They feel left out, but this was not my intention. My
purpose in keeping shtum was to make sure I finished. For me, the only way to
achieve something difficult, long-term, and which eats up creative energy, is
to tell no one. This isn’t out of fear of failure, it isn’t even about people
messing inside my head and muddying my ideas. It’s about channelling energy.
If I talk about an idea, then I dissipate that
energy, in discussing or explaining or simply receiving support. It’s great to
have cheerleaders, but if I talk about something enough then I almost feel that
I have done the work, the actual
writing becomes expected, almost a chore.
If on the other hand I tell no-one, I’m forced to
respond to friends asking me what I’ve been up to, with ‘Oh, nothing much.’
Which makes me seem like a wet weekend. But that’s the point. The pressure
builds up precisely because I can’t
tell anyone, like an old pressure cooker rattling away, the steam is desperate
to escape: and all that drive, energy, ideas and enthusiasm gets fed straight
back into the work until you can see it bursting from the page.
I thought I was alone in this peculiarity. Now I find
there has been a century’s worth of research on the subject. In 1926 American
social psychologist Kurt Lewin, called this ‘substitution’. You tell people
about your goal, they affirm your intentions and then the mind feels it to be real. You’ve already had
the gratification, ‘Wow, sounds great…’ so now you feel less driven to do the
hard work. Your mind mistakes the talking for doing.
In 2010 motivational speaker Derek Sivers gave a talk
on keeping your goals to yourself. His advice? If you need to talk, state it in
a way that gives you no satisfaction, such as “I really want to run this
marathon, so I need to train five times a week and kick my ass if I don’t,
okay?”
Likewise, the exception to my rule was my Faber Academy writing group. A meeting of like-minded would-be writers all struggling with
the same problems. Competitive, critical but constructive, it was at least a
space to let off steam. The danger, of course, is to become a writing course junkie, where
praise within the group is enough, and finishing your book becomes secondary.
Keep working, keep silent and keep the pressure
building. Before you know it you are gunning along toward the finish. And then,
finally, you get the satisfaction of saying ‘Guess what? I’ve written a book…’
