On writing.

In late November I travelled to London and spent some time in the British Library, trying to reconnect with a part of me that seems to have been lost among the busyness of being a mother, working, maintaining relationships, and all the many boring-yet-worrying things that adult life comprises. Once upon a time I used to make these trips relatively frequently, using the three-hours-each-way train journey to focus and write, setting aside the procrastination that has long accompanied any serious endeavour in favour of progress made possible only by very limited options and a looming deadline. The same magic filtered into my mind, words appearing on the screen as I moved through the Devon landscape and into the still-familiar outlines of the city; in a few hours nearly four thousand words gathered themselves to me, as though they had been watching, waiting, for the right opportunity to make themselves known, and all it had taken was for me to pause, to notice them, quietly present in the shadows.

It has been a little over a month since that day, and I haven’t been back to those words yet, but I can feel the time coming again.

I see many people choosing a word for the coming year. For me, it appears I am not yet done with the word that whispered to me last year, and indeed the year before. Listen. Listen. LISTEN. And so I shall. Or at least I’ll bloody well try.

When I was writing my PhD thesis, I also wrote 500k words on a blog. I enjoyed connecting with what turned out to be a surprisingly large community, reading and responding to comments as people shared snippets of their lives with me, often across the seas and skies of great distance. We exchanged posts made of binary spells, domains, hosting plans. But also parcels of shared magic, pocketfuls of soul. I have missed that, in the years since my blog dwindled to nothing.

When my brother was dying, four years ago, I found myself thinking how I mustn’t waste time, must take note of every grain of sand as it passed. Perhaps it is being 44, now. Perhaps it is seeing my girls reaching new levels of independence, at 11 and 14. Perhaps it is the inevitable morbid thoughts that are woven into the warp and weft of a relationship with a man I love in a way I have loved no other, and who, 21 years older than me, may not always be here with me, if things follow their natural order.

I feel the words, whispering to me. Do something. Do something that actually matters. That isn’t just a job. That isn’t just the next contract. That doesn’t tick a box. That isn’t about this life that we lead, that fills the days so close to brimming over that it is almost impossible to imagine any space anywhere in which to do more, to do, to do, to do.

Do something.

And do it now. Make a start. Just a few words, a few words done often. Remember how it feels to write. To think in paragraphs, pages, chapters. And do it now, remembering the flowing sands, the breaths that will not always be here, the time that doesn’t stretch out to infinity and will in fact never feel right. Do it anyway, and do it now.

So I will listen, and I will try to write.

And naturally I will procrastinate. So if you are reading these words, welcome. Perhaps in procrastination I will find my way back to words, and perhaps I will share some pocketfuls of soul here, along the way. I do hope so.