In order to apply for the scheme (a year of retreats and support as a fiction writer - http://www.arvon.org/grants-schemes/jerwoodarvon-mentoring-programme/) I had to put together a Bio and Personal Statement. Trying to ignore that both of these things terrified me, as they meant addressing my consistent floundering and self-doubt, I typed them up frantically (mostly looking away from the screen). I presented them to my husband, flushed and ready for praise.
He destroyed them (not physically, though they deserved it). He was right to do so; they were flowery, eager to please, rushed attempts at demonstrating my able wielding of the written word rather than daring to say anything about my life or my journey as a writer.
Back to the drawing board, and almost two solid days of re-drafts. The more I tried, the more I panicked. I was gearing myself up for this, wanting it, investing. I was inflating myself higher and higher, and slowly becoming aware of the imminent fall.
My husband's advice was not to get too excited. But that's not really me. I don't know how to try but not care, to give everything, but pull the emotion back. If I'm not successful with this it will hurt like a bitch, but that's good. I'm out of practise with failure. I need to get a wealth of failure behind me again, scrap through the hurt and rejection, and be better for it. Failure is good, great even, it suggests effort; a million times better than standing completely still with my eyes shut - my usual attempt.
In my Bio I talked about my frantic scrawling as a teenager. It took me back. I would stay up until the early hours writing, until my floorboards were covered with barely legible sheets, my hand ached and I had nothing left to stay. It is painful to look back and realise that in some ways, the past you was a better version.
I know what changed. It's the same stuff that plagues us all; work, relationships, owning shit we don't really need, cleaning it, fussing with it, selling it on. Adulthood can often fail to be the imaginative wonderland that childhood gave us in abundance. But that's probably our fault.
As we've just bought a house, my Mum has decided to relinquish a huge sports bag worth of my stuff - most of it books from school, letters, old photographs. It's early days, but I'm already finding some absolute beauties, my which I mean, horrific yet endearing writing I'd forgotten about. Perhaps the contents of the bag will teach me how to go back to writing for myself, back to the girl staying up till dawn for the words (even if that does mean for a while, producing a few worryingly odd poems about bullying).
