Once upon a time, I was a writer who wrote a lot.
Not a lot a lot. I have never been the type of journalist who can bash out two pieces before lunch, one-handed, on the toilet, possibly drunk. I’ve never really felt comfortable calling myself a ‘journalist’ at all, given that my reflexive response to any editor offering a quick-turnaround commission is “Gah! No! How dare you??”
But still – I paid the rent, I fed the content monster, I racked up a decent number of bylines. I had ideas and wrote them down in little notebooks. I could write a feature without it stretching out over weeks. I could write a paragraph without needing a little treat afterwards.
I think it helped that I went freelance during what was, I now realise, a golden age for being silly on the internet. It certainly didn’t feel like a golden age at the time, considering magazines were folding left, right and centre and every year my tax return read like an in memoriam for titles that had since bitten the dust – but there was still (some) budget for playful ideas and the space to let them run around a bit. The pieces from my portfolio that I’m proudest of aren’t the emotional big-hitters or the rigorously researched pieces for broadsheets (let’s pretend I wrote some); it’s my ode to The Cos Woman, the mildly deranged 1600-word Great British Bake Off episode recaps, and the one I wrote for a brand’s shortlived blog called ‘7 Things Nobody Washes As Often As They Pretend To’.
Back when I had a weekly newspaper column (words that look impressive before I feel obliged to add: for The Worthing Herald) I could spin even the nothingest of non-ideas into 600 words with a boom-tush callback at the end. Sometimes in an hour, sometimes at 2am, once in a Paris internet cafe (‘Isn’t it a shame you can’t see fish out of the Eurostar window?’). And that was the same energy I used to bring to pitching; wasting far too much time writing up far too wordy explainers for articles that I knew could be brilliant if only a generous editor would look past how little sense they made. ‘Can you give it a newsy hook?’ were words that usually brought me, rudely, back down to earth. But still, it was a fun time.
Then I started writing books, and that was also a fun time because my first one required me to spend a summer thinking exclusively about the Spice Girls, but my brain began to shift gears as I adjusted to the rhythm of publishing. I wrote another, longer, more serious book, and my brain clunked down another couple of notches, the parts that used to be dedicated to coming up with pithy headlines like ‘How Susan Sarandon Helped Me Reclaim My Cleavage’ now occupied by masochistic visits to GoodReads and panicking about having accidentally done a Johann Hari.
Then there was a pandemic, and then I had a baby.
These are two very different and mostly unrelated things, but there were a few notable points of crossover: wild anxiety, a sharp dip in personal hygiene standards, a fervent beatification of the poor old NHS and the steamrollering of my motivation.
Now, I am a writer who does not write a lot. I am a writer who is generally pretty good at answering emails, and DMs, and the door, and making extravagant omelettes and collapsing down all the cardboard delivery boxes for recycling, because I would rather be ‘productive’ doing any of those things than my one frankly very cushy job. Somewhere along the way, I’ve become scared of writing.
It hasn’t felt like a burnout so much as an incredibly slow grinding to a halt. My brain feels like an aged household appliance that only retains a fraction of its original functionality and needs to be turned on with a special ‘knack’ (in my case, sheer panic and excess sugar).
Sharp-eyed pedants might point out that I’ve produced two novels during this time, which I’m afraid is true, but you have to understand how slowly I wrote them (years!) and how little else I have done.
I was supposed to hand in my second one just before I gave birth, but in the end I barely managed to write half. People talk about baby brain, which was definitely part of it, but also nobody tells you just how much admin is involved in being pregnant. All the appointments and the classes and the vitamins and the stretching and the googling stuff and the buying stuff and the breathing and the endless peeing and the sheer bloody workload of trying to grow another human – and then you want me to do another job on top of that? In this economy??
It was all ok because my publishers were very understanding, and also because the great thing about being a parent, many people assured me, is that you become so much more productive, adept at squeezing creative work into tiny slivers of time between meals and poos and tantrums. Your creativity becomes richer and more concentrated, like fine consommé, and you value any time you do have to create so much more.
Well, that hasn’t happened. Maybe it still will happen, perhaps the magic time is 17 months postpartum. But deep down I suspect that I’m just not the kind of person who is very good at slipping away into the cognitive realm when there is so much else to be doing in the physical realm. Meals and poos and tantrums, for a start.
I also suspect – and no outrage, it’s fine, I’m reclaiming this word for those of us who identify – I am simply quite lazy. Ultimately as much as I love writing, I will always prefer watching TV in the bath.
Still, I would like to be a writer who writes again. If not a lot, then some, regularly, and for fun as well as pay cheques. So here I am with my rusty old brain, long out of warranty, hoping it can still toast a slice of bread even if it doesn’t shine like it used to. Welcome to my Substack!
The concept of Nobody Wanted This is fairly self-explanatory, but also helpfully loosey-goosey. It will be a repository for the ideas I’ve had that no editor will commission, but which I want to write anyway, to say boo to The Fear and stop my writing muscle from seizing up and crumbling away like old feta.
Some will be silly, some will be serious. Some will be absurdly long, because there’s a reason we have editors and I’m not one*. Very few will ever have a newsy hook.
It will also be a place for me to recycle some bonus book content, deleted scenes, favourite old pieces that don’t have a home online anymore, and other choice offcuts as and when I remember they exist. Maybe sometimes poems?? And because I know a lot of people follow me for secondhand fashion stuff, I might stretch the title (I knew it was a good one) to include a little of that too.
I’m leaving it free for now but will slap on a paywall once I’m confident I remember how to do this. Early signs bode well. I’ve written this whole post, and it’s only taken me three days!
Subscribe, won’t you? I deserve a little treat.
*Worth saying that if you are an editor and want to publish anything that appears in this Substack, I can be easily bought.
>Isn’t it a shame you can’t see fish out of the Eurostar window?
This was my nieces' complaint when they went to Paris! Though I suspect the Channel wouldn't exactly have looked like Finding Nemo even if there was a view.
Oh my god how glad I am I found you !!