Hi friends,
Some weeks, you push, and you push hard.
Some weeks, you take it easy.
I’ve been pushing hard this year. We’ve been in lockdown again since January, what else was I going to do? But as life begins to open up, I’ve been loosening my grip on work, and making plans to head out into the world again.
I booked an appointment to get a haircut.
I made plans to meet up with friends in Brighton, in Tunbridge Wells, and in London.
We actually had a drink at a café near the beach. We’re still not allowed inside, but the weather was nice and we sat outside and talked about how strange it felt to be around people again.
I talk a lot about showing up for work, and it’s necessary. If you don’t show up for your writing consistently, it doesn’t get done. When the writing doesn’t get done, it doesn’t get published. And when it doesn’t get published, your career stalls.
But showing up for life is important, too. For so many, if not all, of us life has been stalled over the last year, and it’s impacted our writing. I don’t know about you, but most of my ideas come from traveling, from seeing people, from being out in the world.
My last two novel ideas came to me when I was abroad. The first was in France, where we’d gone on holiday. I’d been lounging around by the pool reading, aptly, The Paris Wife, and for some reason that I still cannot entirely explain, I kept having flashbacks to the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, and my life before and after that event. I’d been playing around with a novel at the time and watching my son and his friend splashing about in the pool made me realize that I needed to center the novel around that event.
The second time, we were in Thailand. We were staying in a small apartment in a high-rise, and everything you could think of existed in that building. A grocery store, a dry cleaners, a small restaurant, a swimming pool. I remember thinking, what if you never had to leave this building? And then it got interesting–what if you’re not allowed to? This was 2019, and yes, I was super annoyed when my crazy idea became our reality. (There’s no pandemic in my book, so it still works.)
After that, I got into my head that I can only come up with novel ideas when I’m traveling or on holiday, preferably somewhere I haven’t been before. Which wasn’t a problem. Until now.
In any case, over the last year, I feel like there’s been a lot of output for me in terms of writing, but not enough input. My creative batteries are running low on charge, and I need people, experiences, and new places to fill them back up again.
It has been a season of work, of survival, of somehow getting through it over the last year.
I’m eager for it, once again, to be a season of life.
Cheers,
Natasha