WHEN EMOTIONS ARE TOO RAW TO WRITE ABOUT

Last week I was on a roll with my novel. It was the last thing I thought of before I went to sleep, the first thing that crossed my mind when I woke up the next day. I ignored the sunny weather and everything else on my ‘to-do’ list and sped on with a new chapter. In spite of my real world having crashed to a halt, I felt as if I was motoring towards a destination.

But my latest bout of corona despondency has stopped me in my tracks. Not because I haven’t written, but because of what I have written.

My protagonist is someone who lives with a Big Secret. She is always on edge, over-thinks the smallest thing and worries she is on the point of being found out. I’m really inside her head, and you might think that what’s going on in my life right now in terms of being isolated and alone might make good material in terms of mining those emotions.

But you have to think of your readers. Of course you want your characters to be authentic, and for their experiences and thoughts and actions to be recognisable. But you don’t want it to be so real that it depresses the hell out of everyone and they give up on the book.

That’s what happened to my writing this week. I had been overloading my protagonist’s mental outlook with all the bleakness that was building up in me thanks to the lockdown. It was too much and I was falling out of love with my book. I didn’t want to write more of my protagonist’s misery. I didn’t want to foist that on readers, who I felt would lose patience with her, as I was doing.

Yet the fact I wasn’t progressing with my novel – one of the few positive things in my life of isolation – was making me even more desolate, so stepping away from it wasn’t bringing me the relief I needed.

I try to write every day: even if I just get 20 words on a page I know that I will make up for it in the next few days. The habit is the important thing.

If ever there was a time to give myself permission to stop writing, however, it was today. At least until this black dog lifts.

Shielding is doing my head in. Apart from Skype and phone calls to family and friends, and a couple of extremely brief chance encounters with neighbours a good three or four metres apart (I am not meant to have any human contact at all), I have had only myself for company because I live alone. And I am sorry to say I have reached Peak Me (stamps foot in a huff and bursts into tears).

All the things I would normally enjoy doing while taking a break aren’t offering respite at all. I don’t want to read a book, or watch a film, or do some weeding in the garden I love. I am fed up to the back teeth of ME.

The things that would really lift my spirits - meeting up with friends, a drive to Bath to my favourite independent bookshop, going to a gig, a walk in a nature reserve or a garden of interest, going to London to visit my son – are off limits not just to me right now.

So I will just endure until the fog of unhappiness lifts, as I know it will. And then perhaps I can examine those emotions from a distance, and use them sparingly in my book.