Facing a worldwide pandemic was scary, facing the ridiculous stock-piling crisis that followed it was scary but, when Boris Johnson told us cafes had to close and I was able to stop worrying about being a huge infection risk to my family, the relief was immense. I write this post very conscious of the awful time some people had in lockdown but, I think for a lot of people (including me), it was like someone had pressed pause on everything that had previously crammed into our days and we finally had space to breathe.
It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t smooth-sailing. Two weeks in and I had to move out of the place I was living. It wasn’t allowed, but I didn’t have a choice. I packed up my car and my dog and sneaked to my sister’s house in the night.
I then had to find a way to live harmoniously with the sister I’d not lived with since she was fifteen and her husband and their 5 month old son. I am so, so grateful they let me stay, and I’m eternally gifted with being there for my nephew’s first crawl, first steps, first hug and kiss, first words. And there were beautiful days of barbecues and baby cuddles and standing bare-footed in the kitchen preparing salads and marinades and me washing up while my sister dried. And then there were days when the baby had woken us all at 4am and no-one could get along and I felt like sisters just maybe shouldn’t live together.
I was sleeping in my brother-in-law’s study and, like so many others, he was now working from home so I had to make myself scarce in working hours. I put my notebooks and pens in a box and spent my days writing in the conservatory, sporadically interrupted by my sticky nephew bringing me toys and wanting to type on my laptop and my dog who panicked the baby would get all the attention and needed some reassuring fusses and my sister who needed some actual conversation.
In some ways, I’m very well designed for lockdown: an introvert with a time-consuming creative hobby that involves staying in the same place all day. But, like everyone, I struggled with the massive change my life had undergone.
I was saved by the aspects of my routine that couldn’t change. My nephew woke us up bright and early and my dog needed a walk morning and evening, I need coffee at 11am (fact) and my brother-in-law worked Monday to Friday which gave us all a residual sense of working time and weekend-relaxing time.
And my writing. My writing saved me even when I had neglected it for all this time. I suddenly had the time to write. Loads of it. More than I could even use. But I didn’t just jump out of bed every day, full of beans, and skip into the conservatory to type merrily all day.
Obviously.
But, with little else to fill my time, I tried to write every day and, with that level of perseverance, I did learn two essential lessons that I have carried with me as “normality” returns.
The first is my need for external accountability. The magical Caroline Donahue (check her out on Instagram @carodonahue because she’s great and her podcast is amazing) did something incredible during lockdown and reached out to anyone who needed it. She started running an Instagram live every weekday called the Quarantine Writers’ Retreat. Every day, by 3, I had to have words on the page. We’d set ourselves targets and share them with the group and, every day, we’d check in. I asked Caroline to hold me accountable and she really did, calling me out by name. We’d confess we’d actually spent the morning making cakes instead, or proudly show off our thousands of words, or sympathise when someone couldn’t find the headspace to create that day.
Because, with few demands on my time, I was realising I will always naturally prioritise the things other people expect of me. All this time at home and at work I had been cramming my days with everything I could do to help others at the expense of what I wanted to do and then feeling guilty when I hadn’t got my writing done again. I kept thinking if I changed jobs, if I worked fewer hours, if only I could protect my time from the demanding employer, then I’d get more writing done, only to find I filled it with cooking more elaborate dinners for whoever I lived with, taking my dog for longer walks, agreeing to meet more friends, for longer. In lockdown, I learned to harness this weakness and make it a strength. All I needed was someone who would expect me to write every day. If someone else expects it of me, I will do it.
The second thing I learned is how valuable it is to surround yourself with other writers. If you don’t have any writer friends in real life (and I didn’t really then), you can connect with people online (Instagram has a beautiful and supportive writing community) or take writing classes, or listen to writing podcasts or read books on writing. This is something I really invested my time in during lockdown and the effect of it is amazing. It makes you feel like you are working on writing like it’s your job, good old-fashioned career development. It’s also a powerful motivational tool. When you hear from other writers about what they’re doing, what works and doesn’t work for them, the goals they’ve hit and their achievements, the inspiration is strong.
It felt like a cheat at first. It felt like I was still not a real writer because I had to have someone else thinking of it for me, inspiring me, making me sit down and type, but then, when it worked, I thought, who cares if it’s a cheat?!
The challenge with both of these methods is being brave enough to go out to strangers and identify yourself as a writer, to tell people what you really want to achieve. That’s, I think, what prevented me from learning this sooner. The thought of saying it out-loud to someone, the thought of the potential for them to see me fail, was (and still is) utterly terrifying. But, the biggest thing lockdown did for me, was give me a taste of what it was to be a full-time writer. And I can’t forget that taste. I always knew I wanted it but now I know I can’t settle for anything else. And, having learned from the people who are living the life I want, I know what I need to do.
When I was struggling to protect my boundaries at work before lockdown, it was because I didn’t think I could justify prioritising my writing until I was a real writer. And what made a real writer? Why a publishing deal, a literary agent, book-signings and readings and festivals and book tours of course! All the things I couldn’t control. But the old adage applies: a real writer writes. And defends their writing time against everything else.
I can’t control whether an agent or a publisher will like my work or see a place for me on their books. All I can control is how I use my time. Do I want to use my time working extra shifts, or do I want to use it working on my writing career by writing?
So, when “normal” life began to return, and I went back to full-time employment and all the demands that go with it, it was with the understanding that, if I don’t honour my time to write, no-one will. (And a bag of sneaky writing tricks to help me along the way!)