You’d think this would be an easy question to answer, since I was there the whole time, but I ended last year in a bit of a funk. December always gets me – there is so much you are supposed to be doing and binge in December: organising a family Christmas, contacting friends, partying and being happy, praying and learning to wait for Jesus, rounding off the year of work so that you can begin afresh in January after a well-earned break and, for me, extra church duties. And I always end up feeling I’m failing at them all. In fact there are still a couple of Christmas presents waiting to be gifted here at Elder Towers.
After a busy autumn involved in a joyous and challenging schools project, my biggest piece of collaborative work to date, the only news popping into my email seemed to be rejections. So when I finally managed to sit down to get a gallery view on the year, I was surprised to find it’s been my most successful yet, on almost any measure.
I’ve earned 2/3 of my target income, and half of that was by doing writing related activities. I’ve submitted more than last year and the proportion of successes has gone up – last year it was 2% success and 9% long or shortlisted, this year it’s 13% and 22%.
You have to cling to facts like this, because that’s not what it often feels like, and because direction is often not clear in the writing life. There are lots of false starts and work invested in things that don’t come off, so that it can feel like most of what you’re doing is failing. When you apply for things, especially projects and residencies and the like, you spend hours committing, making an authentic case for why this is just the project for you – and mostly you won’t get the gig. That’s time and emotional energy you’ve expended, and more you need to spend resetting, letting go of that idea and moving onto the next thing you’d dearly love the opportunity to have a crack at. I suppose one solution is to develop a really thick skin. But that brings its pitfalls too, the main one being, for me, that I wouldn’t be myself any more! I really admire rhinos in lots of ways – but I’d rather be a giraffe…
So I’ve been working on resilience in three ways. Every now and then – like now, or at moments when I need to take myself in hand – I make like a giraffe and aim for an overview of life, piecing together what’s happening, why I’m making the choices I am, how it all fits into my why. It’s usually surprising, when you look down at the spider diagram of your recent life, how much sense it actually makes!
I’m developing techniques to keep me away from interpreting the writing life as a zero sum game. This is a challenge when you keep getting rejections, but easy when you find yourself part of generous, supportive communities like writing groups. I’m also collecting a set of mantras to help: for example, when I get a disappointing rejection, I tell myself it’s not that I wasn’t good enough, it’s that other people were good enough too. And during crises of confidence, when Margaret, my trash-talker, has got the upper hand, I try to put her back in her box by reminding her that we’ve been here before and come out the other end! Like the arribi (little Ugandan antelope), I know I’m vulnerable to attack from lions and leopards and I try to stay alert, but life isn’t overwhelmed by that fear; it’s to be enjoyed.
Finally, I know my why and I cling to it. For these elephants nothing distracts from looking after the young ones. I’ve written a bit about my why in a blog here and there’s more to come. Like life, my why is a work in progress, and it’s vital. I anchor mine in three quotations, which remind me what’s really important and help me to make and stick to choices that keep me facing the right way.
So, how was 2024 for me? As Bridget Jones would say, an excellent year’s progress. Now it’s time to turn towards whatever’s next …