Writing, Again… (A Kind of Love Story)

Lorna Luxe x In the Style cardigan
H&M trousers
Jonak mules (similar)
Looks Like Summer clutch (similar)
Zara sunglasses (similar)
Keltie Leanne Designs ring (c/o) (similar)
Mejuri earrings (c/o) (similar)
Location: Byredo – New York City, New York

In reality, our story begins a couple of weeks before we went to New York…

Last October, I wrote that I sometimes get so distracted – that I often allow myself to be distracted – by keeping up with content creation that I forget the real reason I’m here: I’m a writer.

That realisation was a long time coming. In the last decade, I’ve allowed myself to prioritise a lot of different things ahead of writing. That’s the story of my writing life, really – that it often doesn’t go smoothly and that, just as often, I allow myself to take the easy way out, rationalising that I am too busy with work to make time for the thing that is actually most important to me.

Writing is fundamentally hard. Words are generally uncooperative, rarely arriving at the end of my pen in the same order in which they left my head. I love to write. But I hate that I can’t write what I want, when I want. I am persistently autocritical, prone to ripping my work apart and stitching it back together in fits of scribbled pique. Yellow Post-It notes protrude from every single one of my notebooks at all angles, because I am constantly running out of space for additions and corrections.

And as if that wasn’t enough, the story of my writing career – the one I thought I would have versus the one I find myself with – is one I would prefer not to dwell on, never mind to actually tell. I grew up reading classics and naively believed in the idea that novelist was a viable career option. That I’ve managed to publish two books while building a career in the corporate world is probably something I should take a certain level of pride in, but in reality, I’m still disappointed in myself. Not, as you might suspect, because my books haven’t been more successful. But because I lack the daring to give up the corporate career and live a tenuous, pay-cheque-to-pay-cheque existence in order to focus on my craft.

I like nice things. And so I will probably never be the writer I want to be, the writer I could be. The truth is, I’m disappointed in the world, too. Even if I could become that writer, the new arrival of the twenties does not herald a return to a more glittering, literary time. That writer would likely languish in obscurity, as most do. Just last weekend, as I perused the aisles of my favourite look bookstore, I overheard a passerby remark, “It’s amazing these bookstores still do so well. Who reads anymore?” It dismayed me, not to hear those words spoken aloud, but to know that the question was legitimate.

In another life, I might be able to give up creature comforts to do nothing but write. But in that other life, there would still be Netflix and Instagram and I sincerely doubt that many people would take notice either way.

My story, just like every story, is full of disappointments and setbacks. The hardest truth to accept, as a writer living in a world of ever diminishing readers, is that my unrealised dreams are not just unrealised, but likely impossible. I was, quite simply, born in the wrong time. The writing career I imagined growing up belongs to another era. For years, I’ve let that dictate how much – or rather, how little time – I spent writing. After all, what’s the point in writing words that no one will ever read?

The thing is, my bookshelves are full of old notebooks, filled from front cover to final page with words no one will ever read. Those words meant something to their audience of one – me. And when I look back at them now, they still do. (Even if it’s just that I have to have a really good laugh at my younger self.) When I finally realised that, last fall, I started writing seriously again. I really do have less time than I did as a teenager, of course. But I keep a notebook by my bed now, and I diligently scribble something in it every couple of days. I am a writer. That doesn’t mean writing is easy for me. Far from it. It means that I write, anyway, because it means something to me.

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