It’s that time of year when the air turns from autumn crisp to winter bite. For the last couple of years that’s felt like the flicking of a switch – literally one day I’m appreciating bright skies, orange leaves, and jackets without gloves; the next, I’m navigating frost or a snowfall in hat and boots.
Today, we woke up to snow. On my dog walk I couldn’t resist taking this photo of an apple tree in a neighbour’s garden. From a distance, I asked myself if they had decorated it already with minimalist baubles. But no, these are apples still clinging to a tree that has long since leached the chlorophyll from its leaves to shut up shop for the winter. The applies missed the memo – they’re still hanging on even though it’s not doing them any good.
(This is starting to sound like a cheesy cat poster or worse, a contrived LinkedIn post – but stick with me. I took that photo just because it was a curiosity to me in the moment. But when I looked on my phone for a random photo to use as a backdrop to this title, there it was, literally the last one in the camera roll. #EverythingConnects)
The apples will fall soon enough. But it’s not so easy to read the temperature in our creative lives – it can take a lot longer to recognise when a season has ended and we can let go of something. However, as I emerge from my bug soup, I have realised I can let go of something that’s no longer serving me: my Patreon page.
I’m sharing here some of what I shared with my supporters over there today as I prepare to unpublish it, as it’s also a general update and follow-up from my last post.
I’ve remembered – reminded myself – that the reason I set up this Patreon was to keep myself accountable to keep writing after our return. To both continue my writing practice and capture the experience of repatriation in real time. To have a tangible writing deadline that would help prevent me getting sucked into domestic decision-making for the first year or so. Thank you, friends, for being here for that.
It worked – until it didn’t.
I suppose it stopped working around a year ago, when I got caught up with preparing my TEDx talk (which was also writing) and started using the get-out clause of pausing the account, then shifted my expectations of how I use this space. Why? Because I had to finish what I’d started, right?
Except I failed to recognise that I’d already finished what I started – the only end goal was, in fact, getting something started. Along the way I’d heaped on a load of extra expectations.
And so here we are back in the navel-gazing writing genre no one asked for of ‘apologising and explaining for the writing or lack of it.’ Still, read on for insights you might find useful too, and to find out what’s next.
I’ve been so muddled in my bug soup that a couple of weeks ago, when I tried to remember what my word of the year is, I literally had no idea. Couldn’t dredge it up from anywhere. I had to look back at my own email archive to remind myself.
Talk about a forehead-slapping moment.
Simplify.
My word of the year was simplify.
Years ago I started reading Growing Gills by Jessica Abel – I even downloaded and printed the workbook to go with it. I didn’t get very far, and not just because of my tendency to go all-in on something for the five minutes until the next shiny new object appears or life stuff inevitably tugs at my attention. (To be fair, this was around the time of pandemic.)
I also had deep resistance to the author’s core idea of Just One Thing – her insistence that the way to make meaningful progress with a creative project is to spend all our available time on that one thing, rather than divvying up our time and focus among several projects, thus only making piecemeal progress on any of it. That made sense to me, and it’s a compelling principle: focusing deeply and watching the fruits of that focus accumulate; finishing something, properly, and knowing you are ready to move on to the next thing, with the trust and confidence you can finish that too.
Yes, I could do that. But my own resistant, insistent voice always piped up: NOT YET!
I can’t stop growing a social media community to write a book, because without that community I’ll not have anyone to read the book. I can’t stop blogging because it’s fodder for the book. Because it’s what people know me for. I can’t stop writing a book to focus on building my editing services because I’ve said I’m writing a book. Because I’m a writer. I can’t stop providing editing services because I have clients already. Because it’s an income. Because I LOVE doing it. Because it’s rewarding and satisfying. Once I’ve got xyz in place, THEN I can focus on one thing for a while.
That Growing Gills workbook still sits in a folder with one incriminating page filled in.
But more recently, even after having stopped doing other things long enough to write and publish a book, well…now I’m an author. I can’t stop being an author, can I? I always will be. (Yay!) Which means I have to keep talking about my book on social media. Keep using content marketing to tell the world about it. (Must start that podcast. Must record that audiobook.) And I can’t stop writing the next book because I’ve said I’m going to write the next book. Because I’m a writer. And I can’t stop building online community because more people should know about the book I published. Because I started doing it. Because I don’t want to leave a gap where I started something. And I did a TEDx talk so now I’m a speaker. Which is also part of being an author. But I should be pitching myself as a speaker more and using my voice more and…
And so on. Taking little stabs at everything amid the other inescapable demands of life. Making piecemeal progress – if any. And, most tellingly, being deeply jealous of the people who are doing just one thing, whether it’s building a business, writing a book, creating a community, or going to a demanding yet rewarding job.
Jealousy is a powerful emotion as long as we turn its ammunition on ourselves and not on the subject of our envy. It can tell us what we want, what we really really want.
My strongest jealousy recently has been of editing colleagues who work full-time on client manuscripts. And that’s what I’ve missed most during this year away from my desk.
Meanwhile, noticing I was in bug soup meant I stopped being impatient to be doing and just started listening, literally and metaphorically, to the messages coming from the world and from my own intuition. Conversations about income. The urge to create a certain presentation for a certain event. (The fact that the urge compelled me to draft the entire thing without any deadline upon me.) Shifts I noticed among some people I pay attention to.
And only as I started writing this (always the way) did I uncover another message from myself.
If you have watched my TEDx talk you might have already tuned in to the language above of some of my ‘But I can’t stop…’ self-talk: all the sentences that started ‘I am a…’ A wise person once said, ‘When I try to be something, I’m moulding myself to the expectations of something outside me.’*
(*It’s me. I’m the wise person. If you haven’t watched my TEDx talk by now, you really should!)
I’ve given myself labels, the nouns of writer and author – I’ve enthusiastically chosen them, and I own them. And now, I can let go of the outer (and inner) expectations that come with them. Going back to the words of my own TEDx talk, I’m letting go for a while of passively trying to be a ‘writer’ and ‘author’, and choosing the actions I want to have most impact with.
Getting back to where we started at the top of the page – the expectations I’ve kept adjusting around this Patreon project – I did finish what I started.
No, I haven’t finished writing a book. But (and I keep having to repeat this to myself) that wasn’t the goal – the goal was the writing. For the first year or so after we moved. I achieved that. It did serve its purpose. I have several draft chapters that capture the experience as it was happening – and plenty more notes and themes to revisit when I come back to the project. Goal achieved. Time to congratulate myself and move on, instead of constantly answering my guilt with a half-assed substitute and feeling even more guilty.
For the generous friend who said, ‘But how will we support you?’ First, it was never about the money. It was about knowing you were there for me and my words. The financial support on this page pretty much balances with the support I pledge to other creators on here, in a beautifully circular way. (Whom, I always remind myself too, I never silently berate for what they do or don’t show up with on here. I support them because I support who they are and what they’re doing, visibly or otherwise.) If you’re looking for somewhere else to commit your support of me, may I recommend Monna McDiarmid, an inspiring writer of powerful gentleness, who’s lately sharing essays about her move to St John’s in Newfoundland. (I just paused to catch up on her most recent one and it is gorgeous and has an amazing surprise!)
You and I can keep in touch via the emails I’ll still occasionally send (sign up here) or on Instagram. Make sure you’re still hearing from me so you don’t miss when I do get back to that book. (Although I still have a presence on Facebook, I really don’t use it any more.) And the very best support is – of course – a review of Nest on Goodreads or Amazon.
The one writerly commitment I’m keeping is Creative Coffee, which surprises me every week. As I type, the window in the corner of my screen is filled with faces of important friends. Some of this intimate community have been showing up for themselves and each other now for over three years. Sometimes we arrive on screen eager to get going with the words on our minds, other times we’re just there, feeling messy, taking this moment in our messy weeks to touch base with each other and our creative goals. Some of us just drop in occasionally, or return after a long spell of dealing with other messy demands, confident in the knowledge that they belong. Let me know if that sounds like what you need too.
The rest of the time? I’m excited to double down on my editing services in The Word Bothy. Following an inspiring conference, I’ve been updating my website, preparing for some training, and emailing indie authors on my list to let them know that my calendar is open again. (Tell your friends! I have availability before the end of the year.) I’ll still be flexing my writing muscles though, as I have a whole slew of resources planned for helping writers fine-tune their sentence-level craft.
So that’s the season I’m in now – fitting, since my Word Bothy tagline is ‘get cosy with your words’ and I’m watching the snow fall outside from inside our newly insulated home. I wonder if there’s a season you’ve been hanging on to because it was tangled up in your identity…let me know if you’ve found a moment of clarity today.
Catriona Turner Books & Blog 