Don't Break The Spell

What can I tell you? I was blessed by a dead Irish poet.

NEWS! Signed copies of my new book, Letters From Wonderland, are now available via the wonderful Big Green Bookshop. If you’d like one, you can snap one up here.

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Many years ago, full of grief, feeling like life was a game I hadn’t been picked for, I walked into my local branch of Waterstones in an automaton daze.

I can’t remember the exact day or what had just happened, only the heaviness in my chest, the feeling of profound rejection. I was lost and I was hurt and I was utterly without hope. I scanned the shelves numbly and picked up one with a strange title: Anam Cara, by John O’Donohue.

I opened it to the first page and there was my name printed.

It said:

For Josie.

Here is what it said underneath.

Beannacht / Blessing

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets into you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue,
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
 
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

by John O'Donohue, from Anam Cara: A Book Of Celtic Wisdom (Transworld Publishing, 1999)

Of course, I wept. I wept right there in the shop. I barely had enough money to survive back then and didn’t buy books, but I bought that one, handing my money to the bewildered lad at the till (are you ok? nod nod, nod and smile) and I took it home, holding it to my aching chest.

I didn’t know it then, but a spell had been cast. The words lifted right off the page and wrapped themselves around me. I was given ever-present companions: a cloak; a flapping, whispering flock of colours; shape-shifting clay; a wise moon; an infinite ocean; a safe boat to ride it. I really do believe I was.

It is two decades later now and here I am nearly twenty thousand words into writing a novel. (It occurs to me, writing this, that the same branch of Waterstones now stocks my own first book and in less than two months will welcome another — isn’t that an amazing thought?). Twenty thousand words sounds impressive until I admit that I’ve been working on this same story for years and years and that I wrote that same first 10-15K words at least three times, abandoning the story for a slightly different iteration each time.

What happened? I’ll tell you. I broke the spell.

My entire creative journey can be summed up in three sentences:

1. I am surrounded by enchantment

2. When I am patient and listen to it, extraordinary things are borne from me

3. When I break or ignore the spell, they die.

I wanted to type just now that I find writing very, very hard, but that is just a story I like to tell myself. It’s a comforting story. It’s all so much effort! I like to wail. It wears me out even thinking about it! And so I can be forgiven, right? Forgiven for anything?

I forget, often, that it can be easy. I forget that much of the strain is of my own making. I forget about the spell, that it’s waiting, that I can just open, receive, and write stuff down.

Of course, not all of it is very good, but that's not important. Good comes later. And, yes, I have to be very, very patient, too. It might be easy, but it isn't always comfortable. I have to respond when I don't feel like responding and write things down that make me hot with unease. I have to study hard and learn how words and stories (and myself) are put together, and I have to do a lot of breaking things apart and reassembling them once I know better.

It can be painful, but it isn’t complicated. At its core, it is all laughingly simple: write down the words that come. Keep going.

I hate that it's true, but it is.

Oh I don’t know. Maybe serious, grown-up writers don’t believe in the spell. Maybe they don’t believe they have a magic, invisible cloak that channels all the beauty and delight and pain and the great truths of the world into a shifting vortex all around them. Maybe they don't believe they've been blessed by an Irish ex-priest and poet with a funny little beard who died in his sleep at the heartbreaking age of 52, the same year my life changed irrevocably, and whose mother just happened to share my name. All I can say is that’s a shame for them, because as a system — and boy are there endless people willing to sell you a different one if you’d like — it works. Elizabeth Gilbert knew it, and wrote about it beautifully in Big Magic. I've tried on a hundred different coats of creativity and this is really the only one that fits. I do not believe I am alone or special in being enchanted. I think we all are.

The spell doesn’t need me to be well, thank goodness. It doesn’t give a fig about speed or how it all looks from the outside. It responds to commitment and persistence but isn’t impressed by me being a martyr or showing off. It is ever-present, but it isn’t unbreakable. It can move closer and it can move further away. That is what I have learned whilst failing to write this novel again and again and again. I think it’s what all writers learn, in time.

What breaks the spell might be different for everyone, but what breaks it for me — what shoos it away — are the following. I list them here for your interest, in no particular order.

• Constantly telling myself a sad story about how terrible and unfair my life is; complaining; whining; resenting; making excuses (there’s always one available).

• Having lots of good ideas, but not writing them down.

• Compulsively filling silence, or times of downtime or restlessness, by staring at a screen; numbing out.

• Wallowing in feelings of envy, comparison, scarcity, doom-mongering, insecurity and shame, most often triggered by doing the above.

• All or nothing thinking.

• Ruminating or obsessing over a problem until I’m paralysed with anxiety.

• Pushing through, out of fear or stubbornness, until I crash. Hard.

• Resting too long — oh the quicksand of that sluggish stupor.

• Not having a writing routine or clear goal for the day; assuming it will all just happen somehow.

• Trying to work on too many things at once.

• Obsessive research or searching for The Answer or The Better New Thing.

• Insisting on perfection; DEMANDING that I be the best.

• Focusing on the big, greedy stuff. A beautiful house! Nice stuff! A six-figure deal! Being beloved and adored by the whole world!

• Giving myself too many decisions to make in a day.

• Shiny New Project Syndrome — oh this is taking too much effort, let's work on something easier.

Yes, it’s a lot. Look, I didn’t say the spell was robust. If it was, the world would be a very different place.

Luckily, the list of what doesn’t break the spell — what keeps the spell close and flowing — is generous, simple and fun.

• Sleeping.

• Lying or sitting still and letting thoughts come and go.

• Writing everything down.

• Being outside.

• Focused reading or audiobooks.

• Moving my body.

• Cleaning and caring for my environment.

• Listening to and being present with people; letting them have their own story (not making it all about me).

• Looking out the window or being taken for a walk/drive.

• Any kind of art making.

• Making a short, focused plan or routine and then sticking to it, no matter what — no decisions to make.

• Doing just a little bit, but every day, if you can.

• Working on two things, back and forth, but no more than two.

• Getting righteously angry, passionate or excited about things.

• Focusing on the small, ordinary, delightful stuff¹

• Calmly writing down the facts.

• Repeating to myself, like a mantra, the words I can just relax.

What can I say? It’s a lesson I’ve learned and failed to remember a thousand times: if I stick with making the day about the second list, avoiding the first, things flow. If I give the spell a chance to do its work, ideas come — drip drip drip. I am enchanted again. Things grow.

Why wouldn’t I choose this life, again and again, every day new? When the spell is right there, waiting?

I write this to remind myself, or course.

This week, my body frozen behind that grey window, my currach² frayed to sinking, I was so unwell, I needed help to make the few steps to the toilet, but, oh, I didn’t break the spell! I let the colours find me. I chose the second list, not the first, and the clay did indeed dance beneath my feet, laughing, to balance me, and the real-life moon shone on my face, and that ever-present cloak of magic held me in its warmest, strongest embrace.

My words grew. I grew.

Here’s to next week.

Don’t break the spell.

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You’re reading a bimblings — my heartfelt offering to a generous universe. If you subscribe, you’ll receive one or two posts like this a month. They’re always free and written with love. Upgrading to a paid subscription is entirely voluntary but a vital source of support to help keep me writing and to protect my livelihood. Paid subscribers receive an extra post a month in which I share a little more of my life — this year I’m exploring some new ways to think. If subscribing isn’t for you, perhaps you’d like to buy me a coffee instead? It all helps me and my family enormously. Thank you so much for being here.

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I have new book coming out on June 5th and it’s a treasure! Read all about it here or press the link below to preorder.

Introducing Letters From Wonderland

“Follow the trail laid out for you in this sumptuously illustrated book of letters that will lead you on a journey of discovery into the magical world all around you.

If where you live feels grey and boring, if you've ever felt different or alone, doubted yourself or wondered if you really matter, if you've found yourself feeling sad that magic isn't 'real' or longed to feel like someone special in a real story, this book is for you.”

1. I’m painting one thing every day! Come see!

2. A little boat. What a delicious word it is.