I’m over it. I don’t want to write this book any more. I really don’t. I’m so close to the end and the thought that I have to keep going back in and fixing this bit and that, is just too depressing.

You are nearly there, I keep telling myself — just a few more hours, days, weeks, is all you need, don’t give up now!

But I want to chuck in the towel. I want to put it in the drawer. Let one of my descendants find it after I’m gone and say — oh, what a great pity, grandma was onto something here, this would have been a great book!

I have around 70,000 words, it’s been read several times by trusted writer friends, a couple of editors even. I’ve made most of the suggested changes, but there is still one section in the end of the second act that’s still not working. I need some kind of reveal, some kind of ‘all is lost’ moment, some kind of shocking event maybe. But how to do that in memoir? How do I manipulate the truth to bring about this kind of effect?

It’s 11.07 am. I go to the kitchen to make tea. This week I have set up a new routine for myself. (It’s my old routine actually, I just had to reactivate it by giving myself a good talking to).

The rule is to be at my desk 9am — 12 noon each week day, no matter what, working on my book. That’s it. That’s all I have to do. No emails, no phone calls, no Instagram, no Facebook. I can use Google for research but nothing else. But when I am dragging the chain and searching for a way in, like today, I have permission to listen to related podcasts.

I click on the Philospher’s Zone, a fascinating talk on Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy. I take notes, it’s very interesting though nothing I can immediately use. Next I listen to my dear friends on This Jungian Life. (I don’t know them personally but I listen to them so often they feel like my best buddies!) They are discussing creativity: ‘how ideas arise from mysterious sources yet creativity is such an intrinsically human function that Jung regarded it as one of the five instincts, together with hunger, sexuality, activity and reflection.’

I go back to the kitchen to top up my tea. It’s a well worn track. I bring my Jungian buddies with me.

Then it comes to me

—the scene I know I’ve been avoiding, a quite confronting scene, shocking even. And because I’ve been avoiding it, I’ve been avoiding not only writing but everything else that’s in the wee-bit-too-hard basket.

It’s 12 noon. My writing session is officially over, but I decide to keep going.  I give myself the writing exercise I’ve given my students many before. It’s a variation on the prompt ‘What I really want to say is…’

Instead at the top of my page I write, ‘What I really CANNOT say is… ‘

Try it, and let me know how you go!

Thanks for the reminder Biff Ward!

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