A Few Thoughts On: Writing in the In-Between Spaces
...and finding alternative writing desks to help push through the block
Lately, I’ve been struggling to write.
I know, I know – as a writer, I probably shouldn’t admit that. It’s like a bird struggling to fly, or a fish confessing it needs swimming lessons. But the truth is, it happens.
In fact, I think it happens to most writers at some point. Life takes over, our brains get stuffed full of all the other things we carry around with us, or we simply struggle to find time amid the emails and the book talks and the workshops and the admin and the washing up.
At the moment, I’m waiting on a big announcement (I’m sitting on some news that I’m almost literally BURSTING to share, but not yet allowed to talk about, and instead of focusing on actually writing, I feel like I spend all my time refreshing my emails and watching social media) - but more of that soon.
Sometimes, getting back into the writing can simply be a case of reorganising priorities. (Do I really need to do the washing up? Or could I write that extra chapter instead?) Sometimes, it can be that there’s something more deep-seated – a big emotion or major life event that needs dealing with first. Sometimes, it can be ok not to write.
At the start of September, I made a back-to-school-type resolution: that I would have a full first draft of my third novel by the end of October.
There are a couple of factors that ought to help with this. Firstly, it’s a novella, rather than a full-length novel. (Ok, so I’ve said that about the other two books as well, and they’ve both ended up somewhere between 70,000 and 90,000 words long – but I really do think it’s true this time.) And secondly, I already have a ‘Draft 0’ of just over half of it.
If you haven’t come across the idea of a ‘Draft 0’, it’s something you splurge onto the page or laptop without worrying too much about character or structure or language, simply with the aim of getting something down. Like digging up the clay which you’ll later use to mould the more cohesive First Draft.
Draft 0 is sometimes called a ‘F*ck-it Draft’. As in, f*ck it, this’ll do for now.
I splurged my Draft 0 of Novel Number 3 during a two-week residency at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre in Perth, Australia, last November. It was very much a case of f*ck it, this’ll do for now.
So if I already have a Draft 0, what’s the problem?
Honestly, I think part of the reason I’ve been struggling lately is because I have a lot on. And I mean that physically and emotionally.
BIG THING number one: I’m getting married! My partner & I got engaged a few weeks ago, and are planning a wedding for next year, so obviously that’s taking up a huge amount of headspace at the moment (in the best possible way, obviously – I’m so excited for our wedding!)
In terms of work, September is often a busy time anyway, and just before summer this year, the Writing Squad (for whom I work as a Core Team Member) recruited its newest crop of writers – which means I’ve been organising a fair few mentoring Zooms. I’m also currently in the process of judging poetry submissions for Nine Arches’ Primers scheme, and planning & delivering a bunch of new workshops for Dove Cottage Young Poets.
All of this is work that I absolutely love – and work which is not only rewarding, but also stimulating and inspiring in terms of my own writing. And yet, for one reason or another, this September, my writing has taken a dip.
So what am I doing about it?
I’ll be honest, for the first few weeks of September, I just waited for inspiration to strike. I re-read my Draft 0 and then sat with my pen hovering over a page of my notebook and waited. Nothing happened.
So I’ve changed tack.
Normally, I like long periods in a dedicated writing space. A cabin in the woods, or a particular desk in a library. I like time to immerse myself in the world of the novel.
This book is different.
It started a few weeks ago, when my partner had a two-hour conference just outside town. The venue had a café and hot-desking space, so instead of sitting at home and staring at an empty notebook, I got her to give me a lift. While she went to her conference, I bought a latte and sat in the hot-desking space, and found myself rewriting the opening of the novel.
A week later, a regular writing group that I attended pre-Covid started up again. Afterwards, I felt so fired up by the day of writing – and of talking about writing with fellow writers – that I sat in the car park for an hour and worked on a scene that had been evading me.
Since then, I’ve been snatching moments and spaces wherever and whenever I can. At motorway service stations. In supermarket cafes. On the train.
Again and again, I find myself writing in the car – parked up in laybys, or in multistorey car parks, or parallel parked on the street outside the house.
Except I don’t just snatch these in-between spaces; I’ve started actively seeking them out. I’ve been driving to random places, just to hang out and write in a layby, and then drive home again. I’ve been arriving places early, or leaving late, just for the chance to sit in the car park and write. I’ve been seeking out those in-between spaces – between dropping off and picking up, between the emails and the Zoom meeting – where I can sit and do nothing but write.
I don’t know if it’s because this book is a novella, and therefore shorter, and with a different shape to the two full novels that came before it. More likely, it’s a reflection of where my brain is at the moment: too packed full of other stuff to let me immerse myself in anything. Running on so many tracks that the only way to trick it into creativity is to pretend I’m on my way towards something else.
But in the in-between spaces, something happens that I hadn’t anticipated. It isn’t just that I can snatch an hour here and there. It’s that, in laybys and car parks, supermarket cafes and motorway services, I can be nobody. I can be anonymous. Often, I can be invisible.
In a space at the edge of a multistorey car park, it’s almost like I don’t exist. And in that state, I can let go of all the other stuff that’s clogging up my brain, and let the novel take control.
Does anyone else seek out these in-between type spaces to write? Anywhere you particularly recommend? Let me know in the comments - I’m always looking for new ideas!
The intoxication of the in-between places comes through in this piece so strongly. perhaps to the exclusion of all else in the moment of writing. I hope you will please remember to stay safe while you write.
Ohh love this idea. I have to write outside the house, it was always coffee shops or the library. But over covid and thwn when my illness got really bad and I couldn't walk places I had to teach myself to write at home. It is weird, but good, to change where you write. Definitely good to try when you're in a slump!