#100 | Failing to write
Jack Torrance: Good. Now why don't you start right now and get the fuck out of here? Hm?
“The things that make me different are the things that make me, me.” —Piglet
“A day without a friend is like a pot without a single drop of honey left inside.” —Winnie the Pooh
I'm sitting at a dining room table in Ballyclare, half an hour north of Belfast. It's been raining, so the lavender outside the window is flat on the grass. It's entirely still; I can't even hear the TV in the next room since the thick walls keep the warmth out and the sound in.
In the cold, I'm flicking through 100 issues of this weekly letter. 100 weeks!!! What the fucckk!! — and so many fantastic responses. But as I read, the universe begins to spin; I get Vertigo. Kundera defines the notion of Vertigo, the namesake of this letter, as:
"Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer Vertigo. What is Vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves."
The Unbearable Lightness of Being is one of my favourite novels. In it, Milan Kundera captures living in all its gruesomeness. The shadows of existence, with its doubts and unspoken desires. (He says, "There is no perfection only life.”).
Kundera's Vertigo activates as I remember exactly where I sat when writing every episode and how life has changed in 100 weeks. It began in cafes in Istanbul, continued on the Kenyan coast, and was published in national parks and from mountains. I lived in the absolute cheapest room I could find in Nairobi, and finally, I posted from my new home with Giulia. All the while, during the week, we’ve been building Yokeru, requiring immense energy to quietly cough to life.
One hundred weeks, one hundred emails. One hundred tiny decisions. I was not a writer when I started, but now (proudly and with gusto), I say I am.
And each decision has been because, and in spite, of failure. Failure is everywhere. We either choose to fail or choose not to grow. The choice is binary and daily. Even a silly little exercise like starting a weekly letter forces me to confront failure. In my mind, Vertigo is realising failure is always close to us, just over the hill and around the corner.
A friend recently asked me how to write a speech for his wedding. Where do I start? — he asked. I have never been married, not even once; I was the wrong person to ask. Nevertheless, I replied with my thoughts, having typed ~150,000 words in the last couple of years. I whatsapped:
Start by writing as if no one will ever read it. All writing is terrible to begin with, and you'll fail at it. But don't worry! Writing is done in the editing, so the first draft is for your eyes only. Remember this! If you freeze up, begin the first line as a letter to someone close to you.
For example, I often start, "Dear Mum, sitting in a cafe...... Then I delete all the top bits! For some reason, it helps with creativity. Finally, block out half an hour with no phone and no internet, just a blank page. During that time, you can either write or stare at the blank page, but nothing else. Remember, no one will read that first draft!!!
Looking back at the message, it's striking how much writing is about failure and little else. I do not reference selecting words, writing succinctly, or keeping sentences to a certain length. It's just about being comfortable with getting it wrong.
For me, each week's process goes something like this:
I brew a cup of tea (this is necessary) and begin to write. Academically, I know that whatever I write can soon be deleted. However, resistance remains. A faint uphill climb confronts me, against which I must push to get to the top. The view from the top of this Hill of Disappointment is of a crap essay. This HOD levels out halfway in and begins to descend when we have the first draft, at which point we're ready for some editing. But at the start, looking up, I can hardly see the top.
My panniers, for this climb, are filled with half-made sentences I've formed the previous week, but I am unsure where they fit. Even now, after a couple of years, I forget myself and think I need to craft something readable at this early stage. I don't! I just need to craft something. I'll make it readable later.
So I type and type and type, like Jack Torrance in The Shining, and try to stop myself from going back to edit (I don't think he checks his work—does he?). And when I've written for half an hour, or sometimes an hour, I get up and refill my tea. This is also important, as it gives me some breathing space from the screen (and gets me tea).
Finally, I sit down again, recharged and full of excitement.
Then, like Jack Torrance, I take an axe to what I've written. I break and butcher my work. I slice it up. RED RUM! I scream with delight. The end becomes the start; I delete and remove and append. I change the tenses and perspectives. This bit is the most fun.
I do all of this in the quiet, and it's meditative. Again, in this regard, I'm inspired (to a limited extent) by The Shining:
Jack Torrance: Wendy, let me explain something to you. Whenever you come in here and interrupt me, you're breaking my concentration. You're distracting me, and it will then take me time to get back to where I was. Understand?
Wendy Torrance: Yeah.
Jack Torrance: Fine. Then we're going to make a new rule. Whenever I'm in here and you hear me typing
[types]
Jack Torrance: or whether you don't hear me typing, whatever the fuck you hear me doing, when I'm in here, that means that I am working, that means don't come in. Now, do you think you can handle that?
Wendy Torrance: Yeah.
Jack Torrance: Good. Now why don't you start right now and get the fuck out of here? Hm?
It's a great story! So many lessons for aspiring writers.
There is no learning without failure. Even on a wee letter such as this, the first effort is a failure that I wouldn't want anybody to see. But the second attempt is marginally better, and so on. Remember too that I started writing in April, half a year earlier than the first issue of this! And — horror — I failed to publish regularly!
In the first-ever letter I sent, I quoted Ram Dass:
"The most exquisite paradox...as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can't have it. The minute you don't want power, you'll have more than you ever dreamed possible."
The quote is strangely prophetic. Writing was hard when I maintained the pretence of being a successful writer. Now I've surrendered to the joy of it — the joy of failing at it — it's the highlight of my week, every week.
Thank you for subscribing, and here's to the next century.
My week in books
It will never happen to me! by Claudia Black. I used to drink too much and now don't at all. One in eight American adults, or 12.7 per cent of the U.S. population, meets the diagnostic criteria for alcohol use disorder. Alcoholism ruins lives, and we have a 1/8 chance of that happening to us. I don't like those odds and remain puzzled as to why it's 'normal' to (a) introduce children to drinking and (b) not talk about the terrible impact of alcohol. I am reading more about it because my life could have panned out differently. Recommended if you suspect you drink too much.
Live well,
Hector