Have I told you that I’m writing a memoir? No? How remiss of me. Hi, I’m Ingrid and I’m writing a memoir about the most painful and traumatic time of my life. It centres on death and surviving, grief and glimmers of joy, heartbreak and hospitals and healing. Oh, and it’s a love story.[1]
With an introduction like that, I wouldn’t blame you for making a speedy exit and avoiding anything I write in future.
If you’re still here, firstly, thank you.
Secondly, I’d love to talk to you about not being able to write.
If you’ve read this essay from last year, you’ll know that I’m working on giving myself permission to write. And the whole premise of my publication on Substack is about permission; recognising that no one is coming to give it to us and accepting that it’s time to gift it to ourselves. But I’m realising that this is still a work in progress, and not the case of a one-off permission slip being sufficient. I often find myself falling back into the trap of thinking about writing as a luxury that I’m not entitled to, that I haven’t earned, that I haven’t been productive enough for, that I’m not allowed to enjoy. It’s something for those other writers over there; not for me, someone who just manages to write sometimes.
Then there are the fears, particularly those that I’ve come to understand plague many writers of memoir: who could possibly be interested in this? What relevance could my life and experience have to anyone else’s life? Of all the millions of exceptional memoirs out there, why would anyone choose to read mine?
I respond to these fears with the assurance that this memoir might only be for my family and those who love me enough to want to read it. Or it might just be for me, to process something I lived through, something I experienced that was big enough and impactful enough to be the line that demarcates ‘before’ and ‘after’ in my life. To understand better what happened, why it happened the way it did, and who I am as a result. To which my fears reply, must be nice to be able to spend hours (and hours) navel gazing about an experience that happened years ago, only to then file it away and it never see the light of day.
Clearly fear has an answer for everything.
To allay the permission-needing thoughts and the fears, I have a little script in my head for when they get too loud (again, and as always, inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic[2]):
Hi Paddy (I should mention here that I’ve nicknamed my fear after Paddington Bear – generally polite, always with the best of intentions, but with a penchant for messing things up.). I know you’re looking out for me, trying to keep me safe and travelling the path set out for me when I was younger. Thank you. But I need to say / write / do this thing, and I can’t not do it because you’re worried. So how about you come along for the adventure, let me know when and why you’re worried, I’ll listen attentively, and then I’ll go ahead and do the thing anyway. Deal?
At least for a little while, this tends to quieten Paddy down so I can get words on the page. Permission granted and fears abated, for now.
Once I have permission, you would think I would be able to write. But then come the practicalities, like time and space to write. Finding time is a tricky one for me at the moment. With a husband, two young children and a full-time business, does that make writing my piece on the side? I’ll admit that was how I framed it at first. Any time I spent writing was time stolen away from something or someone else. It felt a little bit sexy, a little bit secretive, and something all for me. The ideas and inspiration were in full flow because every time I sat down to write I was so thrilled, so grateful, so exhilarated by the decadent hour I had secreted away. There were always words and worlds ready to flow onto the page.
But after a time, I realised this wasn’t enough. As I imagine happens with most pieces on the side, I wanted something more, something real, something that could take up space in my normal life. And I wanted my writing to be more than a secret I hid away. I wanted to block out time in my calendar for writing, become a paid subscriber to all my favourite writers on Substack, go on writing retreats and take part in writing courses and attend book festivals. I wanted to live my writing life out loud and in the world, rather than hidden from view. Essentially, I wanted to go public with my side piece, so this analogy no longer worked for me.
Was it the framing that was the problem? Instead of a piece on the side, what about a side hustle? Everybody seems to have one these days, very millennial of us all. My bordering-on-gen-X understanding of a side hustle is all about taking something – a thing we do for joy, for relaxation, as a hobby, something just for us without any need for external validation or adulation – and we monetise it. That is, we sell it, or we teach people how to do it, or we productise it, and then we promote the living daylights out of it. Essentially, we do everything except do it for joy and relaxation because now it’s an income source.
And once it’s an income source, we need to scale it. That’s right, because a side hustle isn’t just about making us some extra money, it’s about having funnels and audiences and growth, which lead to investment, and funding, and more growth. Which eventually ends up with us becoming just another cog in the capitalist side-hustle-start-up machine that keeps us working and not doing the thing for joy, for relaxation, as a hobby, something just for us without any need for external validation or adulation or, indeed, payment. It becomes another thing we have to do, rather than the thing we get to do.
Small caveat here: I have nothing against anyone making money doing what they love. Truly, if you can find a way to get paid for something you’re passionate about and/or are great at, have at it and I think you’re fantastic! My complaint here is about the external pressure to productise and monetise our joy to the point where it’s no longer joyful.
It’s clear that side piece and side hustle weren’t the right frames. Perhaps the issue is seeing writing as a thing I do, rather than a thing I am. If there’s time and space in the day for Ingrid the mother, Ingrid the wife, Ingrid the sister, Ingrid the friend, Ingrid the lawyer, Ingrid the businessperson, so on and so forth, what’s one more thing? Can’t there be a bit of space for Ingrid who writes? As everything in my life has previously had to shift to allow for something else, can’t everything shift again now to allow for writing?
I acknowledge these are not simple shifts, but nor were the others. Every other aspect of my life had to change shape significantly to accommodate motherhood. And when, less than three years into motherhood I started a business, again every other aspect of my life had to change shape to accommodate that business. Isn’t this what we do, as people with changing people, priorities and passions? We shift things around, perhaps shrink some things for a time, to make space for something important, something that matters, something worthy.
Almost 1,400 words into this essay I imagine some of you are thinking I should get on with writing, instead of thinking about why I can’t write or why it’s hard to write or what must change for me to be able to write.
But I strongly believe I’m not the only person, and absolutely not the only woman, who has been taught and conditioned to tick every box before she gets to do what she wants. Who has been taught that doing something purely for joy or pleasure is a luxury she isn’t entitled to, and if she has earned it, then she must endlessly justify it. And I’m absolutely not the only woman who is constantly contending with the guilt associated with taking time in her day for herself.
Also, no, self-care is not only an uninterrupted shower or a new scented candle. Self-care is about making choices that prioritise our mental, physical, emotional wellness. It's about meeting out own needs, and not only so that we can meet everyone else’s. That means filling our own cups, not so we can fill everyone else’s, but because we get to have a full cup.
Incidentally I would love a full cup.
I don’t have a tidy solution except to keep coming back to the page, in the moments when fear abates and life allows. To come back to the page and keep writing.
I would so love to know if you have experienced any of these blocks? Or any of your own? And what you’ve done to move through them? Answers on a postcard, or even better, in the comments.
[1] Quoting the wonder that is Elizabeth Gilbert [tag] when she’s describing a moment of magic between her and Ann Patchett. Gilbert, Elizabeth (2015) Big Magic. Bloomsbury, Great Britain, p 53-4.
[2] Gilbert, Elizabeth (2015) Big Magic. Bloomsbury, Great Britain, p 25.
[3] Thumbnail Photo by Alex Stone on Unsplash
Oh Ingrid, I could have written this myself (and I wish I would have!). Why do we as women feel the need, no the obligation, to justify any minute that isn’t spent serving others? I am struggling too with the whole process of ‘indulging’ myself in writing (and that’s before I have even written a word). I’d give my child my last breath so she could take one more but I struggle to justify the time and space I need to write. Is it a business or side hustle? God, no… I can hardly add up! But would I rather do this than my day job?…Hell yes! So much to process before I have even opened my laptop. Thanks so much for writing this, I loved it.
Ingrid! I want to quote and restack every paragraph of this piece, which articulates many of my worries and fears around writing so clearly. The imposter syndrome (who would want to read my story?) which I’ve mostly quieted by focussing on the first draft being for me (I can worry about second drafts and audience and proposals later…much later if I keep writing this slowly!). The worry that I’m navel-gazing and taking time away from my family and other parts of my life to write about something that I should be over by now. The niggling feeling that I should be making my substack into a side hustle, when I want my writing to be something I do for me rather than for other people. I’m not sure i have any pearls of wisdom to share, other than keep going, keep finding those moments of time and space to writing, and try not to worry if sometimes the words come slowly or not at all - trust the momentum of continuing to show up for your writing ❤️