On Writing

Although, as a graphic designer, I spend hours in front of the computer each day (and have done for nearly thirty years), when it comes to writing, I prefer to scrawl out ideas into notebooks first — crossing out, adding notes as I go — before committing my words to a typed, digital format.

I don’t have the best handwriting which often makes typing up these drafts difficult and slow but at least giving me the opportunity, when I can’t make out what I have originally written, to play around with new words.

Even armed with my current notebook and favourite pen, I can’t write anywhere and anytime. Firstly, and most importantly, I have to be in the right mood — though these days, that does seem to be most of the time — and then I have to be in a comfortable writing position which can vary from day to day, hour to hour, depending on how I feel and where I’m sitting.

And then there’s privacy. I originally wrote this, sat on the sofa, with my family all around me. But, when it comes to writing fiction, I don’t want anyone reading what I have written until it is completed, in my mind at least.

When, in 2017, I began writing my first short story for twenty years, it took me weeks to finish the first, handwritten draft because I was so nervous of people reading what I was writing and judging my work prematurely. Heading to London, for a meeting, I looked forward to the sixty-minute train journey — an opportunity to sit at a table and write for an hour undisturbed. And undisturbed I was, in the flow, words leaking fluidly from pen to paper, until a couple got on the train and sat down opposite me. I tried to continue to write but it wasn’t the same. Eyes were watching what I was doing, reading the words forming on the page. Or, that’s what I believed; I couldn’t bear it. I closed the book and spent the rest of the journey staring out of the window.

I laughed to myself when it turned out that the couple were German and, when I struggle to read my own writing in my own language the right way up, I probably had nothing to be concerned about. Later that day, I found myself with an hour to spare before my meeting and wrote out a dozen pages in a quiet corner of Pret A Manger.

I’m a bit more confident in my work and where I write now. Though, I am still reluctant to let anyone read my work before I feel it is ready, I am slightly more open about sharing ideas.

I’d be interested to hear other writers perspectives on this.