Turning Points

EDITED TO ADD - it only just dawned on me the catalyst for this thought process was this incredible, moving, insightful post from Sophie at Little Fish, an Oxford band whose integrity and ethos have been inspirational for years. Thank you to her for making me think. Do go and read what she has to say - it's important, and she's so much more eloquent than me.

I started 2012 in a strange and rather unhappy place, and I’ve been there for most of the year since. I was in such a deep rut with my writing that I swore off doing any promotion of any kind for the year and declared 2012 a year when I’d play around creatively and see what happened . That still didn’t work.  

Yes, I was producing some new material for the first time in several months, but the same gnawing doubts and insecurities were there, and they were being exacerbated by increasingly poor general mental health that meant I was becoming more insular, avoiding social situations, getting tetchy and distant.

It feels as though I finally turned a corner a little over a week ago. It came from a convergence of several very dark places that forced me to look right in the face at what was really eating at me, and what I really wanted. Undoubtedly the bulk of what I needed to come to terms with was that I was displacing an awful lot of feelings around my mum’s health struggles. Being able to get that straight with someone as wise and supportive as my wife instantly cleared my head, letting me feel the emotions that needed feeling in the directions they needed pointing at and clearing out a whole lot of other areas that weren’t really their place.

That still left a lot of creative issues to come to terms with, though, and doing so has been hard, because it has involved reopening a lot of very old wounds and resentments. It’s also been hard because some of the things that have been eating away at my enjoyment of all things creative are things I don’t like about myself – most of which come under the heading of stretching myself too thin. Specifically, saying yes to too many things that, whilst important, and whilst for people I love and respect, aren’t things that have anything to do with what I’m best at or what I really want to achieve. I love promoting people, and putting on shows to promote amazing writing, for example, but for a long time too many shows have been less focussed than they should have been because I’ve not selected what was best for the show – the end result of which is that no one gets the full benefit they should have done. Like wise I receive requests to read work on a very regular basis and it’s something I try desperately to do but for well over a year it’s come almost completely at the expense of any time to do my own writing. The problem I have is that even thinking these things makes me feel like a revolting human being – I have struggled for much of my life to understand how people who do their own thing when there are other people they could be doing things for are able to look in the mirror. The very idea of focusing on my own work leaves me with a whiff of self-disgust.

This isn’t intended as a piece of self-absorptive indulgence, but I hope the process by which I’ve turned the corner, the places I’ve had to go and things I’ve had to think through, will strike chords with others who’ve reached a similar sticking point in their creativity. So without going into too much detail, the deep dissatisfaction I’ve been shielding myself from goes back to my breakdown in 2000, which put paid to the academic career I’d wanted pretty much all my life and, if I’m honest, still do. All my writing-related feelings of anxiety and deep unworthiness go back to that.

But they also go beyond, back to schooldays as, as my wonderful friend Michele Brenton puts it, the fat kid with the sweeties. That was me, trying to figure any strategy not to get seven strips peeled off me. And then at university I learned that constantly doing more and more was at least a way of maintaining some kind of social contact with people I knew would never speak to me otherwise. Which made me all kinds of conflicted, because the desire to do what I could was real, and yet any help I gave I ended up resenting, because of the feeling that friendship, acceptance shouldn’t depend on usefulness.

Spooling forward, this is exactly the kind of conflict at the heart of my writing life – a desperate desire to help in any way I can, paired with fat kid with sweets syndrome, the knowledge that the moment I start saying no to requests any kind of meaningful involvement in the writerly community will end. Which means I end up resenting many things I do do.

What I’ve failed to see is what I have a feeling is a shortcome many of us share, and one I’ve written about before but singularly failed to take proper notice of. None of this is a zero sum game. I can’t do my best for what I believe in most – which is to enthuse as many people as possible with a passion for the most amazing work that’s out there, and to fire people up with a passion to let their voices be heard – without reining back and focusing. I can’t do everything. Neither can I do the things I do focus on to the best of my ability if I’m not balanced and centered, and working with the attention it deserves on my own stuff. And if that means doors that have been open to me are closed, I have to accept that, and let my work stand on its own, and make it the very best I can, and do that alongside giving my all to those things I have the knowledge and energy to give my all to, and just hope people understand.

So here’s what that means

First, I am only going to work on writing I believe in. I’ve already taken The Company of Fellows off Amazon. I’m proud of it but it’s a long way from my best work, and it’s not something I can see in my creative future. It’s been hanging around me like a bit of a millstone and I’m relieved it’s not there any more, however much harder that makes it to get taken notice of.

Second, I’m going to be a lot more focused about the shows I organise. I spread myself way too thin last year. I want to take the New Libertines format and make it something really successful, putting on shows across the country 5 or 6 times a year, and focusing on those shows publicity-wise, building to a stage where we end up on festival programmes. I would dearly love to do more shows that other people put on, and dearly dearly love to build up to some slots as a poet on the bill, but that will rely on taking the leap of faith to trust my performances to stand for themselves and the work to bring them up to scratch

Third, I am sure I made the right decision to stop publishing other people’s work. It took too much out of me emotionally, almost sent me to a breakdown on more than one occasion. My finances have also changed since I started – I just can’t put the resource into promotion I need to, and there is so much guilt and conflict I just can’t do it. What I will continue to do, and do more of, is promote people through the eight cuts website and in any way I can online.

Fourth, I’m going to throw myself into my own writing, both the writing and the performing of it. And I’m going to promote it, gently and courteously, but promote it nonetheless because I’m determined only to put out there things I’m really proud of, starting with the new poetry collection, Last Man Out of Eden, of which I’m incredibly proud.

Fifth, I will continue to campaign for greater recognition of self-published writers at festivals and in the media, and will work with groups like the Alliance of Independent Authors to further those campaigns – and I will use any platform I have or can develop to make sure that when self-publishing is talked about, it’s not just sales or the so-called successes but the content of books, and the wonderful experimental delights that self-publishing is made for. I’ll devote more energy than ever to the eight cuts mission statement of “overgrounding the underground”. I’ll promote the profile of poetry, and performance poetry within that, and try to bring amazing things to new readers.

Sixth and finally, I want to work on the blog on my main website to make it a more helpful, informative place, focusing on each of the five points above.

So there we have it – self-reflective and self-indulgent, but a series of important realisations about the balance of a life that combines writing, advising, and cultural campaigning that I hope will not only explain but encourage.

And finally finally and most of all, a huge thanks to all my wonderful friends and their patience through my grumpy recent past :)