Getting Out Of Your Comfort Zone

In writing, and in life

This week I have been building flatpack furniture. This is one of my worst fears. My brain just does not work in this way. I have the same experience when looking at flatpack furniture instructions as I do when I think about space and infinity — I feel sick. Apparently this is a recognised thing, though I can’t remember the name for it, perhaps you feel the same when you think about space and infinity. But when you are a single parent, there are certain things that you have to tackle: catching spiders; building plastic toys with loads of fiddling bits and pieces; being upside down on rollercoasters when you hate them; and building flatpack furniture.

I’m going through something in my personal life at the moment that I wish I had instructions for. I wish that there were little drawings and numbered actions of how to tackle each feeling and each day that arises. But alas, there is no such thing when it comes to life experiences, just flatpack furniture.

I had some help with this assembly, someone to supervise me and tell me what to do, but after a while I got out of my comfort zone and into the swing of things. I actually — dare I say — enjoyed it, I found it quite meditative.

“It wants us to put that screw in there…” I said. “It wants us to put that dowel in there now.”

I liked the idea of this demanding ‘it’ character, this omniscient narrator who we were in service to, for whom we must build this chest of drawers and wardrobe as if it were some kind of sacrifice that we would leave at its altar (rather than in my daughter’s bedroom).

Narrators are powerful things after all. Earlier in the week I was painting and, in case you do not know anything about my process of writing a book, you can catch up here where I was painting by way of avoiding a book deadline (or running down the time) last year:

Someone — hi Sarah — called it “procrastipainting” on Notes this week. That is the perfect term.

While I was painting I was listening to Helen Garner read her diaries. For most of the six or seven hours she was reading she was arguing with her husband because he was having an affair. Or at least it was obvious to us that he was, but it was not that obvious to Garner as these things tend not to be when your husband — rather than admitting any wrongdoing — prefers to accuse you of being possessive and paranoid and crazy. This, of course, makes him even more of a bad guy than he would have been by just admitting the affair in the first place — I never understand this bit.

It struck me whilst listening (and painting) how in every argument I was always on Garner’s side. She could have committed murder (she might even have considered it when she found out about the affair for certain) and I would have been right behind her. This is the importance of a compelling narrator, this is the reason that we take so long to get/find/hone that voice because in all the storms that your reader will endure it will be the only thing they will have to hold onto.

This is why you must have authority to tell your story too, why you must answer that question that your agent first, then your editor second, and then finally (hopefully) your reader, will be asking — why you? Why are you the person telling me this story?

Of course when it comes to diaries no-one has more authority than the person writing it, but it is worth bearing this in mind in all of our writing, this very important ‘why you’ question, it is where I start with anyone who I am mentoring.

Speaking of which, I have been so excited that many of you signed up for my Summer School. I’m really looking forward to working with you throughout June, July and August, so make sure you give that ‘why you’ question some thought in the meantime and have your answers ready for me.

But back to painting, and back to flatpack furniture, and back to getting out of our comfort zone because this is the theme of this particular piece. I’m asking you again this month if you would mind switching our creative writing workshop from Monday to Sunday. So this month we will be meeting at 7pm BST on Sunday, May 4th, and what we’re going to be focused on, inspired by my own adventures with IKEA flatpack furniture, is getting out of our own comfort zone.

Some inspiration comes from this post, one of my favourite guest author essays by Jenni Fagan, who wrote in this essay that ‘every form you write in will teach you something’ and we are going to be doing just that, trying different forms and treatments for the same story.

So, come with something — anything — in mind. It might even just be a scene from your life, your novel, your own diary even, and we are going to look at tackling it in all the different ways we can and see what it unlocks for us creatively.

I would love to end this with a photograph of the absolute masterpiece MALM chest of drawers I built this week when I got out of my own comfort zone — my creation! — but alas, I am still piecing my daughter’s room back together, and so you will have to just be inspired by a picture of the instructions themselves. You never know, they might even inspire one of the exercises…

Looking forward to seeing all you paid subscribers at our monthly meet up on SUNDAY (don’t forget!). And, as usual, I will email you the zoom details at midday on the day.

If of course you need to upgrade to join us, which I hope you will, you can do so here:

Until Sunday!