When Writing Sucks…

I started writing seriously fourteen years ago. Before that I’d always written a journal, and I’d attended the odd creative writing class, but fourteen years ago something happened and I decided I was going to try my hardest to BE a writer.

In those fourteen years I’ve started a dozen novels, finished eight, had three published (under a different name) by a small, independent press, and had my latest, The Disappeared, published by Harper Collins. Along the way I’ve had four agents offer to represent me and a TV production company bought an option on the TV rights.

Fourteen years and I’ve had nine days where someone has said yes. (And yes, I know how lucky I am to have had those days.)

However, for the non-mathematicians out there, it also means that during the past 5 110 days I’ve had 5 101 where there hasn’t been a yes (a ratio of 1:568.) Of course it doesn’t mean that all of the other 5101 days  have involved a no, or that all have them have been bad, but some days being a writer sucks.

Today was one of those days. Loneliness, rejection, insecurity, worries about the future and feelings of not being good enough – not earning enough – paralysed me to the point where I was reduced to surfing the internet looking for stories to make me feel worse. These are the times when the best piece of advice I ever heard about writing starts to float around my head. If you can, quit.

So, I did. I walked out. I quit my desk, quit my job, quit my writing.

I was in such a mood the only way I could get myself to go for a walk was to bribe myself with a packet of Pringles and I was convinced I wouldn’t feel any better.

Julia Cameron (The Artists’ Way) says it takes twenty minutes of soothing, monotonous activity to switch the brain from the left side (the organisational side) to the right side (the creative side). Apparently ironing is also good.

I walked to my local park. I’ve grown up in this park. In my twenties I used to look after a boy with autism and we’d spend our days paddling in the river, getting chips in the cafe and a blackcurrant Callipo from the ice cream van on the way home.

I fell in love in this park – we had our second date here. We now live just around the corner. My children learned to walk, to ride bikes in this park. Six years ago I took up running and now I run three times a week around the lake. I’m ingrained in its paths. I know every inch of this park.

I didn’t think about writing. I didn’t have any great plot ideas. No massive breakthrough on my next novel… But somewhere along the way I started to feel better and that’s when I caught myself thinking I should write a blog about this.

And that’s when I was reminded that if you can’t quit, you just have to accept that being a writer sometimes sucks…