Category Archives: Self Reflection

Writers: Know Your Limits! (or why I’m not doing NaNoWriMo again this year)

Husband and I often share a giggle over this Harry Enfield sketch when we talk about my limitations:

Yes, well, thank goodness its not so much like that anymore!

Women are especially bad at knowing their limits because we are brought up to be martyrs, to sacrifice our own well-being before that of others. I’m no exception. I’m useless at boundaries, and having ME has made me even worse for committing to something that I have no earthly hope of carrying through because of my fluctuating energy and pain levels. I continue to have expectations of myself that fall way beyond my capacities.

Anyway, a little while back I had this brainwave: “I know,” I thought, with all the enthusiasm of a labrador puppy. ‘I’ll do NaNoWriMo in November, and I’ll use the month to get the basis of my Viking novel done, and then I’ll have a book I can edit up and sell in the new year via Kindle.”

Great wheeze, No?

Hmm. The thing is, November is always a really busy month for me. Its the run-up to Christmas, which means getting the present shopping in early because I have to pace myself with all that trudging around the shops. It usually involves an extended visit to elderly parents, taking a week out during which there is no spare time, and no internet access. It is also the real onset of the bad weather, which always has a deleterious effect on my health. And if there is one thing I can always be sure of, its that I can never be sure when I am going to capable of getting out of bed in the morning!

I’d really like to do NaNoWriMo. Its not that I am not capable of writing 1700 words a day. I’m lucky in that, unlike many writers, I can crack through 3-5000 words a day when I’m well. But writing 50,000 in under 3 weeks is probably beyond even me.

So with a sigh of realism, I have relinquished my claim on that November novel. Another year will go by without me being a NaNoWriMo winner.

Instead, I have come up with another, more achievable goal, an ebook that I hope to bring you in the run-up to Christmas, so I hope that you’ll stay tuned to this blog to find out more about that. I know you’ll love it!

In the meantime, here are a few ideas on how to judge whether you are over-reaching yourself on a creative project:

1. Be realistic about how much time it will take. If you can, divide the task into measureable units, the way NaNoWriMo does with the word count. How long does a unit take? If you need three hours a day to write 1700 words or make a preparatory sketch, can you afford to carve out that time daily, or are you only likely to manage 3 hours once or twice a week?

2. Schedule your units of time into your diary or planner and keep a date with yourself. This might mean working other activities around them, bartering childcare with friends who are also mums, asking husband/partner or housemate to help out with basic chores. But making an appointment with yourself to create, however much subtle manoevring it takes, will help you finish your project more easily in the long run.

3. Expect the unexpected. Be prepared for life to throw a spanner in the works (or, if you are like me, an entire socket set!). Remember Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. So have a back-up plan. Either that, or don’t get too wedded to a deadline, or you may find yourself disappointed, which could put you off for good.

If you are tackling NaNoWriMo this year, I wish you the best of luck! If you have chosen to do something else, like me, then good luck with that too, The point is to know how much, realistically, you can take on, and be at peace with that.

Happy Creating,

Do you have a Creative Vision?

I am incubating a Cunning Plan!

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Summer opens up a world of possibilities…

Isn’t summer wonderful? The Husband is off work at the moment, enjoying a couple of well-earned weeks’ rest. My mother came to stay for the week last week (very exhausting), and the week ended with a family party, and a 6 hour long round trip to get there. You will appreciate that I am feeling just a little jaded right now. However, there is sunshine, and friends dropping by, and this morning we sat in the garden, drinking freshly pressed apple juice for breakfast, and basking, and it doesn’t get much better than that, let me tell you!

Sometimes, its good to take a breather. I’ve had a week where my thoughts have not been my own, and its made me realise how much I need to write. It is not so much a desire as a primal drive. Now I have my time (and my brain) to myself again, all I can think about is what I want to write next. My body may not be ready to get started yet – a lot of restorative time in bed will be necessary for that – but my Muse is getting her juices into gear.

And let me tell you, that feels so great!

I can feel a plan beginning to form behind my eyes about what I want to achieve in the next three months up to Christmas. (Yes, I know, I’ve started thinking about presents already, I must be a sick, sick person!) I can’t quite put my finger on the specifics of it yet, but I can’t wait to just plunge in and indulge my creative urges.

And I mean indulge! I want to do something delicious and opulent. I want to manifest an idea made of mental gold thread and velvet and jewels, something as luscious as sinking my teeth into a ripe peach. Know what I’m saying?

I want to CELEBRATE!

I promise I’ll keep you posted about what I come up with. In the meantime, enjoy the rest of the summer, and raise a glass of Pimms/mint julep/mojito/insert your favourite tipple here to the joys of August and Time Out!

With love,

Journal Friday: The Structuring Absence

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When I did my English degree, way back in the late ‘80s, Literary Theory was all the rage. I don’t know if they even study it now, but it was the thing then. Literary theory is the place where literary criticism, philosophy and linguistics meet. Throw in a good handful of politics, sexual politics and psychology and you have a seething mass of academic pretentiousness that no one with a reasonable sense of humour should be subjected to. Literary Theory goes in fashions like everything else, and the Next Big Thing then was Postmodernism, which leant heavily on Poststructuralism and the work of theorists like Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes. We read Thomas Pynchon and Paul Auster and pretended to know what they were on about. We were encouraged to use words like signifier (word), signified (meaning), and problematize (make something difficult). I find it deeply satisfying that Roland Barthes’s death resulted from being run over by a milk float. It couldn’t be more pedestrian (sorry for the pun), or ironic, could it?

Now why am I ranting on about all this pretentious bollocks when I should be talking about journaling? Well, let me explain the one phrase that poststructuralism gave me which I still cherish today:

The Structuring or Signifying Absence

This is actually another way of saying ‘The Elephant in the Room’. It is the thing that is never spoken of, yet which underlies and give shape to everything that happens around it. It is the empty space which is significant, which speaks of something profound.

It is ‘that which is left unsaid.’

Take a very simple example. In Daphne du Maurier’s novel ‘Rebecca’, the character of Rebecca de Winter and her untimely death are the signifying absence. Rebecca structures the whole novel, and the behaviour of all the characters revolves around her, even to the extent that we never learn the heroine’s name, because Rebecca is more important in everyone’s mind, including her own. Rebecca is a tangible presence, even though she no longer exists.

Actually, this isn’t strictly a good example because its too overt. Take the Wooster novels of P G Wodehouse. Set in the 1920’s and ‘30’s England, they almost never mention the Great Depression or the First or Second World Wars, and yet the fact that as readers we know that the ridiculous events are going on against this backdrop makes them all the more ludicrous. Wodehouse does lampoon the figure of fascist leader Oswald Moseley at one point, but basically, his choice is to exclude politics.

The point of the structuring absence is this: that what the writer chooses to exclude is just, if not more, significant than what is left in.

How does this relate to writing a diary?

I am thinking right now of gaps. I have been keeping a journal for nearly 40 years now (ouch!), but there are plenty of gaps. And I am sure those gaps say as much about my life as the parts where I was writing. They usually happened for two reasons:

I was having a brilliant time and was too busy living life to bother writing everything, or anything, down. My honeymoon is a great example of this. I was determined I was going to record every detail of our tour across the south of England, but when it came to it, I was having too much fun! So all I have is the photos we took. And I think that is very significant.
I was in a state of such terrible depression that I was incapable of writing. This is far more common. There are several gaps of months in my diary during my early 20s, when I was struggling with clinical depression so profound that it threatened my life, and it was impossible for me to write at that time. So I didn’t.

What we don’t write about in our diaries is just as significant as what we do. Every diary entry is an act of self-censorship, whether we know it or not. By choosing what we write about, even if the choice is unconscious, we are in fact editing, fashioning a narrative of our lives structured by our choices and the responses we have to our life events. Just as Wodehouse chose, out of what I believe was sheer political naiveté, not to write about politics (to his great cost as it turned out), we may choose not to write about our cancer, our son coming out as gay, our struggles with debt, even though these are massive issues which shape our lives in profound ways. We may even choose at times simply not to write at all.

When I don’t write in my diary, I am always aware that something is going on for me. I may be in denial about some issue that is obsessing me, or I am too sick to write, which is an issue in itself. Either way, the gaps between dates in my journal are a red flag.

But they are not a reason for self-flagellation.

When I was a kid, I thought that you had to write a diary every single day. A lot of people believe this, but very few manage it, and most give up because of this misconception. Don’t beat yourself up when you have non-writing periods. Accept these empty spaces as significant, as structuring absences, and consider what they might mean for you. Above all:

Write when you need to write.

Journal Exercise:

At the moment a big gap is developing between today’s date, and the last one I wrote in my journal. I know why this is. I am ill. Staring into space or lying on the sofa watching Harry Potter yet again is about as profound as I can manage right now, and I’m okay with that. I will go back to it when I am ready, and because I don’t make a big deal about it, I won’t be creating any blocks, so the gap will be much smaller than it would have been otherwise.

Are you creating a journal gap, a structuring absence, consciously or not? Take some time to contemplate why this might be happening for you – you don’t have to write about it in your journal, just allow it some kind and accepting thought. It may because you are hung up on ‘doing it right’. It may be because there is a HUGE elephant in your life that you are simply not ready to address yet. It may just be because you are present in your life, too busy or, what a delight, having too much fun!

Whatever is going on for you with this, make peace with it. Be accepting of yourself. You might even want to write something in your journal to that effect:

‘I am not writing much here at the moment and I’m okay with that. I’ll get to it when I need to.’

You may not want to write in the ‘why’. Perhaps that is better left until you are ready to write again.

And if you are writing regularly, and getting lots out of it, make sure you relax into it and don’t make it an OUGHT.

Happy journaling,

Journal Friday: Reflecting on Creative Blocks

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So, if you read my last post, you will know that I am increasingly drawn towards drawing and painting at the moment. This is my current creative season and I want to honour it. So today, no doubt, you will be expecting me to deluge you with jpegs of the beautiful pictures I have been creating.

Yeah, Right.

Nigel has been hard at work again. I have produced the sum total of zero drawings in the last two days. Yesterday I couldn’t even bring myself to go into the study to get out my sketchbook and paints. The blank page suddenly seems terrifying. I can’t even doodle. How the hell have I lost the ability to doodle, for Gods’ sakes?

Bit not good.

This, my friends, is where the journal really comes into play. I sat down with my trusty moleskine and pen, and thought about my childhood memories of drawing.

I used to draw all the time. It was what I was known for, amongst family and friends. I was never without a piece of paper and a pencil. I made little books and illustrated them. I wrote stories and illustrated them. I wrote stories about my favourite TV programmes, like ‘Blakes 7’ (remember that one? I had a terrible crush on Paul Darrow) and drew the characters all the time. (If only I had known about fanfiction and fanart then!) I was obsessed at one point with the Tudor monarchs, and copied their opulent portraits and clothes with fibre tipped colouring pens. Then I got into the Ancient Egyptians, and copied their sideways style of representation. I even copied the drawings of E.H Shepherd in the beautiful edition of Kenneth Graham’s ‘The Wind in the Willows’, which my father gave me – it was his favourite book. And I painstakingly illustrated all my school work (except the Maths, of course, because that was too serious, which was probably why I was never any good at it.) In other words, I spent hours absorbed in transferring images from my head onto the page.

What happened? Senior school art classes. Hours of drawing still lives of pots and pans. Teachers who made us draw boring subjects, and never gave us any information about technique. I’ve learn everything I have ever learnt about art and how to use paint from copying, which my art teachers said was the worst possible sin.

(But I am getting ahead of myself, I’m supposed to be thinking about my childhood drawing.)

As a kid, art was my obsession, but it requires materials, and they were in short supply. For paper, my dad bought home gash computer paper from work, the perforated kind that comes in a concertina, with holes along the edges, and with about the same handling quality as IZAL toilet paper. I was occasionally bought coloured felt-tipped pens but in the 1970s they were rubbish, and the black ones were invariably dried out before they were even used. At least 25% of the pens in the pack didn’t work within about two days of having them, and you had to conserve those that did with fiendish vigilance. There were occasional gifts of watercolour pan boxes, but they were very low pigment, and anyway, painting in your bedroom is frowned upon by most mothers because it is messy. And there wasn’t anywhere else to paint. What I am trying to say is that I grew up yearning for those huge bottles of poster colour paint that stood on the trolley in school. The thought of being able to just splash paint about willy-nilly was ridiculous. My parents wanted to encourage my artistic side, but they didn’t have the disposable income or the mindset to invest in good raw materials for it.

The result is that the scarcity of my childhood has bloomed into a scarcity paranoia in adulthood. As soon as I was earning, I went out and bought decent art materials, but then I couldn’t make myself use them. I have drawers and boxes full of sketchbooks, pastels, inks and paint tubes that have never been opened because I still have the mindset that they have to be conserved. I can’t waste a thing. To the point where I can’t use a thing.

None of this would I know and understand, were it not for exploring it in my journal. And in my journal have come the little glimmers of a solution, a plan to tackle my stuckness with baby steps so minute that I can fool Nigel into thinking I’m not even putting pen to paper at all! Slowly and gently, I will con myself into the belief that making a tiny drawing is safe. And then I will con myself into making a bigger one. Until one day I will fulfil my dream of illustrating my own novels, and making huge abstract expressionist canvases like Rothko and Pollock. But not yet. To begin with, I will throw out everything I learnt in art class, scrunch up my eyes and begin again, as a child. It will be hard, but I can do it. I did it with the writing, after all…

Journal Exercise:

Are you also struggling with a creative block? Is there something you used to do, and would like to do again, but are afraid to? Perhaps you are just stuck and you can’t get out of your own way. You probably don’t even know why.

Get out your journal and take a few deep breaths. Close your eyes and let yourself fall backwards through time. Feel yourself become a child, doing that thing you loved do and don’t do anymore, whatever it is. Immerse yourself in that memory. How did it feel? What was so satisfying, enticing, transcendently joyful or just effortless about it? How did splashing paint on paper, sewing a doll’s dress or dancing to the radio help you express yourself? Connect with the fun, the pleasure, the satisfaction.

Now write about it. Take time to write out all you can remember about doing that creative activity, and take the memory from as early an age as possible.

Now take another deep breath and continue to write, this time about when you stopped pursuing that activity. What happened? What age where you? Was there criticism from parents or responsible adults? Or was it competition with other children who you regarded as being better at the skill than you? Perhaps you reached puberty and decided that form of creativity was childish and no longer for you? Or you felt you couldn’t go any further with it because you couldn’t make a living at it? Whatever the reason, explore your memories of it. Be as thorough as you can.

Give yourself some time to sit with these memories, to contemplate them. Decide what aspects are still stopping you. Are you, like me, fearful that your work won’t be ‘GOOD ENOUGH’ (thanks, Nigel), or still carrying that fear that there isn’t paper to waste? Will doing this activity make you vulnerable in some way? (If so, you don’t have to show it to anybody, just keep it for yourself.)

(If some major trauma is involved, it is wise to seek professional help. A therapist is invaluable, and those who specialise in expressive arts or Gestalt might be just what you need. Don’t suffer flashbacks alone as a result of this exercise. Self care should always be the first rule of creative expression.)

Think about ways to ease yourself through these issues. Maybe taking a beginners or taster course, where everyone will be fumbling about at the same starter level, could encourage you that what you make doesn’t have to be perfect. Perhaps an online course that you can follow in private, and at your own pace (Alisa Burke has some brilliant art and sewing courses.) Or you could buy some kids art materials and use them with your own kids (or borrow someone else’s for an afternoon). Watch how kids are completely free of judgement when they make art. They are just having fun. You can, too. (Actually, I think I may have to borrow some children and do this myself!)

Trust that what comes up in writing your journal is from deep within, an inner wisdom that will guide you back to your creative centre. Above all, be gentle with yourself as your formulate your action plan, and give yourself as much time as you need. You don’t have to become Picasso or Nijinsky overnight.

Happy Creating,

Outflow: My Creativity Right Now

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We are having a heatwave here in the UK, and I’m not very good in hot weather. The result is that my brain has gone on strike, as has much of my body. Which makes me think about ‘creative seasons’ and the Habit of Art.

My ongoing health problems taught me long ago to have peace with the days when I can’t do anything beyond lie on the sofa and practise my groaning. ( I’m getting quite good at groaning, I have to say.) Chronic Illness is, however, a bit of an extreme way of forcing oneself to recognise one’s creative cycles, and not one I would recommend.

There are lots of creativity gurus who are adamant that turning up at the page, or the canvas, and making yourself do the work is the only way forward, and for the most part, I would agree. But what do you do on the days, like today, when it just ain’t gonna happen?

Take note, that’s what.

I find my creativity goes in bursts, as I have mentioned before, and in recent years I have noticed that my writing seagues slowly into art in the summer months. Writing is a great thing to be doing when the weather is cold and wet, and all you want to do is curl up in the warm. In the summer, though, the urge to get out there into the landscape and experience the world is almost irresistible, as anyone who has ever worked through the summer in an office will agree. Right now I am experiencing the difficult-to-ignore urge to paint rather than write.

And I am OK with that.

Yes, I am feeling a bit frustrated that I can’t settle to the writing projects I want to progress, but I can’t force it, or I will get resentful, and probably produce pages of complete drivel that I’ll hate later. The urge to be creative is still with me, though. It is just taking a different, more exterior form. I want to draw, paint, decorate pottery, make cushion covers, garden, and bake cupcakes. So that’s what I’m going to do – at least as soon as the weather cools down and my brain starts functioning again!

There is a tension between turning up to create and the creative seasons themselves, and the skill of a true creative is to be able to accept the difference between a) the resistance to sitting at the desk and working, which is procrastination and stopping oneself being all one can be, and b) the natural flow of creativity as it morphs from one season to the next. There is much to be said for making yourself sit down to create every day, but using it as a stick to beat yourself with is not helpful. We need to be aware of when our creativity transforms, and to trust it enough to go with the flow. This doesn’t mean I am abandoning my writing for good, simply that I know that right now, that isn’t where my best work will come.

The image in my head to illustrate this is when Picasso discovered the provencale village of Vallauris and threw himself into the art of ceramics. I have no doubt there were those who worried that his canvas days were over, but that was far from the truth. Instead, he trusted his creative urges enough to know that ceramics was a road he had to walk at that point in his life.

So I am trying to emulate Picasso, and to be at peace with where my creative road is taking me. It’s not easy, and Nigel has a lot to say about not having the gumption to get on with the novel, but frankly, STUFF NIGEL! Lets get out in the sun, eat ice cream, and do creativity the way we need to right now!

Happy sun-bathing and creating,

Journal Friday: The Life Organiser

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I’ve been enjoying Jennifer Louden’s The Life Organiser for a while now, and I wanted to share it with you. It is a weekly practise that may offer those who struggle with daily journaling an easier way into self-expression.

Now I have to confess, I’ve got a bit of a thing about the whole Organising scene. It is definitely a displacement activity for me. I would much rather go out and drool over new Filofaxes than actually do the work to sort out my office. I love stationery. I love notebooks. I love books about how to organise your life. I love the websites too. Call me a GTD addict. It cons me into thinking I’m actually getting something done. I am sure many of you can relate to that!

Lately, though, I have been wrestling with something of a mid-life crisis, and that, together with the complexities of actually writing on a regular basis for this website, as focussed my attention on the real core of the whole productivity mindset:

Intention

Life Coaches and self-development gurus go on about formulating your life goals, having a vision, a mission statement, working towards SMART goals, and all that stuff. Achievement, in other words. All of which is great of you actually know where you are going, and what you want.

But what if, like me, you are about to fall off the edge of 45, and still don’t have a clue what you want to do when you grow up?

Deciding what direction you want to push your life in is a huge project. It can feel overwhelming. Jennifer Louden’s approach is more subtle and manageable. Building on her work with The Women’s Comfort Book, and other invaluable tomes, she has written a workbook that gives the reader a chance to get in touch with their essential self, cut down empty busyness and focus on what is really important. On a week-by-week and day-by-day basis, she encourages you to think about what is going on in your life, here and now, and what you need to help you flourish. It feels quiet, comforting and manageable. And it offers you a chance to choose direction and improve the quality of your life in a gentle, incremental way. So how does it work?

The Life Organiser Book

The book itself is a delightfully satisfying object to handle, even before you get inside. It begins with some explanatory chapters, and then sets to work. Each week of the year has a two page spread, offering journal prompts and questions to contemplate and answer, inspiring quotes and the chance to list things you have to do, would like to do, and can reasonably let go of (the latter is my favourite, because it is the most thought-provoking for me.) It is all laid out so that you can use the actual book to write in if you like, but there are inspiring examples at the front of how other women have made their own notebooks and digital documents into Life Organisers too.

My Life Organiser Kit

My Life Organiser kit comes in this cute little bag…

I was given a little bag which is just the right size to keep my organiser kit in, and my day-to-day dates diary and journal fit in there nicely too.

I like to use lots of bright colours when I am answering the questions, so I include coloured felt-tipped pens, both fine and brush point, so that I can do that. I have settled on a colour scheme that I like, with particular colours for certain subjects, and that helps me if I want to check back through the pages of my notebook.

… and here is what’s in it!

The notebook itself is one I bought from WH Smith because I liked the cover. It has wide-spaced lines and lies open easily, which is great if I want to do a two-page spread for a mind map or such like.

Doing My Organising

I try to do my Organiser on Sundays or Mondays, so I can set a clear intention for myself for the week.

I like to write in my journal or do morning pages before I start on my organiser because it clears my mind, and helps me to focus on my needs rather than my complaints. I like to check my date diary or calendar before I start too, so I know what appointments I’ve got coming up, and how my time and energy will have to be distributed for the ensuing week.

When I have done that, I put in the date, and then write a section I call:

Where I am right now

This is a way of grounding myself, working out where I am emotionally and physically, and what issues are coming up for me at present. It isn’t in the Louden version, but I find it useful to do.

Once I know where I am, I start on the actual questions for the week. I always write out the questions in, in full, in a bright pen. (This year I am using pink, last year it was orange.) I answer in a kind of stream-of-consciousness. Sometimes a list comes out, sometimes a paragraph, sometimes a complete rant! It doesn’t matter what, it is all instructive. It tells me what is important to me at the moment, what I need to encourage and nourish myself, what I need to take notice of. From these realisations come the lists of what I could do, must do, and need to let go of.

I have found it is important not to make long lists of things to get done or to force myself to release things. Once you become prescriptive, these things become OUGHTS, and just make yet more burdens to add to those we have already. I keep my list of things I could do for the week to a minimum so I don’t pressure myself. Sometimes it is just a couple of things I could think about.

The lists can then be transferred over into my day to day diary and calendar if appropriate. I can make appointments to do the self-care things I have identified, and book rest time in, which I need because of my health. I put my ‘Let Go Of:’ list in the margin of my diary too, so that when I refer to it every day, I reminded of what is important to me.

I think the Life Organiser is a more mindful way of keeping true to my intentions and needs than the endless To Do lists most productivity tools offer. It forms a kind of accounting process that lies on top of my journaling, a means of orienting myself in a more concrete way. Because I do it on a weekly basis, (although sometimes I miss, in which case, I don’t worry about it) it doesn’t feel so much like a chore, and I look forward to it. It keeps me in touch with myself and has helped me formulate my dreams and visions into doable agendas in a gentle way that seems far less scary than other methods.

I recommend it. Get yourself a copy, and have a bash. You might find it bridges the gap between journaling and Filofaxes that you need!

(You can find out mroe about the amazing Jennifer Louden here.)

Happy journaling

Journal Friday: Outflow – Making Lemonade

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Part of being a writer is the dance of self-acceptance.

I have to deal with a chronic illness, which has radically altered my life for the last fifteen years, and shows no sign of waning. This means I have to manage the delicate balance between self-care and doing too much. When I overdo it, I end up exacerbating my symptoms and have to face extended periods of bed rest and being confined to the house. Anf brain fog.

So sometimes I can’t write. And its not that I don’t want to, its just that I literally can’t.

As I have said before, however, that doesn’t mean I’m not writing. In my head, at least.

Sometimes life deals us lemons, and the lemonade is hard to make. But even when I feel like I am buried under tonnes of lemons, the dream is still there. The memory of how fantastic it feels when I am able to write, when the flow is happening and I am submerged in a scene.

This is where my diary comes in. At times when I can process language, when I can hold my pen, I write in my journal. It may only be a few lines, a sentence or two, but it is self-expression, getting the feelings out onto the page, and it feels fantastic.

At times when things are tough, my journal is my life raft.

At the moment, as I struggle with another period of sickness, I am working with this book. When I have finished squeezing every drop of goodness from it, I will tell you how I got on, a little review of sorts. In the meantime, I offer you this quote, from the marvellous SARK, patron saint of creative women, quoted by the author, Jackee Holder:

“I love journal keeping because it has helped me to discover and uncover myself, to encourage my own bravery, sort out difficulties with other people, to invent new ways of being.”

SARK, Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper, 2008.

Happy Journalling,

Journal Friday: How to write yourself out of a hole

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Lighthouse at Dusk, Islay, Scotland

(DISCLAIMER: I am not a qualified counsellor, psychiatrist or doctor. I am just describing what works for me. If you are suffering with depression I urge you strongly to reach out and get help. You do not need to suffer.)

I have suffered from bouts of depression since I was a child. Depression is not having a bad day, or feeling blue, though both of those are unpleasant. Depression is a soul-crushing, heart-lacerating misery that debilitates and destroys everything in its path. Do not deny it or under-estimate it.

That said, over the years I have found ways to help myself, and believe me, helping yourself, feeling you have a little control over something that feels like it is controlling you, is a real relief. Journaling is one of those ways.

So what to do if you find yourself at the bottom of the depression mine shaft? Or even if you are just having a bit of a black dog kind of day?

How to:

Get out your journal.

Write down how you are feeling RIGHT NOW, in this moment. As my counsellor often says, you can’t get to Edinburgh if you don’t know where you are now. (Think about trying to plan a journey that way – impossible!)

Be specific.

Stop and take the time to feel what is going on inside your body. Do you have particular sensations associated with this low mood? If so, where are they? Write them down. They may be indicative of trapped emotions.

How are you feeling emotionally? Write that down too – a list of adjectives if that is all you can face doing.

Does an image that describes how you feel come to mind? Describe that. For example, for me a real, deep depression feels as if my ribs have been ripped open, and my heart repeatedly slashed. I feel it bleeding inside my chest. Yes, it is a horrible image, but that is exactly how I feel, and describing it, in as much detail as possible, can be a huge relief.

Do not judge your feelings as you record them. Do not judge yourself as selfish or unfeeling because you resent the fact that your husband is not doing much to help with your crying baby, or that you are angry because your boss does not recognise how hard you are working.. Have a good rant, safe in the knowledge that you don’t have to protect anyone’s feelings. You are not being a martyr or a victim at this point. You are just recognising how you feel. Do not feel bad about what you write. Admitting these feelings exist to yourself is the first step to healing, and no one else is going to see what you write.

If you don’t feel anything, write that too. An absence is just as important. Describe the void in as much detail as you can. You may even find, as you progress, that you begin to pick up on little gimmers in the abyss, feelings you didn’t know were there. Write those too.

As you write, you may find other feelings coming up from underneath the ones you are describing. Get those down. I often find that underneath my depression is anger, and underneath the anger lies a need not being met. When I identify what it is I want that I am not getting, I am right in touch with the small child inside that feels unloved, whose needs went unmet. Do not judge the need. Simply recognise it. Is there a way you can get what you need now, in a healthy way? Now you know what it is, you can ask for it.

Whatever else you do, try to write daily, and get whatever miserable feelings you are having onto the page. Once you have let them out, keep writing. You may find more positive stuff coming through behind, and perhaps even ideas of things to do to help, comfort and console yourself.

Above all, be gentle with yourself.

Show yourself the same compassion you would to a friend in need. (We often don’t do this, conditioned as we are to berate ourselves for the smallest failing.)

What next?

This is a process of continuing orientation and expression. If you were on a cross-country walk, you would stop regularly to check your map and compass, to be sure where you were, to work out which was the next direction to take.

In the same way, depression is a long journey. You need to be taking your own emotional temperature, checking your compass, as regularly as possible. So make time to write often.

In my last spell of depression, I worked in my journal like this three or four times a day, for several days, then continued on a daily basis long after. That probably sounds like quite a lot of effort. On the other hand, you might take a pill three or four times a day if told by the doctor that it would make you feel better. And this will make you feel better.

Why? Because it gets the toxic feelings out of your body and mind, and puts them somewhere else – onto the page.

NOTE: Do not reread what you write when you are still ill, or at all. That would be ruminating on your feelings, and will encourage you to judge, feel guilty or ashamed. Just get it down. You are looking for TRUTH, not BEING GOOD.

You may find it helpful to write on loose sheets of paper, rather than in your journal proper. This way, you could opt to burn the pages, ritually releasing the feelings, and freeing yourself.

Whether you are in the midst of a long bout of clinical depression, or just having a low spell, I encourage you to try this way of journaling. I hope that it will help you to release your pain and move back into the sunshine.

With love,

How to Take Criticism

1 Reply

The idea for this post came to me last week when I got a pretty starchy comment on one of my stories. It happens sometimes. Actually, I have to say I can think of only two previous occasions when comments have upset me in three years of online publishing, so I suppose I am doing pretty well. My pals were very supportive, as was my husband. No sweat, right?

Hmmm.

It got me thinking about how as artists we approach taking criticism. Art of whatever form is a subjective thing. Whether we like it or not is a personal matter. You can’t please all of the people all of the time, as they say. It is just a fact of artistic life, and we can learn a great deal from it.

The problem with art in general, and writing in particular, is that it is the product of our soul. That makes it very close to us, an expression of our feelings, of everything we believe in. And that, in turn, makes it hard not to take criticism personally. Which is why a negative review can feel like being emotionally disembowelled. It can be crippling. It can block us completely, so that we never creatively express ourselves again. That is why it is so important to know how to deal with it.

It strikes me that there are two types of criticism.

Constructive Criticism. This is the kind that comes from readers who support your work, who appreciate what an emotional risk it is to put your work out there, and who want to help you to improve. They give honest, caring feedback.
Rants. You know this kind of comment. It is usually about content, not plot, pace, language or technique. It is usually angry, often vindictive, and actually has nothing to do with your work, and everything to do with the commenter’s personal ‘stuff’.

Constructive criticism comes from a place of empathy and support. Its aim is to help you along the road to expressing yourself better. It may seem niggly (you missed a comma out, for instance, or left a typo in) but it is there with positive intent.

Rants are to do with issues that the critic has in their own life. The first nasty experience I had with this was with my story, ‘Property Of:’. A reviewer wrote a vicious snarl about how I had depicted the armed forces as being shagging frantically in trenches at every opportunity, and that it was disgusting that I should suggest this, or that Dr Watson could have been involved with a married person. My (possibly misguided) response was to email the person in question and ask her to expand on her comments. What I got back was a three page diatribe on the fact that Watson should be whiter-than-white and how dare I criticise the army.

Clearly she had issues surrounding infidelity and the armed forces.

I don’t write for Disney. I deal with the real shit. Real life. Real people. And real people make mistakes and get scared and do weird, unexpected things under pressure. She had her own reasons for not liking my story. Fine. I triggered them. Okay. But I am not going to change the whole tenor of what I write to please one person, however hurt they have been.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love criticsm. When it is constructive.

In the course of publishing daily episodes of ‘The Case of the Cuddle’, for example, I realised from comments being made that I had left out a whole area of the story between Lestrade and Mycroft. Without it, their responses to later events made no sense. If it had not been for those reviewers who were unafraid to ask awkward questions in a supportive way, I would not have noticed the gaping hole in my narrative. I hacked together an extra two chapters to insert into the story, and fixed the problem. Bravo critics. I learnt something. Thank you.

That is the point of contructive critisicm. You learn something. The way to approach any kind of criticism is to ask this question:

What can I learn from this?

So, how do you deal with criticism, nasty or kind? Here are a few tips:

Take a deep breath. Walk away. Give yourself some space. DO NOT immediately fire back a stroppy reply that will only provoke further attack.
Work out which kind of criticism is being offered. Calmly.
If this person has been triggered by some issue in your work, accept their right to their emotions, however wrong they are in venting them on you. Something horrible has clearly happened to them to provoke such an outburst.
You don’t necessarily have to email them, or reply at all. If you are really upset, do not engage.
If you write about difficult stuff, things that are likely to trigger strong reactions in your readers, them you should expect rants a bit more often than if you only write fluff. Be prepared, but DO NOT back off from writing about the tough stuff. It is only if we talk about these things that we can address them in society and heal the suffering they cause. You are doing good work. Keep doing it.
If you find yourself reacting strongly to a challenging, or ranting comment, it is worth thinking about why. Perhaps this review has triggered something for you? My commenter from last week challenged me about a prejudice I had been kidding myself I didn’t have. On reflection, I realised not that she had a point, because I stand by the artistic decision I made, but that there was an element of truth in her accusation. From now on, I will think more carefully about my responses to certain situations and where they come from. I have learnt from her, and not just in terms of my writing.
You do not have to rewrite your work just because someone negatively criticises it, nor should anyone expect you to do so.
Think about the reasons why you made the artistic or aesthetic choice you did. If your choice is rationally defensible, ie there is a better argument than ‘because thats the way I want to do it!’ (accompanied with a stamping of the foot), then let it stand. If, on reflection, you decide that it could have been done better had you made a different choice, then you can take the criticism on board, and maybe do it different next time. Make the decision to learn from it.
Don’t sweat the small stuff. I find myself getting very gnarly when someone is kind enough to point out where I left a typo in. Gggggrrrrrrr! But actually, they are doing me a favour. Not only are they acting as a free proof reader, they are also helping tackle my Perfectionism, and giving Nigel a good kick in the teeth at the same time!
Allow yourself to absorb the helpful comments at your own pace. Sometimes it can be very challenging to be told your sentence structure is a bit dense, or that your character’s motivation is shaky. Are you ready, at this point in your development as a writer, to accept this criticism? If you are, take it on board. If not, put it aside, and keep doing your best.
Don’t trust your first defensive denial. If the comment is offered sympathetically, with the earnest desire to help, then examine it.
As with all criticism, take what feels truthful to you, and leave the rest. Just let it go.
NO ONE has the right to browbeat you, attack you, abuse you, or verbally savage you to the point where you give up writing. Constructive comments on the work are helpful, personal attacks are not. Report vicious repeat flamers where necessary. Bullying is NOT ACCEPTABLE.
The internet gives you the opportunity to get free comments on your work in a way that never would have been possible twenty years ago. It is a huge resource. People take a great deal of time and effort to read your work. Thank them for the time they take to respond to it, and choose to learn from what they say, as far as you can.
Relax. No, really. This is not personal. Rejoice in the feedback you get. Why? because it means you are OUT THERE, being seen, and that, my friend is a HUGE blessing.

No doubt there is a great deal more that I could add. Taking criticism constructively is something you learn by doing. It really helps to join a writers group, where you can trust your fellows to offer you helpful feedback on a regular basis, so that you get used to it, and build up your ‘resistance’. (More on writers groups in a future post) In the meantime, I return to the following, which is the best advice I can offer:

Take what feels truthful to you, and leave the rest.

Next Wednesday, I will be writing another article about how to give constructive criticism, so stay tuned!

Happy writing,

evenlodesfriend

Speak Your Truth: Writing and Creativity

Category Archives: Self Reflection

Writers: Know Your Limits! (or why I’m not doing NaNoWriMo again this year)

Do you have a Creative Vision?

I am incubating a Cunning Plan!

I want to CELEBRATE!

Journal Friday: The Structuring Absence

The Structuring or Signifying Absence

Write when you need to write.

Journal Friday: Reflecting on Creative Blocks

Outflow: My Creativity Right Now

Journal Friday: The Life Organiser

Intention

… and here is what’s in it!

Where I am right now

Journal Friday: Outflow – Making Lemonade

Journal Friday: How to write yourself out of a hole

Above all, be gentle with yourself.

How to Take Criticism

What can I learn from this?

Take what feels truthful to you, and leave the rest.