Part Five: Let the Sunshine in…
Now you’ve found your inspiration, you can set to work. Get ready to shine a light on all those subjects that have been waiting for your unique voice to bring them to life.
I’ve found that clearing my diary and desk before beginning a new project works like magic. Without the shadow of appointments or deadlines, or distractions such as my towering To Be Read pile and accounts waiting to be updated, I can sit down with a clear conscience and start writing.
Let the smell of the furniture polish and screen wipes you use when making that clean sweep act as stimulants, but don’t allow procrastination to lock you into an endless loop of housekeeping. There’s a limit to the number of times pencils can be sharpened before they disappear!
Only you can fully understand the motivation behind your need to write. Writing for pleasure, profit, or posterity are all equally valid reasons. I know many of you are using writing to help you through the anxiety of illness and lockdown. Hard though your accounts may be to write, they will fascinate future generations and offer insights into the ability of human beings to adapt to any situation.
Regardless of your reason for starting to write, it should always be a pleasure. If you write from the heart, your enthusiasm will shine through. It doesn’t matter if nobody else ever sees what you’ve written. Translating your thoughts into words, seeing them on a page or screen and then refining them is an achievement in itself. Millions of people think about doing it, but only a small number actually settle down and put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard).
While I’m lucky enough to earn most of my living from writing, I have always looked on any payment I receive as a bonus. I enjoy writing so much I’d do it for nothing—and that happens more often than you’d think! I’ve been involved in projects that started well but somehow never gelled, others where I’ve loved every minute and poured my heart and soul into the work, and yet it wasn’t picked up by a publisher. Most frustrating of all, I’ve had a novel accepted by an independent publisher which—so far— has never managed to get as far as publication.
Writing is always worth the trouble, although your work is unlikely to be snapped up for a six-figure advance. In these days of shrinking budgets and growing costs, getting paid any money at all before your book has been on sale for several months is rare. Payments may continue to trickle in for years afterwards, but to begin with you’ll become richer in writing experience than in hard cash.
That experience will help you to help yourself, and others. In good weather, our house is a lovely twenty-minute stroll through the woods from the nearest main road. A few years ago, we were completely marooned by snow for several weeks. Collecting our deliveries and groceries meant a tiring half-hour trudge through drifts almost up to the tops of our boots, before hauling our goods home on a sled. That was fun the first few times, but the novelty soon wore off.
During that season of snowstorms the electricity was cut off quite often. The weight of snow kept bringing down branches onto the power lines running through the wood. As many people in this rural area were in the same predicament, we often had to wait for a long time before we were reconnected to the power supply.
Although our isolation then was nothing compared to the current crisis, keeping a journal about our day-to-day life kept me busy by giving me something to focus on. Looking back on the entries I made then is fascinating. It reminds me to double check our supplies of candles and torch batteries. Not to mention Calor gas, staples like flour, yeast, and the one thing I can’t live without—tea!
You don’t need to live in interesting times to create something that will fascinate future generations. The Mass Observation Archive, which is held as part of the University of Sussex’s Special Collections, originally started in 1937 as a national life-writing project. Submissions from a cross-section of British people supplied accounts of lives that now exist only between the covers of history books. The difference is, contributions to the Mass Observation Archive have been written by people like you and me, rather than professors of politics and economics.
The most well-known example of a contributor to the MOA is probably Nella Last, whose journal entries have been published as Nella Last’s War, and were adapted by Victoria Wood to create the TV drama Housewife, 49. Nella’s life is a world away from how we live now. Things are bound to change in the future—why not leave a record of your own life for posterity? Imagine giving your grandchildren, and their grandchildren, a written example to follow (not to mention an endless source of material for school projects!). Start writing today. Your family, as well as future historians, will thank you for it.
Next time I’ll be talking about the ways your ideas can be turned into a manuscript that’s ready for submission. Make sure you sign up below, so you can read Part Six the minute it’s published.