Writing the circumstances of writing.

Behind my desk is a bookshelf. 

Either side of that bookshelf is a wall. 

If I were to turn around and knock on the wall, I would be reassured of its wall-ness.

I’ll come back to the wall in a moment.

A lot of people looking to find their voice – and their time – and their writing life – start by saying ‘I don’t have enough time.’

More often than not, the belief is something like this:

The amount of time I have in my life will need to get bigger before I can give any of it to the thing that I have come to you saying I want to do.’

It took me a PhD and a decade before I came close to shaking my own version of that belief (or accepting I had it in the first place). Which is why I do what I do now. Writing is important. I do a lot of that. But freeing writers to write is important too. A block is a block is a block, even when it’s one of permission.

So when I meet this, or something related to it, I sometimes go and knock on one of those walls. 

When we put time around our writing, the boundary that exists around that time needs to be as real to us as to that wall. 

That wall isn’t a wall because someone tells me it’s okay for it to be a wall.

It’s a wall. I can’t walk through it and neither can you.

That belief (or perhaps we could call it a realisation?) doesn’t begin with it being real to everyone else in my family, friendship group and work life. 

The reality begins with me, if it is to become real to anyone else.

We design the wall. We build the wall. We can do it in seconds. Except usually it’s taken us years to realise we can do it in seconds.

This is my time. This is my writing’s time. So that my writing exists, my time exists. And it’s mine.

So when someone says ‘Can you do this at this time?’ the answer doesn’t need to be a nasty no; it can be a very loving and (if necessary) repetitive declaration of fact. I’m not free at that time. How about this other time…

I need to be able to believe in my no. Which doesn’t start by having solid feelings of my own permission. 

It starts by committing to a behaviour.

Creating a reality.

Repeating and stabilising the reality.

Until that’s the real story.

Not a bad warm-up for the actual writing you’ve created it for…

Adapted from this week’s InkCouragement with Dr Rachel Knightley on The Writers’ Gym Podcast. Listen on Apple, Spotify, Podbean or wherever you get your podcasts.

Visit RachelKnightleyCoaching.com for more.