What Are You Doing At The Moment?

It’s an ordinary question. But it has a particular razor sharp resonance in the world of the arts. It is the sentence that is the lubricant of networking events and the after-show drink fandango.  It is a sentence I often find myself asking out of habit or uncertainty as to what to say next.  And yet it is a sentence I have historically feared.  Along with its evil twin ‘what’s coming up next for you?’

The need to be seen to be doing, to have something to say; it powers the churn of our creative industries.  ‘What are you doing next?’ and ‘what’s coming up?’… I spent so long worrying about that stuff.  Worrying about if I’d tweeted enough today. Was visible enough today. Worrying about the next commission instead of truly letting myself be in the moment of writing the one I was writing.

And then in January 2017 my Mum, who was one of the dearest people on the planet, died.  She was brave, funny, annoying as hell, stubborn, kind, sentimental, nosey, and (despite the stereotyping of older people) did not vote for Brexit. Though my libtard friends, don’t get over excited now. She was a royalist, a Christian and a former spy. Yes a former spy. She was a lover of music, a liberal who often voted labour but who confusingly thought the daily telegraph was a good paper. She introduced me to hill walking, Powell and Pressburger, Goodbye Mr Chips (the original version with Robert Donat), and David Attenborough. And many other wonderful things. Though these things didn’t include cooking. She hated cooking. But she did love Archeology and clouds and maths (which she said was an art and not a science). She taught me to read and write when all my teachers had given up. She believed in me. She loved me. And then she was just fucking gone. And she wasn’t coming back. 

And so in protest I stopped.

It was the first time I had properly stopped for years. For as long as I can remember.  I mean, I’d had holidays and taken breaks. But this was different. I simply couldn’t write. I was contracted to teach at Leeds University for a semester and I’m very thankful for that.  It gave me something to think about and care about. It was one of the few things that cut through the fog.  For a semester I simply did teaching, or felt blank, or slept, or cried, or as time went on began to laugh a bit again.  But I did not write.  I was in the middle of the first draft of a TV spec script when my Mum died. I had promised it to my agent (who has been so incredibly patient and brilliant through this whole period). I couldn’t write it. I couldn’t face social media. I stopped going to the theatre. I stopped doing. I just walked. Ate. Drank wine. Or did Joe Wicks exercises and worried about my students who weren’t doing their homework and I missed my Mum.

Or that’s what I thought was happening. And of course it was happening. But it wasn’t the only thing that was happening.

Because, behind the scenes something that hadn’t happened for a long while was happening. I began to think, not just about the what but about the why and how of my writing.  We never ask each other at networking events ‘why are you writing next?’ We should. I started to ask myself. ‘Why?’ And ‘do you want to start again?’ And ‘if the answer is yes, what do you want to write about?’ And if you work that stuff out ‘how do you want to go about writing things, now that everything is not as it was and never will be again?’

I didn’t write a word for 6 months.  But I did do a lot of thinking.  And slowly the need to write returned. But I also worked out that I no longer felt it was a badge to be worn.  I care less if you think I’m good any more.  There are other things that matter. I realized that working creatively with other writers was an important part of my practice that I hadn’t acknowledged enough before.  And what I’ve discovered as I’ve begun the process of coming back into the world again, is that fallow time has silently, almost magically, created a focus that I haven’t had for years.

Which is a long way of saying.  I’ve been away. But now I’m back. And I’m blogging again. If and when I’ve got something to say.  And that’s what’s happening now. And non of that would be happening if I hadn’t had a time of blank nothing.

We should let blank nothings in more often and be a bit less frightened to talk about the times when we’re not doing and don’t know what we’re doing next. Those times are not weakness. They are not moments when we become irrelevant. They are times when we are doing the thinking that will make the next thing come. When it’s good and ready.

Onwards dear hearts.