and since then, every time one of us is falling apart about our inability to complete some project, the other one says, ‘You’re in the woods of self-doubt, aren’t you?’

This always cheers me up, because a) it’s so silly, and b) it reminds me that the panic, worry and self-loathing are all just an unavoidable stop-off on the route to something you’re happy with (or the ‘Summit of Success’, sure). Look, did my parents want to stop at the Happy Eater on the side of the M1 and eat reheated pancakes with us when we were little? Probably not, but it was the only way we would get through a long car journey.

In order to help you remember, on the bad days, that you are not shit, I have designed a downloadable wallpaper for your desktop. I’ve just set it as my wallpaper and it’s cheered me up already. Below is the mini version. I can’t work out how to give you the full-sized file to download directly through Substack (let me know if you know), but in the meantime, you can download it from WeTransfer. If the link expires, let me know and I’ll do another one.

If you have enjoyed this nonsense, I’d love you to share it with somebody else who might benefit…

…or consider becoming a paying subscriber. This would mean you could join the In Writing Creative Hour that I’m hosting this Sunday 26 November at 5pm UK time (you’ll get the link to join a few hours beforehand). Here’s your timezone converter so you can work out what time that is wherever you are (put your location into the second set of boxes). You’ll find more info about the Creative Hour here.

That’s all for now – see you on Sunday, and good luck with your writing this week!