Creativity, life and gold stars

I have often wondered in four decades of writing how it is that time and again my stories seem to gather themselves, write themselves almost (the best ones really seem to), cover the empty pages almost effortlessly - once I get going, that is. Each one is, I believe, the result of forces of a creative fusion, a fusion that simply can't happen unless certain elements are in place, a fusion I don't properly understand, but can only guess at.

Michael Morpurgo (author of War Horse) writes this in Singing for Mrs Pettigrew: A Storymaker's Journey, a kind of autobiographical account of where his stories come from, interspersed with a few actual short stories. He goes on to discuss the elements that create that fusion - the life he has lived and the memories that has given him, the books he has read, the research he does. But, he goes on:

I must wait for the moment before I begin, until the story is ripe. This process can take five minutes (unlikely) or five years. All I know is that you can't hurry it. The story will be written when the moment is right.

When I was training as a journalist, I remember one fellow student being soundly ridiculed by a tutor (it was his favoured teaching style) for suggesting she had writer's block. And sure, if you have deadlines and a living to earn, you can't afford such luxuries as creative procrastination. But news journalism (in the British style at least) is more about getting down to basics than nurturing creative flair. When I am writing, I often wonder about that magical process that sometimes happens in which the words flow and your work manages a coherence of mood and metaphor and style which continues for page after page. But for a fiction writer, the need to actually produce brings a great conflict.

Some set themselves daily word counts to meet, others take part in the month-long slog of NaNoWriMo to produce a first-draft, some may have annual targets of how many short stories, novellas, novels they will turn out. And then there's that balance sheet you fill in to keep the tax man happy, showing what you've 'achieved' in hard numbers. And we've all seen and possibly given (I have) that most basic of writing tips: If you want to be a writer, you have to actually pick up a pen, or place your fingers on the keyboard, and write.

But what happens when you're juggling your writing with another job, relationships, family, the needs of your health etc? Guilt is what, if you're given to such things. Even if you're not, there's likely to be a nagging feeling as the days and weeks go by that you've lost your mojo as a writer. What happens when your brain gets taken up with some other big life event, like a major career change or the ill health of a loved one or a house move? You might find that, even when you have some time to spare, your head simply isn't in the right place. You might lose that sense that, whatever else you're doing, you are always a writer.

Partly, I'm writing this to make myself feel better while I have one of those big life events going on that means my brain's focus is elsewhere. But I think there's a wider point (I'll get to it eventually amid the ramblings). So, partly, I'm saying that sometimes you have to sit back, forget the targets, do other things, look after yourself and those you love, live a little, store up some memories for future stories. (Is it possible that writer's block means we've used up our store of memories and need to get some more? And despite being a writer of erotica, I don't mean that in the most obvious of ways, necessarily, because there is so much more in the way of knowledge of places, the quirks of human nature, the tidbits of knowledge we pick up and store away that all contribute to a good story, sex-based or otherwise.)

But my other point is about the non-linear relationship between both the writer's effort and talent and the reward gained when it comes to publishing fiction. We all know of books that have made it big when many people deride their quality. And we all know of the books we've loved, but which sell very few despite how good we think they are. And we do also know of the talented authors who, after many years of hard work, could be deemed a success - as well as the fact that not all talented authors who work hard will get there. 

So, my wine-fuelled conclusion? Putting in the hours, the practice, getting the words down, trying out new things, writing, writing, writing is, of course, a Good Thing To Do. Have a gold star. But if your target falls from three thousand words a day to three short stories in a year, you're still a writer, you're still living the life you need to live in order to be able to write in the future - and you've probably got as much chance of making your fortune from those three short stories as the people on three thousand words a day.