A few days ago, I shared this photo of the view from my office on Facebook.
Looks lovely, doesn’t it?
I was very careful to show the best bits. If I’d stepped forward a couple of paces, you might have seen the weeds and the dry sandy soil, the holes where we moved some azaleas to another part of the garden and haven’t yet filled the gaps, the plants that have self-seeded, which make it look wayward and unkempt. The messy bits.
It’s not so much about what you see as what you don’t.
This is the photograph of the view from the opposite wall (if it had a window). The business end of the house, the dustbins and the washing line, the things I don’t want you to see.
NOTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS
Nothing is really what it seems, especially on the internet. We all want to show the best of ourselves. It’s an illusion. But it doesn’t serve us well to think everyone else has a perfect life and we’re the only one who’s dropping all the balls we juggle.
It’s the same with writing a book and publishing one. You don’t see all the words, scenes and chapters that didn’t work, things that slow the pace or don’t add anything to the plot. You’re not meant to.
You don’t see the rejections, the research, and the hours of reading and studying to improve the work. The trying and failing.
If you’re sitting down to write and it isn’t quite coming together, don’t give up, push through. Put all the right words in the wrong order. You can sort them out later. Your job is to get the words onto the page and keep going.
The same applies to learning any new skill: a language, a craft, a sport – riding a bike. There will be times when it all runs smoothly, but you have to allow for the bumps in the road.
THE MESSY BITS
It’s the same with any creative endeavour. All the things that go unseen. As a virtuoso steps out onto the concert stage, we’re unaware of the hours of practice, the bum notes, the failures, the bleeding toes of the prima ballerina, the spoiled canvases as an artist creates a masterpiece.
I remember watching a programme on Charlie Mackesy, the author and illustrator of The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. In his studio, he pulled out a huge drawer of sketches that didn’t make the book. Hours and hours of work.
That’s what you never see – the things that don’t make the final edit.
Writing is getting comfortable with finding many ways that don’t work to get to the ones that do. It took me a while to get comfortable with cutting words so ruthlessly. My finished books might come out at 90,000 words, more or less, but no one sees the other 60,000 or more that end up in another document titled ‘Bits of…’
You need the recycling bin, the washing line, the yard brush and the gas meter – all the messy bits.
The messy bits are all part of the journey to making something you feel really happy with – with the hope that someone else might like it too. The beautiful view.
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