Let's write this Saturday
Plus, when you finish a big project – how long should it take to care about something new?
While we’re in the silly season of summer, please forgive me for the irregular scheduling of In Writing Creative Hours, which are normally on alternate Sunday afternoons, but are currently popping up on a totally haphazard basis. This week, I’m going to be online on Saturday morning at 10am UK time (timezone converter here) and I hope you’ll join me for an hour of quiet writing.
My attention is all over the place at the moment, but not much of it is landing on writing. With my book due to be published in November, people have started occasionally asking if I have a second book in mind; honestly, no. I’m mainly preoccupied with trying to make a living, and moving along the gentle slope to the publication of In Writing, with its steady trail of things to do.
(This week I’m also recovering from COVID, which was mild, but still feels like someone has opened my head and stuffed damp towels all around my brain. It’s thought-muffling. It’s also voice muffling, which is why there’s no audio recording today!)
When do people start feeling imaginative again? Last week I spoke to an author whose book has just come out, and he said the experience is strange – years of build-up, then an exciting week or so, and then it’s more or less done. Of course if you’re lucky there’s a longer tail of promoting the book, but it was good to have the warning that there might be an anticlimax ahead. Maybe it’s once the dust settles that you start gathering yourself around something new?
When I interviewed Taffy Brodesser-Akner a couple of months ago about her new novel, Long Island Compromise, she told me she still wasn’t really over her first book, Fleishman Is In Trouble, which came out five years ago. ‘I’m starting on press for this not really feeling like Fleishman is done, even though it's done in every metric you could imagine,’ she said. ‘You know, when I’m on my television, and I'm looking for something to watch, I sometimes pass the little box that contains the television show I made out of that novel I wrote. I think, “That happened? That's in the past? That is now historical? It can’t be.” And it is.’
Obviously, this hasn’t stopped her from writing and publishing an entire second book – but I do wonder how long it will take me to get over In Writing and get really involved in something else. I also spoke to Geoff Dyer about this – he’s quoted in my book discussing this very topic. Here’s an excerpt:
There is a pattern that I recognise now. I finished my last book a while back, and I was ecstatically happy during the last six months of writing it. I was putting in really long hours, and it wasn’t requiring any self-discipline on my part, because it was all I wanted to do. So I made a resolution that I would do what I’ve never been able to do before: as soon as I’d finished that book, I would go straight on to the next book without a pause.
Then I failed to keep that resolution, and I fell into my normal pattern, which is to do nothing and become rather depressed. I wasted a lot of time before I properly got going on this current book, and even now, the contrast between those effortlessly long shifts that I could put in before and the kind of concentration I can muster now is considerable. I recognise this feeling.
Gradually, I would say two things are going on – one, the length of time I’m able to concentrate on this new book is increasing; and two, the amount of will that I’m needing to draw on, in order to get going on it, is reducing. Maybe the worst is over – the year that I spent doing almost nothing, just foolishly squandering my time.
One of the weird bits of self-discipline that I’ve needed to acquire is the capacity to not fall into complete despair during these long interludes when I’m not doing anything. The instinct is, of course, to think, ‘I’m finished. I can’t do it any more,’ but now I’m so familiar with that feeling that I’m able to sort of ride it out, because I recognise that for me, this is part of the process. Each of my books is about something completely different to the previous one, and it has a form that is uniquely appropriate to that subject. I would almost go so far as to say that this period of not doing anything is a necessary part of decompression – so that I can start over with what is genuinely a new book.
So I suppose if Geoff says it’s fine, then it’s fine.
What about you? How long does it take you to get closure on a finished project and feel excited about something new?
Anyway, I don’t know what I’ll write on Saturday morning but the Creative Hour is always inspiring, thanks to everyone who shows up – and I’m looking forward to seeing you. Until then, good luck with your writing this week!
Take the time to enjoy this. Celebrate all the work. Bless it, breathe light over it, send it into the world. Honour your work and your gift to readers. It is a gift that will help them grow.
Don’t push the next phase, take and create space and let it come to you.
I’ve had a lovely long tail with The Seasonwife and I’m gradually learning to let the novel have life after me. This gives me permission to conceive the next ideas and labour in that art.
Huge congratulations Hattie. Will place my order!
This was the perfect thing to read today. I have just finished my debut novel (so exciting!) and although I am so excited I have fallen into a sort of paralysis and can't do a single thing - even read. As for working on my dissertation? God no. I have starred emails I want to read and finally this morning opened some - and so this was perfect - the decompression and the lethargy is part of the process? That's exactly what I need to hear. Thank you for sharing and writing x