On the joy of writing
My lovely writing room, which I’m so lucky to have.
This week, I wrote my acknowledgements for my novel and I’ve also been reading through my final, typeset pages. And goodness, I do love what I’ve written! Of course, I’m nervous about how it will be received, but right now publication day is still far away enough for me not to feel too nervous. I know this book inside out, like I know my children’s birthmarks. Which is to say, right now I’m very close to it. But I know that in time, this feeling will pass. Just the other day, I went to look something up in my memoir which I wrote three years ago now (or is it four?) and I couldn’t quite remember where it was. But right now, I know everything about this novel. Every comma, every sigh, every shrug.
It’s kind of sad to think that soon, I’ll have to draw a line and say goodbye to my characters who have lived in my head for so long now, before they even made it to the page. So I’m savouring this opportunity to spend these last moments of time ‘just us’ with them, taking my time with these final pages.
It’s funny how writing a book takes so long, but then you get to this stage, when the end is so tantalisingly close you can almost reach out and hold it, and suddenly the pace quickens. Now there’s publicity meetings and talk of proofs being sent out and final cover reveals and it’s wild to me that in five months, I’ll have another book out. It’s exciting, nerve-wracking. But when things suddenly pick up speed, when things are going well, it’s easy to forget what it took to get here. It’s easy to forget just how hard it’s all been.
Because it has been hard. So hard. Harder than any of the other books I’ve written before. And I don’t know why, whether it was the actual book itself or whether it was that it coincided with an awful lot of just, well, life which requires me to be many things at the same time, not just a writer.
Writing a book is hard for so many reasons. Mostly, I think, because we put so much expectation on ourselves (or at least here I speak for myself) and that weight can be crushing to have to carry, every single day. But I’ve also realised that, in a way, what’s harder than writing a book is not writing it (I mean, there are obviously also many other things harder than writing, but you know what I mean in this context!). And this reminds me just how much I love writing.
Because even though writing is hard, it’s also joyful.
And beautiful and satisfying, so very satisfying. That feeling, when you know what your plot is, when you know what you need to do; that feeling when you just hit your stride in your writing. I’d say there’s nothing like it. Every day last summer, I woke up early and wrote seven pages a day so that I’d have a completed draft of my novel by the end of it. And yes, it was hard. But also, I got such a kick from it. Because there’s nothing quite like the feeling of believing in yourself. Of knowing that you are making something happen. That there is some kind of magic happening on the page.
In all my writing courses, my intention is always to remind my students that writing is above all a pleasurable pursuit, something we’re lucky to do. These last few weeks have really reminded me of this, and if anyone who is reading this is struggling with their writing and beating themselves up about it, I hope you’ll find a way to remember that the joy will come, eventually; you just have to wait for it, push through.
Online Short Story Writing Course with Award-Winning Author Huma Qureshi
Miniature Worlds, my eight-week online short story writing course, is an invitation to discover and absorb my short story writing process so you can apply it to your own work. With my guidance, you’ll learn how to write short stories that linger with your readers long after they’ve turned the last page