On doing the do I want to do
Reflections on my writing practice, plus a very short poem inspired by a walk in the last gasp of summer.
If you want to do something, you have to do it.
Obviously, you say. Yes, obviously, I say. But also: it’s not always that simple, is it? There’s only so much time, and time is quickly filled. Meetings, eating tea, sorting out the laundry, catching up with friends, changing baby butts, sleeping, watching telly, looking quietly out of the window at the rain, scratching your dog’s ears, researching birthday presents, grating cheese, slowly thickening a béchamel sauce.
You know; day-to-day being and bumbling.
We’re taught to fetishise productivity, so I think it’s easy to see all that stuff as procrastination or inefficiency — as getting in the way of what you really ‘should’ be doing — when actually it’s made up of all kinds of little things you either want or need to do in the living of your sweet human life.
Last week I read this gentle wander through Katherine May’s writing notebooks, and it made me reflect on my writing (and reading) practice. I’ve been treating my creative writing too much like a job that needs doing and forgetting what it is: a practice, a way of expressing, understanding, sharing, and capturing. A scribble of something. Since then, I’ve started keeping a writing notebook for the first time; when I have an idea, or there’s a moment I want to remember, or a line crosses my mind, or I have a thought I want to remember, I grab a pencil and scrawl.
And so I’m now writing — just writing — for a few minutes, about whatever, whenever the fancy takes me. I’ve never done that before; I’ve always sat down at my laptop and said to myself: now it’s time to write. It’s hardly ever worked, and over the years writing became the thing I’d do if I only had the time (or a good idea). Perhaps if there’s a thing we want to be doing — reading*, knitting, cooking, or in my case, writing — we should be making it part of, rather than counter to, the bumble. That way, it becomes something we just do and weave into our day, rather than something insurmountable that’s impossible without a clear schedule, a strong coffee and an iron will.
The other night, with all this floating around my head, instead of clinging to my weekly Substack posting streak by slinging out a half-finished poem and calling it a job well done, I shut my laptop, sipped a glass of wine and watched Sort Your Life Out with my mum. Which is incredible, in case you’re wondering. I now want to lay out all my possessions in a warehouse and then burn it down.
I let myself be, instead of pushing to get something done. I left the posting until I had something to say, and the poem until it was a bit more finished. It came from something I wrote down after an evening walk in the late summer heat.
Enjoy — and allow yourself the bumbling. It’s what life’s all about.
Bye 🌳
(*On that note, I also love this article by Pandora Sykes on how she finds time to read. It’s inspired me to read a couple of poems when I wake up early, and save screens until later.)
Soothing
Hush, say the trees,
tousled by the last, oven-warm exhalation of summer.
Hush, say the waves,
sucking at the sand, sighing, rolling away and away.
Hush, I say,
drawing soft circles on a round tummy as it rises and falls.
It’s okay. I’m here, I’m here,
we’re here: mother, sea, trees.
Do I sound like them,
or do they sound like me?