Fiction found me when I most needed it, bubbling up under the surface of a bunch of shitty, directionless years, and a chance taken on a local writing class. Its discovery was a revelation, a relief I could feel this exhilarated about something again; regret, for years spent without. So this was how it felt to be truly passionate about something … I threw myself into it, heart and soul. Those moments when you barely feel the keyboard or the pen on paper for what’s flowing through your fingertips, I lived for them like I’d nothing else. When people talk about what makes a writer, that feeling of flow is the closest I’ve found to an answer. And if there’s any great secret to writing, it can only be this—to find that feeling, and chase it for the rest of your days.
But what do you do when that isn’t enough anymore?
*
The realization can be a horrifically lonely one. Oftentimes, you only admit the truth to yourself when it starts affecting your writing, pushing at the edge of thought, intruder in your idyll. This hurts. You have reading, and you have movies, and games, but as a break turns into something longer, when it’s clear it’s not just a case of painting the house for a few weeks, the loss of flow—at best, the sense that writing is tainted—is hard to accept.
If admitting it to yourself is difficult, telling others is much harder, especially other writers. Creative people can be amongst the most supportive, welcoming souls you will ever meet. If you’re lucky, you’ll count some amongst your most treasured friends. To admit that what binds you together doesn’t make you happy anymore can feel tantamount to losing your tribe.
Worst of all is the sense of inadequacy you’re left with. Because … this should be enough, shouldn’t it? The defining feature of an artist is love for their art. And despite the difficulties of creative life, that love should anchor them against any storm. To keep creating in trying circumstances is ennobling—romantic even. A sign of dedication to your art. Right?
So you pretend everything is fine. Hide behind the door, while your problems pile up outside. Bury yourself in so-called dedication to the work. Drive yourself on, even as that dedication becomes a sacrifice, your health and well-being for your fears. It’s a dangerous, and ultimately self-destructive mindset—one that can be astonishingly difficult to get out of.
*
In her recent column on supporting a creative career1, Zen Cho suggests any job you do alongside writing should not only keep you fed, but also stimulated, in terms of your mind and your social life. This makes sense—you can’t write about people if you never spend time with them. Nor can you write if you’re too tired, or too bored to think. Cho admits it’s tricky to find all this in one job, but urges “if you’re serious about writing, it’s worth thinking about how you can arrange your life to support [that].”
But note these aren’t just things you need to write. They’re things you need to be fulfilled as a human being. And I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
Stories mean different things to different people, but at their core, they’re about exploring what it means to be human—how we interact with each other, with ourselves, and the world around us. If we never allow ourselves to be human, how can we write stories that truly resonate with people at this fundamental level?
You have to live.
By the time you read this, I’ll have started a Masters degree in Glasgow. It is, by all accounts, a supremely idiotic move on my part. I’m in my thirties. I don’t have much money. I’m starting a career dependent on international funding and cross-border research just as our government is dissolving its strongest overseas partnership. There’s probably not been a worse time to start an academic career since the advent of World War II.
And I can’t remember the last time I felt this happy about where my life is going.
The odd thing is, I have writing to thank for this decision. Not just for being a bellwether for the issues in my life. If fiction hadn’t come along, perhaps I never would’ve realized I could be happier. The loss that followed now seems like the next step in my relationship with the craft. If discovering your passion for writing is like the first flush of love, then this is the subsequent realization: that love isn’t the answer to your problems, just the start of a bunch of new and much more interesting ones.
It’ll be a challenge. I don’t expect the guilt to just vanish. But when I think about the reasons why I’m doing this—to exercise my brain, be with good people, and work in a vibrant, creative community—I’ll remember why making this decision was so easy. I won’t lose writing—it’ll just be another part of a well-rounded life.
Daniel José Older, in his seminal essay about the myth of writing every day2, states that shame is the biggest enemy of creativity. “Beginning with forgiveness,” he says, “revolutionizes the writing process, returns it being to a journey of creativity rather than an exercise in self-flagellation. I forgive myself for not sitting down to write sooner … for living my life … My body unclenches; a new lightness takes over once that burden has floated off. There is room, now, for story, idea, life.”
So, for now, I’ll start by forgiving myself. I’ll allow myself the need to be more than just a writer. After all, I have to live.
1. Zen Cho – ‘5 Things for Writers to Look for in a Day Job.’ http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/5-things-for-writers-to-look-for-in-a-day-job
shortened address: http://tinyurl.com/soi5c
2. Daniel José Older ‘Writing Begins with Forgiveness: Why One of the Most Common Pieces of Writing Advice is Wrong.’ http://sevenscribes.com/writing-begins-with-forgiveness-why-one-of-the-most-common-pieces-of-writing-advice-is-wrong/
shortened address: http://tinyurl.com/soi5b
Ruth EJ Booth is a writer living in Glasgow. In 2015, she won the BSFA Award for Short Fiction. For more of her non-fiction, stories and poetry, head to www.ruthbooth.com
Reviews
The 1000 Year Reich
Ian Watson
NEWCON Press, 248 pages
Review: Ian Hunter
By my reckoning, Ian Watson has published over 30 novels since his first, The Embedding appeared way back in 1973. Now he has a baker’s dozen of short story collections. The 1000 Year Reich containing 18 stories (although one of them is co-written by Watson and Roberto Quaglia) and starts with an introduction by Justina Robson. She recounts being a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke award back in 2005 when she began reading Watson’s novel Mockymen and had to put it down and ask herself, “what is this?”
Actually, it was a novel about Nazi occult practises, nude photography and alien invasion, though even that description probably doesn’t do the novel justice. Likewise, The 1000 Year Reich is a cornucopia of delights ranging from stories about space marines (Watson has some “previous” with Warhammer and their own space marine titles back in the day) to weird science to alternative realities and even a story that was originally published in The Mammoth Book of Erotic Romance and Domination. Fifteen of the stories have appeared elsewhere in the last five years, but there are three new 2016 stories original to this collection including “In Golden Armour” and “The Wild Pig’s Collar.”
The collection kicks off with the eponymous “The 1000 Year Reich”, the inspiration for a “war is hell and chaotic especially in space” type cover illustration by Juan Miguel Aguilera. Control of space is decided by computer games, but the ultimate weapon which harnesses sexual energy is waiting to be unleashed in a tale that is totally over the top, but a hoot. In “Blair’s War”, a tale inspired by Watson’s knowledge of Spanish history and the writings of George Orwell, Tony Blair decides Britain should intervene in the Spanish Civil War and change the course of alternative world history. If only, perhaps, when you look at what happened to Spain in the decades that followed.
Sometimes in this collection, Watson has fun with a famous book, or another genre, and in “The Name of the Lavender” we have Umberto Eco meeting Dan Brown in a head-on collision involving spies and gardeners and strange plants in a story that appeared in a very limited edition chapbook from PS Publishing which accompanied a special “best of” collection they brought out a few years ago. Watson reckons few people will have read it because copies of the chapbook are so rare that book collectors have sealed their copies away in non-biodegradable bags filled with inert gas. Lucky us, that it makes an appearance here. Likewise, we are in Dan Brown territory again in “The Arch de Triumph Code” but this time he is cunningly disguised as Don Broon from Dundee (crivens!) and about to encounter another American in Paris. Other tales involve robots, theories about how the galaxy was formed, alternative realities, solving crime, alien visitors, returning from Mars, and “Faith Without Teeth”.
Is it unfair to call Ian Watson an “old school” science fiction writer? Some of his stories could be called non-PC. Science fiction aside, I am reminded of his story “The Eye of the Ayatollah” where a religious fanatic who snatched out Ayatollah Khomeini’s eye at his funeral uses it to discover where Salman Rushdie is hiding from Khomeini’s fatwa. It originally appeared in Interzone and the very first of Steve Jones’s Best New Horror series, and was reprinted in the 25th anniversary “best of” edition, where Jones pointed out that very few people would dare to write a story like that today, let alone publish it.
Each of the stories ends with a little postscript as Watson recounts the origin of the story or debunks some modern myths. Of particularly interest is his damning of flying saucers and UFOs, but very entertaining it is too and so are the others, even down to a description of some of Paris’s less salubrious areas. Each postscript is accompanied by a picture of Watson’s head with him wearing a hat. The picture is slightly compressed, warped, distorted. It’s like looking into a glass bottle and seeing the imp or genie peering back at you, waiting to get out and cause some havoc. But too late, he’s here already. Recommended.
Invisible Planets: Collected Fiction
Hannu Rajaniemi
Gollancz, 248 pages
Review: Iain Maloney
Short story collections tend to fall into one of two categories. Either the author has written every story with a collection in mind, stories focused around a theme, a world or a group of characters. Alternatively the collection is made up of disparate and diverse stories already published in journals and online over years, perhaps even decades.
The former are usually more satisfying to read, the grain of ideas flowing in one direction, tone and style complimentary. As all the stories are written over a shorter period of time, the quality of the writing will be more balanced, representing a snapshot of the author’s talent and interests at that time.
