Keeping track of your creative life will provide a framework to enable you and your writing to progress, advises Ian Ayris
Having completed our set-up of the Foundation of the Building Blocks of Creative Writing in the previous articles in this series, focusing on the importance of writing with courage, honesty, empathy, etc – I would like now to turn to an issue often spoken of in writing circles – the isolating nature of the life of a writer.
The writer’s life can feel lonely and, yes, it can feel isolating. It can feel – and to a degree must – be all consuming. And in the pursuit of words the writer can easily become untethered. Untethered from daily life and relationships, even untethered from their own writing, drifting helpless in a torrent of self-doubt and self-imposed recrimination. Most pernicious of all, the writer can become untethered from themselves.
In this article I propose a companion – a Writer’s Companion. The Writer’s Companion could be seen as the rock to which the writer straps themsleves to as a means of staying tethered, of not coming undone.
The Writer’s Companion is made up of two distinct sections:
i) The Reading Companion
ii) The Writing Companion
Now, I am very much a bear of the 1840s. Technology is not my thing. I was pestered into getting a phone by my children in my late thirties (I am now 54) and if I had my way there would be no phones, no cars, no television, no aeroplanes and no internet. If I had my way there would also be mute buttons for people. But, you know, life is as it is.
If I was to put this Companion together it would be with an A4 ring binder and a wad of A4 lined paper. If it makes more sense to you to use a computer and have all these as separate files and sub-folders, please do.
A small disclaimer. The sections for The Writer’s Companion are neither exclusive nor mandatory. I am also well aware they will take time – time which you might find it more important to commit to your writing project. Pick the ones that make sense to you. Add some of your own. Ignore this article completely. You are in control of your writing journey.
You are the writer.
Right. Here we go.
The Reading Companion
Keeping a track of your reading journey can provide a useful complement to your writing journey. One of the pieces of advice I give all writers is do whatever you want but know why you’re doing it. This applies to reading as well as writing. Choose the books you read with care. There simply isn’t enough time to read rubbish. Read great books, read groundbreaking books, read experimental books, read the classic and
