“I learned how destructive it is to tear yourself apart with guilt for not writing, or stare at a blank page wishing you could be anywhere else.”
Forgive yourself if you don’t have the headspace, says the thriller writer, and trust that your moment will come.
In 2010, I decided it was time to take my writing dreams seriously. To stop talking about it and start doing it. I resigned from my job and moved to Edinburgh to study a Masters in Creative Writing. It was a risk: a pay cut, no guarantee of publication, no job at the end of the course.
In doing so, I gave myself whole year of time to write, and got over my greatest fear: that I was fiction’s version of William Topaz McGonagall, a terrible writer who was blissfully unaware of the fact. I graduated with an amazing network of fellow writer friends, an insight into the industry, and confidence in my own writing.
So did I spend that university year writing my debut novel? Nope. I mainly spent it in the pub with fellow writers.
Did I continue writing after I graduated? Not really; for years I started many projects but didn’t finish any of them. It took me another seven years before I finally began work on a project I would see through to the end.
What was I doing in those seven years? Did I waste my time? Did I give up writing?
I learned to forgive myself. I accepted that sometimes sitting down to write is hard. Finishing a project is even harder. I learned how destructive it is to tear yourself apart with guilt for not writing, or stare at a blank page wishing you could be anywhere else. I found that the destruction of guilt stops you writing and hampers your creativity.
Even when writing feels like a necessity, for many people your base layers of Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ need to be in place before you have the headspace to write: it’s hard to be creative if your life is falling apart around you, or if you’re not comfortable, happy or safe.
Forgive yourself if you don’t have the headspace, if you still have some stuff to sort out. Forgive yourself if you don’t feel like writing today. Maybe you’ll feel like it tomorrow, or the day after. Remember that taking a break isn’t giving up. Trust that your drive to create and tell stories will wait for you, until the right moment when you’re ready.
Eventually, I found a career I enjoyed, a relationship which made me happy, a great group of friends, and a flat without mice, mould and drafts. And with that came SECRETS OF A SERIAL KILLER, published July 17th from HarperCollins UK’s One More Chapter. The novel was an expansion of my original 25,000-word Masters thesis that I started back in 2011, and which I fleshed out into a full-length novel over about a year while working full-time.
I couldn’t have done that if I hadn’t learned to forgive myself and accept that sometimes writing is hard, and that’s OK.
Rosie Sawicz is a novelist living in Edinburgh, Scotland with her American husband Kevin and Cypriot rescue-hound Bella. Her debut novel, Secrets of a Serial Killer, is a fast-paced serial killer thriller set in Lancaster, England and published by HarperCollins UK’s One More Chapter imprint. She is currently working on her second novel, available in 2021. Find Rosie at www.rosiejanewalker.com, www.facebook.com/rosiewalkerauthor
and twitter.com/ciderwithrosie
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Author Rosie Sawicz on the importance of self-forgiveness