Why I Started Not a Write Off

This is a place where I show up, natter about writing, and skim off thoughts whilst my hands are busy parenting.

If you’d prefer to hear me read this post, tap the voiceover above.

Ah, yes. That’s me. That’s my baby. That’s the novel I desperately tried to finish before my baby joined us earthside and which is still blinking away on my laptop, added to in the unpredictable hours of her naps.

With all the will (which looks like tiptoing, Grinch style, around the flat) in the world (wherever the baby decides nap time is), I can only work on my novel in chunks decided on by her. She’s like an erratic stopwatch and I never know whether the alarm will go off in nine or ninety minutes. ‘Sleep when the baby sleeps,’ they say. HA! But I have a deadline that she has negligable respect for!

Now that I *kind of * have my head around how to keep my tiny little time vampire alive, I can also get back to delivering my fourth novel to my very patient and understanding editor. BUT there are times when I’m trapped under the baby, or feeding her, or stuck in a waiting room with my phone, one hand free, and have a need to write something, ANYTHING! Yes, sometimes time is gobbled up by things and people and obligations, but hey, that’s life! And yet, I still want to write.

In the past year, many things have interrupted me when I ‘should’ have been working on a Big Project and as a result, I’ve sacked off the day because I didn’t acheive what I wanted to within the neat little box I’d set out for myself. These reasons have included:

1. I’ve taken in a parcel in for the neighbour

2. The baby decides that twenty minutes is a perfectly long enough nap

3. I decided to watch an episode of Below Deck and didn’t stop it halfway through like I said I would

4. Day jobs spool into evening jobs

5. I’ve socialised! (seeing friends and family is not an indulgence, even though many writers feel it is!)

6. My thumb inches towards yet another mindless phone scroll

7. Negative thoughts intrude until I close the laptop in frustration

8. I can’t find my favourite pen

9. I’ve left my laptop charger at home

BUT there’s something about trying to balance a baby and a writing career that won’t magic time into existence, and that made me realise something. I can’t get to the end of each day with a failure complex. Not only will words stay adamently off the page, but I’ll feel like a sad little worm, wriggling around on tarmac until someone squashes me flat.

This is what I’ve realised. You don’t need retreats, whole weeks, days, or hours. Every moment spent writing, or thinking about story, or playing with words counts. You are not a write off and neither am I.

Big wins don’t happen unless the small ones happen first. Also, sometimes writing is parked because you really need to finish a series of Below Deck and that’s okay too.

Zadie Smith said that ‘The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.’ I feel that and I expect you do too. Sometimes I really, literally feel it because I’m sleep-deprived and have to feed a hungry baby multiple times a night, but Zadie’s take is a little more romantic.

There is so much happening to me that I want to make sense of and this is the best way I know how. Also, I have absolutely hit my quota of sincere ‘YoU GOt thIS MAma!’ posts on social media and want to provide an antidote to that.

There’s another side to it too.

During the pandemic, I was asked to put together a workshop for a creative writing group and got such a buzz from thinking about the tasks, working in prompts, and finding ways to demystifying the writing process. When I started out, I loaned every book I could find on how to write fiction, read blog after blog, and listened to hours of podcasts in an attempt to make the road to publication easier. Some of it was golden, some of it was irrelevant, and a lot of it was so woo-woo and abstract that I felt it necessary to conduct a heavy sage burning to un-muddle my mind. If I could save other writer’s time, I would. Six successful workshops later, I had another request. This time, for mentoring. I have now mentored a number of writers and also coach groups with the London Writing Salon. You know what? I absolutely love it.

When I say that I have found my sweet spot of writing, reading, and teaching, I feel like I’m inching towards it, slowly but surely. BUT! (why is there always a but??) last year I had more requests for mentoring and workshops than I had capacity for. Especially now, with a lil’ bub, I wanted to find a space to share my insights and workshop materials in more bitesize chunks. I’m genuinely proud of the content I put together, but as the industry changes and I learn more, I want revamp, expand on, and share it again in a slightly different format that is (hopefully) more accessable. That’s partly what this newsletter will focus on.

For a long time, I doubted whether there would be an apetite for yet another newsletter largely centrered on writing, but my experiences have taught me otherwise. Put it this way: I once sat in a hotel bar and overheard two plummy, English thirty-year-olds talk about their new podcast idea with the uninhibited confidence of Ricky Gervais roasting celebrities at the Golden Globes. I’m pinching some of that nepo-baby energy with the creative writing posts I’ll be sharing. I’ll make as many posts as I can accessible for free, but paid subscribers will get access to more. Basically, I sift out the good stuff so you can make progress with your writing and learn to love the process again. I like to keep things down-to-earth and practical, so that’s what you can expect from posts of mine that sit within this camp. What about the rest? Well, you can expect motherhood, insights into my writing life, and a breakdown of my top five Below Deck episodes.

What kind of content can be found where?

For free, you’ll get a post a fortnight, as well as opportunities to interact using Substack’s chat feature.

• Writing from under the baby (which is like a journal)

• Mini-essays on writing, publishing, and comedy

• Ears and eyes recommendations (podcasts, TV, film, etc)

• Writing Q&As, where I (and other writers) can offer friendly, practical advice on any issue, from the spark of an idea to the frankly bizarre world of publishing

Why bother with a paid subcription?

For starters, you’ll be supporting me! As a freelance creative writing tutor and author, this is a magic spot where I can offer you the best bits on a more regular basis, so you don’t always have to wait for a new novel or a workshop. This will include:

• Monthly book recommendations

• Plot Cloudbusting sessions, where we jump on a thread to bounce ideas and plot solutions around so you can keep your story moving

• A series of mini-workshops and writing prompts. First up will be plotting and planning a novel

• More personal posts that I likely wouldn’t share so readily to a wider audience!

It’s £3.50 a month, or £30 for the year. So, a coffee a month, and that’s without an oat milk upgrade if you’re passing through London.

Whatever you decide to do, I’m glad you’re here. I’d love it if you’d like to introduce yourself in the comments section and to share a tiny triumph from your day. I’ll go first.

I’m Abi. I live in London and am a displaced Norfolkian. My small triumph today is that I finished this blog post whilst my baby slept on my chest. In other news, I drank a coffee yesterday made with very-off oat milk and didn’t get sick! Hooray!