By god it feels good to be working on something. Not just anything but something that requires creativity; something that I can describe as ‘my work.’
Nothing gives a writer more sense of identity, more self-confidence and self-doubt, more elation and dread than writing freely.
You have to make a living in this world and while I truly appreciate being able to earn money doing what I love, I also yearn to write unleashed.
Over the last few years I’ve started many stories. Enlarging scribbled almost indecipherable notes into sketches, I then tried filling out those sketches into substantial pieces of work, but each time I failed.
They didn’t grab me at all.
A writer never wants to throw anything away. Even when that note or half-written story feels empty of purpose, void of strength or simply offers no reason to exist, you keep it.
On my desktop there’s a folder called In Progress and inside that there’s another folder called Where Does This All Go?
Inside there I dump the detritus of years of failed attempts at whatever it was I was trying to do. Not once did I get down on myself.
Instead I walked away from each piece knowing that I’d given it my best at that time, and might use some part of it in the future, or maybe not: either way, there had been no harm in its creation.
At least I tried.
At least I had a go.
I’d kicked my imagination up its backside and made sure it was still alive.
Then in March I was over in Tel Aviv for my lovely niece’s wedding, so I was able to spend some time with my friend and teacher, the Israeli writer Iris Leal. Although she’ll always be my teacher, these days we meet on level ground.
Nobody has had such an influence on my writing. Back in 1986 I was living in a manky old flat, two floors above the shops on London’s Golders Green Road. Two years previously I’d quit a lucrative marketing job to travel around the world, all the way scribbling frantically the first draft of a first novel into a red hardback copybook.
Returning to London homeless, I sofa surfed for 6 months, until lifetime friendships were sorely tested. Eventually I found that flat in NW11, and there I sat, wrapped up entirely in the image of being a writer.
When Iris wandered unannounced and uninvited into my living room, she found me sitting at a desk, banging away at a typewriter, with the requisite number of screwed-up pieces of paper strategically strewn around the floor, an ashtray overflowing with still-smoking fags and a bottle of whisky (no ‘e’ as it was Scotch in those days) within a hand’s reach.
Artless, craftless and wonderfully ignorant, I was chucking the story out of me, so when Iris looked at my work she could feel my raw passion, and thankfully believed I had sufficient talent to adopt me, to take me on as her unofficial pupil and try to drum some craft into me.
Over two excruciatingly painful years she taught me ten years of craft...
Over the course of two excruciatingly painful years she taught me ten years of craft. Back then, more than ever since, we occupied polar opposites of literary ambition.
Iris would take all day to write three sentences, with, as she rather melodramatically put it: “The ghosts of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Thomas Mann at my shoulder as I write!” while I was knocking out 2,000 words a day, concerned only that anyone able to read might appreciate my work.
Happily now we both understand that we are different writers, on completely disparate missions. She wants the recognition of her literary peers, grand prizes and eternal glory, while I am wary, fearful of fame and the ensuing loss of privacy, happy to improve, hopefully one day coming up with worthy work that is uniquely my own.
Chatting over coffee in Tel Aviv, Iris asked me to describe in precise detail every minute of my working day.
“You are being lazy, Charlie. Do not be blasé about your life, Charlie!” she admonished me. “I want a short story in six weeks.”
“You are being lazy, Charlie. Do not be blasé about your life!"
Second person is not a voice I’d ever recommend to any writer, and certainly not a voice that you force out - you never want to force any of your writing - but for that story the voice felt absolutely perfect.
Buzzed up and inspired, I tried the same voice on those old sketches and unfinished stories languishing in the Where Does This All Go? folder. Thankfully once again it fell out of me.
It had to, if it was going to work.
As before, the second person proved perfect, somehow distancing my narrative and unleashing the stories’ potential.
Iris told me aeons ago that a writer is like a pressure cooker; that each time you talk about your work it loses some steam, some pent-up power.
So why am I writing about this work in progress in this very public newspaper?
Well, starting a book is a terrifying process. After so many fallen flares of optimism, I wait until a body of work starts to build, gradually trusting that the process is this time truly up and running; that a book is being written.
Here I am, breaking Iris’ rule, forcing this book to be real by sharing its existence with you.
Feels so good to be writing unchained once more. If it proves good enough, you might see it one day.
Wish me luck.
©Charlie Adley
08.10.2017.
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