Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
Ambition, people say, is an itch, begging to be realised. I’ve been intending to write a book for a decade, and the itching is getting more insistent. I haven’t settled on a genre, let alone a story, but half-formed characters and narratives are swimming in my mind, and it’s time I did something about it.
I’m busy, though. Before I became a mother, I had evenings, weekends and early mornings. Not to mention every Friday, when I didn’t work. Two and a half years since the birth of my daughter, time has a different quality. Unfilled hours are notably scarce, which lends them a preciousness. As a result, I am profoundly productive: in a single, rare hour to myself, I can shower, run to the supermarket, make two phone calls, pay a bill online and cook lunch. This has spurred me into action: after years of procrastination, I want to start writing.
In early October, I open my diary, looking for time. I’m surprised at how much I have; I spend half an hour on a train six times a week. I can spare an hour in the evening once a week. And I have three uninterrupted hours – currently spent cleaning, tidying and kicking back – on a Monday morning, when my daughter is at nursery.
“We are not as busy as we think we are,” says business psychologist Tony Crabbe, author of Busy: How To Thrive In A World Of Too Much. “Being ‘busy’ is a claim, not a fact. It’s not inevitable, it’s a choice, and a dumb one.” But I am busy, I whine: I’ll have more time when my daughter starts school. “We assume we will have more time in the future,” Crabbe says, “but if you can’t start something today, you probably never will.” Everything else, he says, is just excuses. Gulp.
Before I begin, I talk to Frances Booth (a colleague, no relation), author of A Writer For All Seasons: Beat Blocks, Face Your Fears And Keep Writing. Apparently, I’m tackling it all wrong. Instead of looking for empty stretches, she says, I need to find regular short spells of time: “Start by finding 10 or 15 minutes, and once you get going, you’ll find a bit more. Even if that day arrives when your diary is clear of every other obligation, if you’re not already writing, you’ll just fill the time with something else.”
Crabbe agrees: “It’s less about hours than your attention,” he says. A concentrated half-hour in the morning, when you’re fresh, is more useful than a couple of hours late in the day, when your head is bouncing between other things.
This makes sense. So where do I start? “Just trick your mind into it: with a scene, or a character, to get you going and build your confidence,” says Richard Skinner, author and director of the fiction programme at the Faber Academy writing school. “Just get the words on the page. And don’t even think about starting on 1 January – it’s too much pressure.”
So one bright late October Monday, with Skinner’s advice ringing in my ears, I open my laptop. An exhibition last year at the V&A, of photographs by Paul Strand, has stayed with me. I write a short scene fictionalising his travels. It is both liberating and terrifying to write whatever comes into my head. The stillness that comes with doing one activity, instead of frantically multitasking, is unnerving.
The following morning, I read over it: it’s full of cliches. A few days later, I try another scene. And over the next weeks, regularly but by no means daily, I write: descriptions of the weather, memories, anything that comes into my head. All the while, I note down phrases I read and admire: “pulpit volume” (John Updike); “indecisively bleached hair” (Agatha Christie); “a small fluorescent traffic warden” (Nancy Banks-Smith).
I’m unsure where it’s all heading. But one Monday morning, I return to Paul Strand, and write a short scene set in present-day London. It fires me up; it feels like the start of an intriguing story, and I’m desperate to know where it’s heading. I don’t write for another three weeks. A combination of busy-ness and a lack of direction in my writing have paralysed me. It turns out this is exactly the time to keep going. “The most important rule is to turn up and write,” Booth says, “even when you’re tired, uninspired, unmotivated, lost and unsure.” So I’m ploughing on. And yes, I gave January 1 a miss.
Start here
• Don’t tell anyone you’re starting. Why? You don’t need the pressure
• Feel what excites you and follow that
• Don’t wallow in ideas: get the words on the page
• Avoid the temptation of distractions, and unplug the internet
• Read, read, read – preferably out of your class, race and gender
