The Books I am Afraid to Write

Like a lot of recovering anxiously-perfectionist first-born millennial daughters, I am spending a lot of my late thirties reflecting on the revolutionary idea that I don’t always have to do what other people want or pressure me to do, and that ‘no’ is a complete sentence. Never mind just reflecting, I’ve been implementing it, enjoying and then swiftly almost-apologising for each instance of the taking back of personal boundaries. Old habits die hard.

Art has a way of holding a mirror up, uncomfortably close at times, and when I find myself ‘blocked’, it’s usually because I am stalling on facing some uncomfortable truths or deferring a moment of necessary growth until after I’ve ticked off enough ‘to do’ list, hoping that nobody will scrutinise too closely whether rearranging the inside of the cutlery drawer was really a high priority task. (It is no coincidence, I fear, that my Substack writing stalled a while due to this). This is never so abundantly clear to me as when I reflect on the content and style of the art I’m making and the art I’m sharing vs the art I’m hiding. Sometimes I am even afraid to write an idea down on a blank piece of paper in an empty room, even though I know only the dog will see that it occurred at all. What’s that about?

I love to make things that nurture others and bring joy, genuinely I do, but sometimes a small murmur inside of me is just there, waiting for me to be ok with the more risky-feeling ideas, the less ‘palatable’ or the more ‘niche’ projects. So here, in the spirit of just putting it out there, are some of the books I’m afraid (but might need) to write.

1. Picture books that are really conceptual, like visual poems, maybe some that feature profoundly sad emotions and don’t remotely try to be ‘cutesy’. The kind that some people really ‘get’ and others just plainly do not like at all.

2. Picture books with absolutely weird lines and mixed-media textures that might make some people think I don’t actually know how to draw at all.

3. Definitely a death book, but perhaps not like you might think.

4. A graphic novel for adults about the loss and re-finding of the creative spark, featuring all the grieving that takes place along the way.

5. A memoir about the experience of being a child from urban deprivation and a life-long journey to feel reconnected to both natural landscape and physical body, somehow finding the guts to leave in the truly ugly or embarrassing parts. (Gosh, even writing that sentence makes my stomach flutter).

6. A book idea I have that starts at both ends and finishes in the middle. It’s intimidating because I don’t know if I could actually pull it off and it might take a lot of time to get nowhere.

Those are just a few off the top of my head and I’m sure they may not feel all that risky to others, but each of us has our own personal comfort level and I’ve become aware of a growing sense of wanting to stop avoiding writing/drawing the weird ideas that I’m unsure anyone will understand. I’m growing weary of blending in too much in general, but it DOES feel like a real risk to spend limited time and energy on this stuff. And of course, I know that being afraid to do certain things in the creative realm can be an indicator of things you’d rather not deal with in a deeper sense. Honestly, I don’t know why artists do it at all, but can only speak to my own deep and unrelenting desire to not leave the earth having not been brave enough to peel back the layers and really look at what it means to be little old me in this entire unknowable cosmos.

So all of that said, fear be gone! I know the time is coming to spend 30 mins here and there with some of this, to faithfully chip away until it looks like something to be both proud of and intimidated by. Perhaps this post is here just as a way of saying “That was the turning point, the day I released the fear by stating it aloud to a thousand friends and strangers on the internet”.

I almost wrote that there’s nothing like dragging fear out into the light and watching it dissolve in the sun but, really, I increasingly think it’s less aggressive and more akin to taking a wee dusty malnourished puppy out of the attic of a neglectful owner and down to the sparkling seashore for the first time in forever.

In fear and rebellious hope,

Gill xx