People who don't write often think writing is easy. After all, it's sit-down, indoor work. Most writers work at home, close to the TV, close to the fridge and the toaster, close to their beds...! And it is certainly true that it is a much pleasanter way to pass your time - for those who enjoy it, at least - than emptying bins, serving in a cafe, laying bricks on a building site, filing, or sitting in a boring meeting. [Though, to be fair, most writers earn so little that they often have 'day jobs' anyway - and then there are children to look after, caring duties, housework, dogs to walk, meals to plan, errands to run, etc].
Having said that, many people would consider the idea of sitting at a keyboard (or with a pen in your hand) for hours at a time to be tantamount to torture. My niece would feel she was receiving cruel and unusual punishment if she was told she had to write a story. Most of the teenagers I teach clearly consider any sort of writing, including 'creative writing', along with any sort of reading, to be a form of child abuse. I once left a good job so I could focus on my writing for a year, and I remember a colleague asking what I was going to do. When I told her, she looked horrified and said 'Oh, I couldn't stand that, just sitting around all day at a computer. It would drive me bonkers!'. It's horses for courses.
Which reminds me of something P once told me. He's a keen chess-player and he used to belong to a local chess club. A fellow member once told him that, while he was playing a game, an elderly man observing them shook his head, pursed his lips and said: 'Oh, I couldn't be doing with sitting there like that, for hours on end. My mind's too active for that game!'
Even though you can sit in the warm and not get rained on, writing is mostly hard work. It's surprisingly physically-demanding - typing for hours, particularly when you're not a touch typist, can be very draining. And concentrating for long periods of time is exhausting. I know this sounds absurd, but it is an act that is mostly wearying and unsatisfying, but there are moments of glorious bliss that make it worthwhile.
Nevertheless, the proximity of the biscuit tin and the kettle, the ease with which you can make yourself a quick slice of cheese on toast or watch an episode of Futurama, does make it difficult to focus. The lengths writers will go to avoid writing should give you an insight into how difficult it can be. When the lockdown began, I think that most of my writing friends and acquaintances were, like many people, shell-shocked and in a state of low-grade anxiety that sapped their ability to work on creative projects. But this has worn off for many of us now, as we adjust to the 'new world'. Yet, while some people are now using their extra time to dive into their ongoing novels or write some poetry or keep a proper diary which they'll eventually turn into a fabulous piece of CNF (Creative Non Fiction), I'm still distracting myself with other things.
Any other thing, in fact.
I have no shortage of things I should be writing. A coursework deadline is fast approaching and I have several half-written stories that I need to finish and select from. I'm also supposedly doing the Write Club's monthly writing challenge, but I only managed a rubbish poem for February and a very short story for March. I have piles of reading to do for the course as well as preparing for the 15,000 word End-of-Module piece due in October. But do I do these things? No.
I began my attempt to focus by trying to catch up on all the posts on the Masters course online forum. People had posted work needing feedback, or completed activities from the course material requiring contributions to discussions, and I thought it would be a good idea to work through the forty-odd unread posts on my screen and respond to as many as I could. This was fine except that naturally I kept being sidetracked into non-writing-related conversations, mostly about Covid-19 and self-isolation. And that's before I took a look at the MA course Facebook page, or the Open University's Write Club Facebook page, or the Write Club Forums where there were pieces of work requiring feedback. For someone who doesn't think of herself as being social-media-savvy, I sure do seem to spend a lot of time on it!
I've also been spending large chunks of every day texting, emailing, phoning and even video-calling friends and family, much more than I ever do normally. As you know, I'd never video-called anyone before lockdown! People must be sick of talking to me.
Anyone who has read this blog over the past few weeks will have an inkling of the other things I've been doing - inventing ways of using up leftover food, making children's toys out of toilet roll inner tubes, sorting the various documents on my various USB drives into folders (takes longer than you'd think), doing 'play' archery and wakeboarding on the Wii machine, preparing the lessons for my private tutees (whom I am teaching by Skype) in unnecessary detail, inventing new household chores and then beating myself up psychologically if I don't complete them, watching TV, looking at things unrelated to my writing on the internet (for instance, I spent an hour earlier working out the chronological order of the Roman Emperors for no good reason at all). And writing this blog is a major procrastination activity.
Twenty years ago, I began making a hand-stitched patchwork quilt. I don't know how to make a patchwork quilt. No one has ever taught me, I've never read a book or watched a programme on it, and I don't have a sewing machine. I have no idea what possessed me. But nevertheless I began making this quilt. After a few weeks, I got fed up and put it away for several years. Since then, it's been dragged out of the cupboard once or twice over the years for a few weeks' sewing until I get sick of it again. Guess what I've started doing this week?
So, I might end up failing my Masters course but I will have a patchwork quilt made out of bits of old shirts, so that's ok...
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