Preemptive Retaliation

I am sitting here with a bit of a frantic ache in my chest. I’ve had it all evening. It’s the same feeling I used to get when I didn’t reach my daily wordcount or, more accurately, when I hadn’t made the effort to reach my wordcount. Over the pandemic and beyond I set myself a task to write 300 words per day or a notebook page of notes – and I mostly kept to it. I think my winning streak was over a hundred days. At the end of it I had a novel that I really like, but haven’t looked at in a while though that’s a different problem to digest.

When I was writing that novel I would get this same feeling in my chest, which would be quelled when I wrote the equivalent of roughly a paragraph. At first it was a symptom that reared up in the evenings, when I was about to boot up a videogame or join a virtual hangout – which was the style at the time. I’d postpone whilst I wrote some words, or start the conversation on a distracted note as I tried to hide the clickety-clack of the keys to the group. Mostly this writing would happen in the evenings when my (at the time) sole child was in bed and my wife was happily entrenching herself into her own online community. Occasionally, though, the feeling would encroach earlier. During the pandemic it was when I had a preferred event in the evening like a movie night with Anna or maybe another Zoom quiz , but after restrictions ended it was when I was out in the evening or visiting family. On these occasions I would wake up early – early early, like 5am early – and spend some time writing these 300 words. Sometimes they were a good 300, sometimes they weren’t. It didn’t matter. All that mattered in the end was that I had a book. And I did! At the end of it all I had a book, and I like that book, I like it a lot, and I’m not going to talk about it anymore because that’s a fatal flaw of mine I suppose.

Anyway, I would write to get this feeling out of my chest. It’s not a good feeling. It’s a very specific feeling. It’s almost like an anxiety attack, of sorts, but it’s very focused. It’s the feeling that I’m wasting my life away. Or, more accurately, it’s the feeling that I’m not using my time productively, and that I could be doing better. I should be doing better. This feeling is, I’m to understand from memes, a very millennial response to the world we live in.

So of course another millennial response to this is to weaponise that feeling. Gamify it. Understand it and exploit it.

Recently I’ve been challenging myself to writing 100 words a day. Not as lofty as 300, but I often end up writing more than 100 anyway. It has let me write four chapters over the past month and a half, four chapters that wouldn’t be here before. I added to those four chapters earlier today, when Lily was at school and Jack was enraptured in Paw Patrol. I sat here and added about 170-odd words. I don’t think those words were particularly good, but that’s not the point of this exercise. I ticked off my obligation for the day.

But, then again, here I am. Sitting at the keyboard, ready to write. The ache in my chest is sitting here too, unperturbed.

The other night I was walking home, and my belly was full of too much pizza and too much beer, and the mixture of wheat and cheese made my head heavy with emotions – the other night I was walking home, and I was listening to Frightened Rabbit, and I was thinking how the line “make tiny changes to earth” actually spurned some major changes, in people and in organisations and everything. At the same time as this, I happened to look upwards at some telephone lines and I immediately though GNU Terry Pratchett, and how this one person has inspired millions, and continues to inspire because of their work.

A few months back I submitted my book for consideration for publication with a well regarded company. as part of the pitch they asked why I thought my book was a good fit for them. I told them that fiction is a way of identifying yourself through others, of seeing someone writing your thoughts and knowing that you are not alone. There’s a quote by some author that sums it up absolutely perfectly, but I shamefully cannot remember who that was or what the context was. In the end, the idea is that; I write stories because sometimes I feel alone, and I don’t want someone else to feel that way.

And on that dark December night, I felt like I would never get there. I felt like I would never be able to touch people the same way these poets did. My work would not be known, it would not provide me with income, it would not help other people in their struggles. I have no doubt that someone else will though. There’ll be someone else with better words than mine that will help these people through their difficulties. They won’t be my words.

But I’m still writing. I’m still writing my stupid little stories. I feel like I’m sitting here playing the lottery, with each ticket being dud after dud.

And I know the answer to this is to submit my work and see where it takes me. Give it a chance. But all of that takes time and effort when I could just sit here and be sad instead. I can be sad, and I can have this ache in my chest that I’m wasting my life away, and I can be sad.