Writing – like swimming only drier

I am about half way through my fourth book – working title, Two Things. It’s about a group of people in supported accommodation and I’m really enjoying it. The reason it’s taking me so long is that I started writing another book (Hearing Loss) and about half way through, I thought this book is depressing me, so I’ve shelved it for now. Life is too short to write depressing books. Writing should be joyful – well not the actual writing. That’s like pulling teeth at times, but the subject matter, the themes, should energise and inspire.

Elif Shafak wrote in one of her wonderful blog posts that writing is an act of rebellion, a refusal to accept things as they are. This is my hope for Two Things. Let’s see.

It reminds me of swimming. I started in January after a break of a few years. Actually I’ve just counted up and it’s twenty. Time does go on, as my lovely mother-in-law used to say. I stopped swimming for two reasons – an eye disease took most of the vision from one eye and a little from the other, and I became profoundly deaf. (If you lopped me off from the neck up, I’d be fine.)

Swimming began to feel a bit scary. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear. Everyone looked wavy and insubstantial, potato-print versions of themselves. If there was a fire, an earthquake, a major incident (hazardous material in pool?) I would be breast-stroking up and down, oblivious, while the life-guard turned blue on his whistle.

So I could swim no more. I had accepted this for twenty years, but back in January, when my husband was swimming, I realised I missed it. I wanted to swim too. Why shouldn’t I? Why must I let the inflammatory disease that stole my sight and hearing, rob me of this too? I am a teacher; I’ve written three books; spoken at conferences; led workshops; done Q and As. Surely I could manage to swim.

My husband gave me his goggles so I could wear contact lenses in the water. My audiologist made me personalised ear plugs the shape of seahorses. I told the Reception I was deaf and took off my hearing aids. Off I went, hair tied. I refuse to wear a swimming cap. It’s like cling-filming your head.

That first time, after all those years, was glorious – the physical movement, the mental stillness, the soft slap of water. I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t see that well either – I hadn’t got the googles right – but I didn’t care. Let earth quake, fire fall. I would just keep cleaving the quiet water, cocooned in my pod of light and silence.

For me, writing is like that. I go in blind and deaf. Some writers plan the whole book. I can’t do that – it’s like cling-filming my head. I picture people – a deaf child, a disabled man, a restaurant worker, and I start writing. At times, I thrash around a bit unable to see a pattern in their stories, hear their heartbeat as it were. But somehow the magic happens and I end up knowing where to go next. Of course, if you’re a writer who is a pantser (you fly by the seat of your pants) rather than a planner, you reach the point where you have to plan a bit. But you are largely blind and deaf until the threads of the story come together. Ah, I see how this will end, you think one day.

This is what writing the short stories in Winter Lights was like. I had no idea where it was going or how it would end. I didn’t know what was going to happen in each story. Things would pop up and surprise me. This bit for example: –

‘When the tractor hits, she’s thinking about Mum: how Mum would have told her not to take the deputy job. There are always ways to make money, but you can never get the time back. Mum liked soundbites, too, but hers were wiser, inviting themselves in before you could shut the door. If only Mum was here now. The road stretches ahead emptily. She closes her eyes for a second, sun on skin. The first thing she notices is the noise. That sound of folding metal, scream upon scream of it, scraping itself against and around her like a tortured animal.’

I didn’t plan the accident. It just happened – the way accidents do, the way life does. Things happen and we try to find patterns, to make sense of it. That’s how I write.

Writing has always been my passion. Swimming could be too.

What are your passions? In these uncertain times, when wars rage and our prayers rise with increasing urgency, for peace, for freedom, for good leadership, we must give time to the things we were born for. Because when we’re doing them, however sparingly, we rediscover a stillness, a sense of possibility. We emerge a little bit stronger, a little bit hopeful.

Like a one-eyed, deaf swimmer, we’ll find a way.

If you enjoyed this post, you might enjoy one of my books. At this time of year, Winter Lights might work for you? It’s a book of linked short storied set in a small English town in the run-up to Christmas. It came out in November 2023 and was a Love Reading Star Book and Book of the Month.

Click here or here to buy the book.

If you’re in Sussex and are interested in writing workshops, I’m running some at Ringmer Library over the next few months. Programme below. Please email Liz at ringmervillagelibrary@gmail.com if you’d like to book a place. Details below: –