When you can't write...

Trying to find my voice again in an entirely new (forced) way...

I’ve broken my arm! So this newsletter is going to look a little messy for a while, but I think we can create something out of it, together. Below, and above, I try to explain (while, yes, quite high on cocodomol) how…

I'm writing this with my mouth. As in, I'm taking the words circulating my brain speaking them aloud and something, something I don't care to try to understand, is placing them down on this page.

I'm writing with my mouth because I tumbled over my bike handlebars, on Wednesday afternoon, on quite a mundane trip to the supermarket. I don't really know what happened: I was indicating and then I wasn't. Then I was on the ground.

My body is now a map of clues, to follow, to try to figure out what happened to me. There's the thin bruise on my right thigh where, presumably, I scraped the handlebars before landing slap bang onto my right knee. It is now blooming a purple and yellow flower, scattered grazes across the kneecap.

Where the map takes me next is to my left side where I must have flung myself towards the pavement, away from the line of cars that braked behind me. It's here that the damage is unseen; any bruises now hidden by a cast and bandage; my arm now a permanent L-shape; the pain both thunder and lightning, a steady growl punctuated by sharp forks.

I'm not sure how I feel about writing this way but as my left arm is broken, and I am left-handed and recovery time is likely to be four to six weeks, I have to try. Perhaps this is the lesson as, for months now, I have not mentally been able to write. Now that it is physically not possible I'm cursing all of that wasted time when I could have been doing the thing that I love the most. But I couldn't write for a reason and it wasn't for lack of trying, I have spent whole Sundays sitting in this window seat, putting words down on paper and not recognising the story that appeared in front of me.

Everything I wrote was not who I am. I lost my voice because I became somebody else: a ghost.

I've been writing books for other people, I sit with them and I listen and I let their words flow through me. When I type it's as if I am possessed by that person: I adopt their language, their thoughts. Within that process I lost sight of myself, of what I want to say, what I want to do with my words.

They say when you can't write you should read, but lately I feel as if I'm drowning in words, smothered by so many opinions, thoughts and feelings. These I do not take in, I can sit and read multiple articles all morning and by lunchtime I will have forgotten everything I have read.

I feel like a crab in a bucket and everyone is scrambling over each other to try and get their voice heard. It's made me wonder is anyone listening?

I just lost my train of thought, ironically because I realised somebody could be listening. The windows are open and on the street below a man is standing, waiting for his dog and I worried he could hear me. Writing has always been something that begins so privately, so silently and then I choose later which of these innermost thoughts I release into the world, but now, I need to speak out loud. This is no longer a way for me to control and contain my secrets, by speaking them I feel both strangely connected to what the words inside of me are trying to say, but also disconnected, like a promise has been broken.

Will there be an element of self-censorship, a shyness that leaks in?

But the thing is, there already is.

I haven't been writing, at least not in this newsletter, as I've convinced myself that no one wants to hear what I have to say. This is partly down to feeling a pressure to have an opinion, to vocalise strongly how I feel on a certain subject, to pick up on a trend or a news story and tell you all how I feel about it. This is how writers make a name for themselves these days and… I hate it. Yet my industry is shrinking, there’s only money for those who will guarantee the clicks. Anger spreads further online than nuance, than balance, than saying “I don't know and I don't know if I will ever know.” I don't blame the writers who are good at this, all we are trying to do is pull some worth from our words, to make them have value in an industry that pays us less and less for them.

It's this that has silenced me, feeling this need for everything that I put out there to gain traction of some kind, to show me my value in data. For someone who has always worked in words it is now numbers that tell me whether I'm good or not.

I've wanted to write for a while about the grief that I feel watching my industry, that of print journalism, crumble slowly around me. I don't want to write about it because I enjoy being in denial, it's good for me to continue to pretend that soon prints resurrection will come. I think a return to print is what's needed: we're all so tired of looking at our blue screams. The dictation said that, it changed screen to scream. I like it, it's poetic, it describes the yawning anxiety that can sometimes engulf us when we consider how quickly our phones have become part of us…

The Onion have just released a print product, that's good news. The people within my industry are still producing such brilliant work, we love it, we care, we keep going despite those at the very top making decisions that will eventually lead to our downfall.

I need to figure out where to take my writing next, I need to figure out who I am today. I had almost finished a book before the pandemic hit, it feels a waste to keep it there, unread, in a laptop that represents a version of myself that has been entirely lost. I wrote a list of all that I'm haunted by and the one line that stands out, that circulates is: who I was before they closed our doors.

These are all the things that I really want to write about. That feeling of grief, of loss where you have followed a career trajectory for so long and then someone, someone with a lot more power than you hold, saws off the top of the ladder. I know I'm not the only person to feel this way, I know journalism isn't the only industry to be facing a reckoning, I know the only way to find your way is to get lost. I want to write about that and I feel until I do, until I clear my way through, the forest of confusion this has created, nothing else will come to the forefront.

It's very difficult to reflect on grief when you're living through it, the reflections only come once it has passed.

I feel similarly about my past self, how I want to find her so I can write about her. But I can't even read the words that she once wrote… we're all just moving on from lockdown, from this defining moment in history that has left a mark on us all. Is it because we can't figure out what that mark is? The damage it has left is unseen, like the damage, the crack deep below my skin, visible only to an X-ray.

I keep stopping myself and thinking this piece of writing is pointless, it's a “I don't know, and I'll never know” and why should I waste your time with my words?

As I speak the words first appear as grey before solidifying to black. I can easily imagine the reverse, them just disappearing… this whole page turns into white again. I'll keep going, keep speaking because I'm hoping you'll be able to hear me. I'm wondering if there was a part of you that was lost, that existed in 2019 and before that…

That perhaps we could have a conversation and we could try to untangle together who we once were. Or maybe you've also chased a dream and that dream is coming to a close and you might want to share that with me?

While I wait for my arm to heal and other parts of me to return I'd love to use this space, to tell more of your stories, to have conversations about everything we don't have an answer for. I think I fell off that bike for a reason, it's forcing me to find a new way to write, to discover, I can slow down and use my ghostly skills to tell other people's stories… as within them I'm pretty certain I'll find my own…

I’d like to do more, while I heal…

Interviews, like the ones found here

Conversations, like this one I had with Amy about whether having kids disrupts friendships

and host more of other people’s writing, like you can find here

If you'd like to help me whether that's writing something or having me interview you about anything, traditional grief or a grief of change (discussed here) please get in touch! It doesn’t have to have a conclusion, or an answer… just be something you’d want to share.