Weekend Journaling Prompt

The human gap

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Hello,

I’ve nearly finished my latest book. I think I started saying that last July. It was, at the time, entirely unrealistic, but that’s never bothered me much. My ability to continue with my writing career hinges on my entirely unrealistic belief that I can impose any kind of a schedule on my writing.

In my defence, the maths is beguiling. Have you ever heard the old chestnut that you could write several novels a year if you just wrote a thousand words a day? On the face of it, that makes perfect sense. There are 365 days in a year, and a novel is about 85,000 words, give or take. That means *gets out calculator…* that you could write four in a year, with 40 days to spare! You would even be allowed to take the odd weekend off! How amazing is that?

Unfortunately, books aren’t simply a matter of pouring out the exactly right words to a regimented schedule, and then sending them off to your salivating agent as soon as you hit the word count. It surprises me every time how hard they are, how complicated to construct, how soul-destroyingly elusive. At the time of pitching, I wholeheartedly believe that I can just machine out the book I have in my mind, and I may, at that stage in the game, make extremely unrealistic predictions relating to my speed. It just all seems so obvious until you get down to write the thing, and then suddenly the words conspire against you.

What exactly do you mean when you say that, they ask; How do you know? If that’s true, then how does that impact the other thing you said a mere paragraph ago? I can get stuck in a loop for months like this, picking apart the basic logic of my argument. Once I get that sorted, the words start to yawn. God, this is SO boring, they say. Where’s the connection? Where’s the light? Why do you have to make everything so complicated?

There is the other stuff too, happening outside of the writing, often blocking its path: family commitments, social life, admin; the rest of the work that comes parcelled with being an author; the need, sometimes, for a break from the sound of your own voice. It all chips away at those teetering projected word counts. Let’s be clear here: my books are about 50,000 words long, and I publish one every two or three years. That’s a pretty depressing rate of production.

And yet I work on them most weekdays, and most weekends, and I tend to carry on writing when I go on holiday. Let’s say I write four days a week for 48 weeks of the year, a conservative estimate. I feel like I should be able to write nearly four of my books per year. I patently do not.

I really have nearly finished my book now. I have completed a draft that’s in reasonable shape, and I’m prodding it to see what makes it squirm. I am tired and grouchy, and I would literally read anything (does Elon Musk have an autobiography?) other than my own words right now. I am full of the intent to never do it like this again, to find a better way next time. I might finally carry out my threat to retrain as an account and enjoy a job whose parameters are clear. Given that I had to get my calculator out earlier to find the multiples of 85,000, I think that’s unlikely to happen.

But what strikes me, in these weary final days of a long slog, is just how unrealistic we often are about our goals. We live in a culture that tells us that everything is a matter of simple arithmetic, that an hour three times a week will get us this, that a mere five minutes a day will get us that. We know from experience that it’s mostly impossible, but we keep trying anyway because we find it hard to fully understand the gap between the two. In our minds, there is the intention, and then there is the failure, and the space between is a blur.

I’m going to name that gap the human gap. It’s a place we barely know because we are so committed to the unreality in which all of life is controllable. The human gap contains all manner of things that are intrinsic to our existence, but which we prefer to believe we can overcome. That includes getting tired, catching colds, running late, meeting other people’s needs, wanting to just switch off for a while, getting hungry, not finding quite the right solution right away, taking half an hour to chat with a friend, screwing up occasionally, or maybe just losing to the will to live a life where discipline is substituted for joy. It includes being waylaid by a beautiful morning frost or an incredible sunset, getting snagged on a really interesting discussion on the radio, agreeing to go out for lunch with your partner who feels a bit abandoned due to all your striving, feeling like you could do with a walk. The human gap is not a gap at all, but a place that is full of all of the flow and flexibility of life, all the ways that our needs and instincts change across the day, all the compromises and negotiations that come with living in a society. We are, somehow, incapable of factoring it into our days, but it is everything.

Today’s journaling prompt is all about noticing your own human gap, and learning to treasure it.