Finding my own meandering writing path
Being open to a little redirection and adopting a gentle ‘what happens if I try this instead' approach.
My favourite spot to sit in the kitchen is on the sofa opposite our kitchen door. It opens onto the landing and the top of the stairs, the middle of our strange upside down house. It’s the perfect spot for watching all the comings and goings.
It also faces the piano, yet despite having played the piano from the age of seven to 18, weekly lessons, competitions, recitals and the like and always having a piano in the home, how often do I sit down to play, even a few simple scales.
Rarely, is the answer.
Around twice a year I might rifle through the piano music gathering dust on the shelves alongside our vinyl collection and choose a couple of pieces to leave propped open - currently Carol King’s Tapestry and Elgar’s Salut d’Amour - more in hope than expectation that they’ll draw me off the sofa and over to the piano stool.
I don’t know why this is. Why would I choose to slouch on the kitchen sofa and doom scroll over attempting the crashing chords and opening bars of ‘I feel the earth move’ or even a few simple scales.
I was nudged into action before Christmas though after an unexpected encounter with my old violin teacher, Lucy. More family friend than violin teacher, she was a constant, charismatic presence in our family for years and I hadn’t seen her for ages.
She taught both me and my sister Louise the violin, mum the ever present supportive parent and quasi older sister to Lucy.
I started learning the violin when I was about five because in a classic youngest child move I’d seen Louise being taught and fancied a piece of the action. Lucy would land on our front door on a Saturday morning, a chaos of violin cases, bags bursting with music ready to teach a steady stream of children before meeting up again after lunch at the music school in St. Albans for group lessons.
She introduced us to the Suzuki method which felt revolutionary with its emphasis on listening, observing others, practice - individual and group - and playing in public.
I saw her face registering sadness as she heard my mumbled response of ‘No’ to her ‘But you do still play the violin though? No? The viola? What about the piano. Tell me you sing at least Harriet?’
I love music. I play music all the time - I have a writing soundtrack that leans heavily on Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson. I’ll play Bach’s Concerto for two violins knowing that there’s a good chance it’ll make me cry. It’s in Suzuki’s Book 4 and other than copying Louise the main reason I wanted to learn the violin, but for reasons I’ll explain another day, didn’t happen.
I’ll listen to Bach’s Mass in B Minor because it reminds me of mum, even though I don’t know if she ever sang it in any of her choirs. I love Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and have a thing right now for Simon and Garfunkel’s The only living boy in New York. I share playlists with the children, and there are days where we silence Alexa and Spotify, preferring the drop of the needle onto vinyl on the turntable, even if it does mean eating Sunday roast while listening to a mournful Thom Yorke and Radiohead - my 18 year old’s choice.
Somewhere along the line though I became someone who only listened to music but since bumping into Lucy I’ve started playing the piano again.
My left hand tends to lag a beat behind my right hand, my brain struggling to read and process the bass clef as easily as the treble clef. My right hand slipping back into life on the keyboard with ease.
I guess the muscle memory is there, it’s just a little weak (to say the least) but I love it. I love the feeling of my fingers stretching across the keys, the sound I can create simply by pressing my finger down on a white or black key and my body moving with the music.
Pure joy and I can’t ignore how I feel it connects me to mum. She might not be here anymore but boy I feel her presence in so many ways and music is one.
That exchange with Lucy was the nudge I needed. I’d started to realise that so much (too much?) of my life was centred on words. I’d added writing to my reading habit. Writing used to be part of my job, then it became 100% of it. Then I started the therapeutic writing which then gave birth to the memoir writing project.
Even going for head clearing walks on the moor would be peppered with pauses to not only take photos of the sky but also tapping all the thoughts that big old sky had triggered into my Notes App.
I’d written myself to a standstill.
I then bought Jake Spicer’s ‘You will be able to draw by the end of this book’ when I popped into Salts Mill just after Christmas. I’ve never seen myself as being creative in that way, despite growing up surrounded with mum’s art, but I’d clocked the learn to draw/paint/sketch books on previous visits and this time thought, why not.
It’s still a pencil and paper but it forces me to pay attention in a way that I don’t normally, my eyes programmed to slide down the screen or paper.
And yep, mum. Again.
Was I done writing?
Short answer - I thought I was done but it turns out I’m not.
Longer answer - I’d set myself the challenge of finishing the first messy draft of my memoir by the end of 2023, I even wrote about it in Time to get my writing act together but I discovered that simply writing ‘Write about dad’s funeral’ or ‘Write chapter about starting chemo and losing my hair’ in my diary wasn’t enough to make it happen.
I was going through the writing motions but it was hard work and I hankered after past writing sessions where the dam burst across my notebook, pages soaked with words and feelings. I craved that feeling of catharsis and wondered if I’d written everything I needed to write.
I told myself that I could stop if I wanted to. I figured that working in Oliver Bonas over Christmas and New Year gave me a valid reason for pausing the project as well as something else to think about. Working outside the home was and still is a welcome distraction and an offer to stay on permanently accepted with almost indecent haste, ‘No really, I don’t need to think about it, it’s a yes from me.’
Silencing the writing chatter and not trying to get a book deal
I think what started out as simply me and my notebook at some point turned into a writing monster that I was fuelling by reading too many posts and articles about how to write, how not to write. How to grow your likes, engagement and followers. How to write a book proposal, how to land an agent, writers block - myth or reality? It’s amazing how all the articles purporting to help ‘find your voice’ led to me losing mine.
It’s why I’ve turned to
and their Writing Reset course and and her Tuesday evening ‘Writing for mental and physical health’ workshops to help me find my writing path again. The rest is up to me…Unfinished thinking and a gentle curiosity
If you’ve got this far, thank you. This has been one of those posts that started in one place hit a dead end, doubled back, took another turn and if I don’t hit send soon who knows where it’ll end up or if I’ll ever finish it.
I sometimes think I don’t have a problem writing, it’s more of a sharing what I write problem.
It might feel a little unfinished in its thinking but I hope that what comes across is unfinished in a gentle and curious way.
Thank you as always for reading,
Harriet
PS As ever, please forgive any typos and errors, I need to stop fiddling with this and hit send!
I also played Suzuki violin method from age 5. I gave up violin when I was 13 because I didn’t want to dedicate so many hours to it. But I love that it tuned my ear.
I love houses with pianos - almost as much as houses filled with books. I’ve not lived somewhere with a place for a piano, but I aspire to live in a house with a piano one day!
Brilliant as ever! Every now and again I lazily swish a duster over the piano but I’m now inspired to play it today. Thank you and please do keep writing.