How the Light Gets In - Liz Kessler

In the past couple of months, I've had kidney failure, liver failure, an unnamed tropical disease, another disease that is hard to diagnose because the symptoms are very much like a cold; I've cracked a rib from sneezing too much, my blood pressure has gone so high that I have spontaneously combusted, oh, and I've gone blind from glancing at the solar eclipse.

Have you guessed yet that I might not really (as in, actually, in real life) have had all (or any) of these diseases? Well, no, as far as I know, I have simply had a cold, a prickly heat rash, a bit of anxiety and a lovely walk along the coast path during the solar eclipse.

The main thing I suffer from is too much imagination.

A good writer buddy and I used to call this "Writer's Brain Tumour". The thinking is that when a writer gets a headache – which to normal people is described as a headache – we immediately fear the worst and think we have a brain tumour. Since my partner had a – benign, thank God – brain tumour a couple of years ago, I tend not to call it this any more. Nowadays I call it (cue dramatic 'dum dum derrrrrrrrer' music)....

The curse of the writer.

While you chew on that thought, let's take a quick commercial break. I was pretty much brought up on an album called You Don't Have to be Jewish, which I have had a soft spot for ever since. There is a sketch called The Diamond, and if I ever use the word 'curse', I can't help thinking of it. It has the best pronunciation of this word ever in the world. I've managed to track down a video of the sketch. Do yourself a favour and watch this before you go any further.

OK, now that's out of the way, let's get back to the issue in hand. And also, can I briefly apologise if I've talked about this before. I probably have. It doesn't go away.

You see, as writers it is our job to spend our days delving into our imaginations, exploring in the realms of 'What if this?' and 'What about that?' and 'How about?' and 'Could this possibly...?' So it's no wonder we do that with our own lives – and often our own bodies – too.

Our day jobs involve us thinking about the least likely scenarios, not the every day events. We deal in the dramatic and our fare is the furthest reaches of our imaginations. How many of us have been told by editors and agents to 'raise the stakes'?

I've spent fifteen years working as a writer. That's fifteen years training my mind to raise the stakes. Luckily, I love to do it in my books. The feeling I get from exploring a story, an idea, a character – and yes, a highly unlikely scenario – is possibly as good for me as the adrenaline rush of scoring a goal is for a footballer. The issue is, how do we switch it off?

When children ask me for my top writing tips, one that I nearly always tell them is to carry a notebook around with you because you never know when you'll get an idea. 

I tell them that ideas are like butterflies and your notebook is a big net in which you can catch them safely and take them home with you so you can work on them later when you have more time.

At the heart of this advice is the fact that our stories and our imaginations don't clock on and off between nine and five. And therein lies the problem. 

If we're not writing, the imagination doesn't instantly switch off. It's like one of those cartoon characters who keeps running, even though the top of the cliff is way behind them. It takes a moment for them to realise they are pumping their legs in mid air – before they fall to the ground. 

So how do we get our imaginations to notice that we are approaching the edge of a cliff and calmly come back from the precipice until it is time to go to work again tomorrow?

It simply doesn't work like that.

Maybe we just have to accept, like Mrs Plotnick (have you watched the sketch yet?) that along with our beautiful gift, there's a curse. We can't change it, we can't get rid of it. Perhaps we can try to wrap it up and put it in a nice box on our desks at the end of the day and hope it won't follow us out of the office when we close the door behind us and get on with the rest of our lives. But it will probably follow us down the stairs – because it isn't just part of our job, it is part of ourselves.

Perhaps the only way to get rid of the curse is to change our language and call it something different. We're good at words - we've already established that – so it could work. 

Yes, I can sometimes (OK, often) exaggerate my physical symptoms and worry about what they might mean. Yes I do feel my blood pressure go up and my anxiety levels rise when my imagination is getting more involved in my backache/headache/slight feeling of tiredness than it should be. But I don't spend my entire life doing this. In reality, it is a small portion of the time – and a small price to pay for the opportunity to spend my days staring into space making up stories about mermaids and fairies and time travel and pirate dogs (and teenagers coming out as gay - subliminal ad for Read Me Like A Book. In all good bookshops from next month.) 

In other words, the curse is in fact part of the gift, and the best way to deal with it is to stop fighting against it and accept it as the imperfection that makes the gift perfect.

Or as Leonard Cohen puts it so beautifully:

"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."

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Walking while working - Nicola Morgan

Big apologies - I have reposted this from my own blog, mainly because I only realised last night that I have to do my ABBA post but also because it's VERY relevant to writers...

A few weeks ago, I joined the band of people who work while walking. I type and do almost all my desk work while walking on a treadmill. It has been eye-opening, body changing and inspiring. And unexpected in some ways. Here’s what happened and what it is like.

Over the last year, I’ve been reading a lot about the health dangers of being too sedentary and not doing enough exercise. And I am (was) very sedentary. My desk work and my workaholic personality kept me rooted to my chair for hours and hours on end. It didn’t feel good but I couldn’t stop.

About a year ago, I bought a Fitbit One, to inspire myself to walk more. Although this helped at first, somewhat, there were two problems for me: 1) I was still a workaholic and still needed/wanted to get a lot of work done so I was still staying at my desk too long and 2) I have an arthritic and cartilage-wrecked knee which has been getting worse and which doesn’t like the manic walking pace that I do, partly in my effort to get the damn walking done as fast as possible and partly because it’s just a Type A personality thing. Walking on roads is painful and walking on hills very. Cycling, too.

So, I decided to deal with this sedentariness properly.

I knew that a friend of mine, Vee Frier, used a treadmill set-up, so I got her advice. I am not sure if I have the same setup but it’s the same principle.

(Warning, my solution is not cheap. But it’s tax deductible!)

I ordered this special desk to go on my desk to make it the height for standing at; and a treadmill especially designed for the purpose, because it’s slim, fits under a desk and goes more slowly than a gym one. And has no incline.

The desk arrived first and as soon as I started working at it, I hated it. (Fear not: this has a happy outcome.) It was extremely painful and my knee reacted disastrously. In the nearly three weeks before the treadmill arrived, I thought I’d made an expensive mistake. I was already wondering if I’d be able to send the treadmill and the desk back.

The treadmill arrived and I switched it on. Hooray! It didn’t work! Excellent! I could send it back.

Then I realised I’d misread the instructions and put the magnetic safety doobry on the wrong bit. As soon as I rectified this, the machine sprang into life. Unfortunately, I was kneeling on it at the time, fiddling with things, and – trust me – this is not a position you want to be in when a treadmill springs into life or anywhere.

The second thing I discovered was that it was NOISY. Hooray! A reason to send it back!

However, I am not faint-hearted so I duly lugged it up to my garden office, with the help of Mr M (I’m as strong as he is but it’s always good to give him a task). And left it there over the weekend while I dreaded Monday.

Monday came and I hobbled up the garden to my fate.

And walked for 3 hours at 2mph. With no pain. Gently lulled by the swooshing noise in the background. While typing. And concentrating unusually well on my work. With ideas pouring from my brain and onto the keyboard.

I also realised I loved the desk thing, too. It’s quite big and also sturdy. I can have my keyboard, laptop, mouse, notebooks, and COFFEE.

Thus began my personal revolution. Three weeks later, my knee is bearing up, I’ve walked between 12k and 20k steps each day (whereas on some previous days I’d be doing fewer than 1k) and I’ve lost 4lbs (which could also be the sugar I’ve given up, though I ate very little of it before). I’ve discovered that 2.5mph is the ideal speed for me while typing and it’s a speed I can walk at without thinking about walking. It’s much slower than my outdoor walking pace, and I think this is why it’s good for my knee – it’s motion without so much flipping force.

More to the point, I LOVE walking while working. I’ve

always found walking a great way of loosening my creative brain and freeing up ideas but how very much more convenient it is to do that while actually at the screen!

It feels very good in every way.

It’s very easy to put it on its side out of the way if I actually want to sit down.

Btw, can you see the odd thing under the upper desk? With a red button on it? That’s the console, where you adjust the speed and things. And there’s a red cord, which you are supposed to clip to your belt, with a red magnet at the other end, attached to the console. *cough* I erm, don’t… This is so that if you faint and fall off, the treadmill will stop.

I’ve only fallen off once and that was because I tried to turn round and pick something up. (Don’t do this, really. Especially while holding coffee.) Several friends sent me videos of people breakdancing on treadmills. That’s a trick for the future…

I have found another advantage: all this walking makes me feel nice and warm so, though I’m using some electricity for the treadmill (500W at the most) I don’t need a heater any more. In fact, I’m working with the door open a lot of the time.

It's the best of every world. I'm often reluctant to recommend things, as I know everyone's different, but if you're thinking about doing this - do!