You’re reading Home Truths, a newsletter from me, Susy Smith. I am many things: a parent of grown-up kids, a dog owner, a gardener and a compulsive mover of vases (I worked for years as a stylist). I am also a writer/editor and former Editor-in-Chief of British Country Living Magazine, for whom I still write a monthly column.
I write here on an eclectic mix of subjects about life, and a few of the lessons I’ve learned along the way. Subscribe now for free and join the community! You can also support me and my work by upgrading to a paid subscription at any time – just tap the button below.
Photo by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash
I’ve been on a course this week. I love courses – always have. They are a break from the everyday, full of the intention that one’s brain will be stimulated, stretched and challenged in an attempt to learn something new.
When I worked in the corporate world, a course was a chance to get out of the office, spend time in a new environment and to build a closer kinship with one’s colleagues while completing team-building exercises and psychometric tests that told you what personality type you were and thus how to best operate in the workplace. I loved it all! It was a bit like doing the quizzes in Jackie magazine as a 1970’s teenager, although then the focus was on the all-important question of whether or not I would get a boyfriend!
I’ve been on loads of craft and gardening courses over the years in an attempt to learn everything from how to weave the perfect willow basket to how to sow seed most effectively for the best results. Some of what I’ve learned has stuck but much, alas, hasn’t. It’s a bit like studying a language – you have to put it to use regularly otherwise the brain doesn’t hold the learnings. No matter. I can always go back and do them again if I feel the need.
The course I was on this week was a writing course. I have been on several of these over the years and I always absorb something new whether it’s about structure, voice, themes or dialogue. What I am always looking for – isn’t everyone - is an answer to the eternal question of how does one make the writing less difficult to do? To that I have learned, yet again, there is no magic formula. The quote by American journalist and novelist, Mary Heaton Vorse comes to mind:
“The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”
I would add, “and staying there”. Vorse famously took away the clothes of one pupil and locked him in his room saying he could come out when he’d finished, so aware was she, of the difficulty of keeping going.
It’s all too easy to get distracted by everything and anything when you are trying to write: the searching for the right words, the dredging up of a feeling or the memory of a certain occasion, requires such intense concentration and appliance that doing the washing up, making a coffee or even, as one writer said “watching a fly crawling up the window pane” becomes much more interesting.
Sometimes a piece of writing works and sometimes it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, it’s immensely frustrating and demoralising. Rarely can I write about anything in one go: I have to step away, forget about it for a few hours or a day and then come back to it with fresh eyes and an open mind.
There’s always the problem, as a writer, of becoming unreasonably attached to a particular sentence or paragraph, even when one realises it isn’t necessary or doesn’t work. There’s something about the time and effort it took to find and combine these words that makes it very hard to let go.
This is why an editor is so important: a new pair of eyes and the absence of emotional attachment to a piece will usually tighten and improve it.
Aside from acquiring new knowledge, the thing I find endlessly fascinating about being on a course is meeting the other people who have also chosen to be there on that particular day or week to go on the same journey as me. We all arrive knowing nothing about each other, but by the end of it, conversations have been had, support and encouragement exchanged and new friends made.
Writing courses in particular are a gift for getting to know people, for the whole process requires an opening up, a revealing of inner thoughts and, as a result, a vulnerability that we rarely have the privilege to witness in fellow humans except in those especially close to us. Some of the people I was with this week found the work painfully exposing and I could see how nervous they were about talking about themselves, especially when it came to their turn to read out what they had written. But they did it – and quickly realised they were in a kind and supportive environment where everyone felt a bit, if not all, of the fear they were experiencing.
As they talked, the most amazing stories came tumbling out – honestly, it just proves the point that everyone has a story in them, and here I insert a great quote from Irish writer Frank McCourt:
“Every life is a mystery. There is nobody whose life is normal and boring”.
So true. The folk I was with this week – and I hope they don’t mind me telling you this - included a Vietnamese refugee who came to Britain when she was four and now works as a surgeon in the NHS. She decided, many years later, to try to track down the captain of the cargo ship that rescued her and the other refugees travelling with her and altered his course to bring them safely to shore in England. She found him not long before he died and now wants to write his – and her – story.
Then there is the ex-MEP who is planning a revealing memoir about life in the European Parliament under Margaret Thatcher; the businessman who came all the way from Uganda to London just to study in the week-long course; and the second generation British-Indian business-woman who is writing about the hugely successful beauty business she started from scratch with her father 15 years ago. And these are just the tip of the iceberg, believe me. I am fascinated by the idea of reading all of their stories but here, I enter a word of caution with another quote from Frank McCourt
“Everyone has a story to tell. All you have to do is write it. But it's not that easy”
Therein lies the rub. To have an interesting and unusual tale to tell is one thing. Mustering the strength, dedication and application to tell it in an original and compelling way and then getting people to read it is quite another. Let’s face it, if Frank McCourt, author of “Angela’s Ashes” finds it hard, where does that leave we lesser mortals? By the way, if you haven’t read “Angela’s Ashes”, I suggest you do so, it’s a fabulous book about the hardship of being brought up in the slums of pre-war Limerick and his subsequent move to America. It was also made into a film in 1999.
I am always heartened, however, to discover that few, if any, writers find the process easy. Ultimately, the help and support one gets from doing a course, whilst really useful, doesn’t change the fact that the writing, the actual content, has to be done by you and you alone. Sitting down, making yourself start, sticking with it even when no more words – at least none of the right ones - want to come, is what being a writer is all about. Tedious and painful though that may be, it does, I’ve learned, get easier the more you do it. Like any muscle, the brain needs to be exercised, and once it realises what it is you want it to do, it will comply more willingly.
The tutor on this week’s course talked about the tricks that some writers play to create the right environment for their writing: aside from having a place of quiet where no interruptions will be forthcoming, some always use the same pen/pencil, some light a candle each day, others play a certain piece of music in the background. This all tells the brain “We are here to work – let’s do it”
Regardless, most suffer the same torture of fear and self-doubt that we all do. Why, you may ask then, does anyone do it? I guess the best answer I’ve ever heard to this question is, “I feel I have something to say”. If no-one bothered to “feel the fear and do it anyway”, there would be no books, no stories, no folk tales – all the rememberings and imaginings that are so vital to help us laugh, cry and to understand more about the human condition and realise that we are not alone in our triumphs and struggles.
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Has this subject struck a chord with you? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Contact me by clicking the button below and I shall respond
Morning Susie, I’ve come to love these Sunday morning essays . You always touch the right chord. Growing up in the 70s I would often pen the opening chapter of a book . I dreamed of being a writer ; my grades implied otherwise. It is quite a paradox how I now teach writing to Year 6 on a daily basis , am the English lead for a large primary school. Yet my own writing - emerged through lockdown - is embryonic and fashioned as poetry . Nothing more - nothing in the tank . That said , when retirement comes , maybe then will I try . How do you ever know if you are good enough Susie ? You seemed in very good company on your course.
I was reading this post - taking a break from writing-putting off working on my book. Thanks for the encouragement to return to it