On Not Writing

Kathleen Jamie considers the fallow times

Well here we are again. I recognise you, old friend, if friend is the word. This time, with several decades and books to my name, I can be more accepting, even welcoming. You’re not malicious, after all. Perhaps you’re even helpful. Anyway, it looks like we’re going to live together for a while, perhaps the rest of my life. Or you might clear off again.

*

Years ago, I remember being panic-y during these times, because so much of my sense of who or what I was in the world was to do with being a writer, striving to be a poet. ‘What are you working on?’ was a friendly question from peers. ‘List recent publications…’ was the less-than-friendly demand of potential employers or funders. And if it ceased, just went away, what then?

Daily one sits at one’s desk; or doesn’t. One wakes and scans the retreating subconscious, rich with dreams, for the glimpse of an idea. One tastes words, mines memory, goes about earnestly noticing things: but it all turns to ash. A line, a half poem, an idea – all flounder. This goes on for months. You try too hard, fail. The months become a year, and all the while we have Capitalist expectation of production, Calvinist horror of idle hands. You feel anxious and guilty. If you’re not working you must perforce be on holiday. But then there’s the suspicion that, for writers, even when we are ‘working’ we are actually on holiday anyway. ‘You’re hale life’s a holiday!’ said my mother, once, bitterly.

I don’t believe in so-called writer’s block with all its suggestions of drains and fatbergs. Whatever is going on, Dyno-Rod will not help. I do believe that if you’re beating your head off a wall to no avail, chances are it’s the wrong wall. As someone said, and I wish I could recall who, it was a woman and a poet – she said something like ‘if you’re suffering writer’s block it’s because you’re lying to yourself.’ Lying is a strong word, but yes, could be you’re trying to write the wrong thing. And why would one do that? Often because we try to mine an already exhausted seam. We return ever hopeful to a cupboard which now lies bare.

Not ‘block’, then, but fallow. All these metaphors. There are good ones: the bare cupboard, the fallow field, the well which must replenish drop by drop, the battery which must recharge. All understandable. But living through it feels like a waste of life. Oh for the intensity when you’re writing quickly and well, surprising yourself, waking at dawn to rephrase, swiftly to change gear – that’s the exception. That’s like living under a comet which appears to blaze across your firmament for a while, only to vanish into the darkness, till next time. If there is a next time!

So many similes.

Meanwhile everything turns to ash and dust. The few lines you jotted down yesterday – ash. You look at your own books on the shelf with incredulity, did I write those? Yes, but you were another person then. Life and literature roll on without you, till you feel - I’m not even in the game anymore. Alan Garner said ‘I become torpid and unintelligent. I sleep for long periods. I stare into the fire.’

Even the fire burns down. Ashes and dust.

At best it’s a daily sensation of falling, not unpleasant, drifting down like a feather, rather than plummeting like a stone. You think you’ve landed, bottomed out, that there is something here to reach for, a line, an idea - but no, you’re off again, falling for another week, month. Nothing happens. Your own inner radar still sweeps round but blips on nothing. Eventually even that stops, you stop checking. Dust covers the desk, the pen dries. Language itself loses its vitality, just becomes an arid means of communication. You can barely even read! What are poems, what are books? Just ash. It’s almost funny.

Of course I don’t mean the kind of Silences written about by Tillie Olsen, if you’re old enough to remember that feminist classic. She was talking about real silence, an inability to come into being as a writer at all because of the oppressions of sex, colour, and class – or political tyranny. You’ll understand I am talking about the flat-lining times which even well-published writers have, and perhaps ought to.

As metaphors go, the fallow field is a good one, the one everyone understands. It’s a good metaphor but still not quite right. If you look at your own works on the shelf and say, ‘I was a different person then’ – it implies something deeper than ‘fallow’. It suggests that to begin writing again one somehow has to take down and rebuild oneself. A new voice, a new diction, a new spread of concerns. An actual refusal to do what was done before, which can even feel like a betrayal. How can you turn from us? says the tribe, the constituency. You represent us! Because one must, if one is to write anything more at all.

*

A year, eighteen months, two years… This time I recognise you, cowled friend. You’ll accompany me for as long as you choose, then perhaps slip away. How will I know you’ve gone? A taste, a quick step, half a line written or read. Something that snags in the mind. A pre-verbal tone. Two or three lines that somehow cohere. A something glanced out of the corner of the eye –

Ugh. Deep sigh. Easy does it. The beginning again.

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Kathleen Jamie’s next event is Writing To, Writing As on 12th June. Get all the details at northseapoets.com 🌊