There are definitely bad things about doing a review of the year – and the worst is getting sucked into seeing everything in terms of success or failure, which I hate for two reasons. One, it drags me into the world’s way of measuring success, which I know is a snare and a delusion, but it’s a mighty powerful one! Two, and connected, it sucks me into the zero-sum mindset whereby everything is either positive or negative. This is a space I don’t find helpful at all. However, it is also harmful to do nothing but muddle along bouncing between a vague sense of underachievement and a cosy feeling that it’s rather lovely to spend so much time doing what I love. While measuring out years in the way we do is definitely a human construct, it is a good idea to face up to the realities of your working life and have a good-old reflect from time to time, and why not now? So I am, a little later than scheduled but turning up as best I can. Here goes …
First, the stats: I’ve submitted 64 times and had 3 successes and 10 long/shortlistings – 2% or 9% success rate depending on how positive I am feeling. There are 12 submissions still awaiting an outcome.
I’ve done several paid gigs this year, including schools work, adult Christan learning and a holiday club. I also ran my own series of workshops which has led to the creation of a regular writing group, Crafting Lines, which looks as though it will be sustainable.
It’s not entirely easy to say but I think I have earned more than I’ve spent on writing this year. I certainly have not earned enough to sustain my writing, although I have started to implement the plan of teaching ESOL to fund the writing.
OK that’s the maths, now for the substance.
The ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teaching has taken longer to get off the ground than I’d hoped, but it is taking off now and it has four major benefits. First, I enjoy the work and think it’s worthwhile work to do. Second, it’s freelance so if writing related opportunities come along I can reprioritise. Third, it is feeding my writing, directly and indirectly. I’ve been writing a series of poems and one or two stories inspired by the ESOL classroom, and I intend to continue with this. Preparing and delivering lessons is creative work with words, and so the skills I’m growing feed into my workshop work. There are connections to be made with creative organisations and possibilities for collaborative cross-cultural work. Finally it’s an income stream, so as long as it doesn’t take all my time and energy away from writing, it helps to fund the writing.
I’ve hustled for some project work and got on a couple of shortlists and worked with some arts organisations on grant applications – none of which have been successful so far. It is difficult to explain how frustrating it can be that you spend such a high proportion of your working time developing highly speculative projects, but that is the system and the only way around it seems to be simply to use all your writing time to write and to do no projects at all. But that’s not me. My writing life is a mixed life. I write to be part of the conversations we have through writing and producing books, though important, is only part of the picture for me.
So in the autumn I decided to experiment with a venture of my own, and ran a little series of writing workshops, Crafting Lines, in my town. It was loads of fun, so much so that all five participants have signed up to continue as a regular group; and although a small project, it was hugely important for me. I love helping people to find their voice, and if I can find a sustainable way to do it where I live I will. In 2024 I hope to do something similar with younger people.
In the meantime the writing has continued. There has been the ESOL poems project, and the surprise package was developing a poetry collection for children about humans’ relationship with our planet. Being part of the Zig Zag Stanza poetry group’s participation in NaPoWriMo in April was a huge boost to this project. (Finding the right writing groups is really important and the three main groups I’m a member of have sustained me in different ways over the year.) My futuristic epic-in-verse is making slower progress than I’d hoped but continues to excite me. I’ve had patches of working on it and pitched it to a couple of competitions but so far no luck. I would be very sad that it’s so far behind schedule, except that the things I’ve done instead have contributed to making my writing life more sustainable, and that, it turns out, is the biggest goal of all.
There are two really big insights from this year which will continue to guide me. I say this year but these insights have been growing for a while now. The first is that I am understanding success differently. I used to think it was being published, widely read, becoming wealthy or famous, winning awards – all the benchmarks you think of when you come across that word. I even have a poem about it:
By these lights I have not (yet) achieved success. I haven’t had a full-length work published, though I’ve written at least three. I can’t support myself by writing. I am published, but not especially widely (yet) and I’ve won one prize in one of the many competitions I’ve entered. But this year as it’s become clearer and clearer to me that working with people is part of my writing life – I love writing by myself, but I love working with people too – and that, really, one of the main reasons success (in competitions, in publishing, that sort of thing) would be a good thing for me, is that it would mean I could do more work. It’s a means, not the end. Doing the work is really the most important thing. Not being admired. This sounds very altruistic and of course I am as vain as the next writer – but this insight is something really to cling to when I get too hung up on how unsuccessful I am or how my work isn’t as good as I want it to be.
Last year, I resolved to back myself, and I think I have. It hasn’t brought fairytale-spectacular results but I have learned this year that I am more resilient than I thought. I know now that I will carry on writing as much as I can for as long as I can, because I believe in what I am trying to do. I think it matters, and I think it makes a difference. I’m not going to end with a paragraph of targets or even resolutions for 2024. I’m sticking with the ones I made for 2023 and I’m going to try to commit to them more fully this year. Here they are:
