Keeping a daily writing practise
Day 75 in Manchester
I’ve been thinking a lot about how I consume. Part of the drive to document a tally of days in which we live under such rules in the north west is to keep me writing.
I read so much, whether on the daily scrolls through news websites, social media or books and, for work I write so much, having to consider how to best put things across on behalf of other people or entities; if I couple that with the other stuff that I used (pre March 2020) to fill my day with, it was impossible to see a slot for writing anything down. Basically it used to be very easy to find a plausible excuse as to why I don’t have time to write.
While I exist in this form of lockdown, with all the privileges granted to me — such as still having a job and the means to buy food and thrive — surely I can’t make the usual I don’t have time excuses?
I read somewhere* that a lot about writing is just doing it. As in, building up tolerance and stopping hating the sound of your written word. So that’s what I’m attempting. This documentation may get even more routine given that my evening scroll suggests we may break a record in Manchester by staying in tier two for the shortest amount of time on record before we get bumped up to threat level three.
Interestingly I notice that I’m so much more entranced with reading print and writing on paper, always have been. I write stuff in journals and notebooks constantly and man do I love lists.
I genuinely have a sort of semi-goosebump reaction to the bi-annual arrival of The Gentlewoman magazine. A glorious day then, yesterday, because it arrived for my second instalment of the year.
This New Zealand science backs up a lot of stuff I’ve read that we just digest print media differently. We focus. We indulge in it — it’s not spoon fed to us in digestable chunks while we walk down the street or wait for someone in a pub, which is why we access a different part of our imagination and therefore get more out of it.
If I think too much about it, I suppose my love for it is associated to me being reassured by assured writers and considered presentation of features and things that are worth saying. I definitely also have a weird chip on my shoulder about how fleeting and throwaway digital delivery can be.
That print is read and consumed by other people just like me feels so thrilling, like I’m part of a secret society of people who bought the CD and ran home to listen to it from start to finish. We all read it and don’t have the means by which to instantly tell the world we read it.
It also propels me forward when it comes to my own practises. I’m trying to unlearn a lot of stuff and one of those things is the idea that I don’t qualify as someone who writes or is worthy of doing so.
The only difference between being a writer and not, is writing.
*I’m not good at details, must get better at bookmarking references.
