The Tussle
“tussle [noun]—a vigorous struggle or scuffle, typically in order to obtain or achieve something”
I’ve worked as a writer and editor, across a range of industries and in different capacities, since leaving school. Before that, I filled exercise books with fictional worlds, cringe-worthy poetry and rudimentary journalism. Writing is in my DNA. Like so many others who do creative things, it’s how I express my experience of being alive, and explore the places my mind goes.
At the beginning of 2019, I decided to do something I’d toyed with for several years but never got started on in any serious way—trying to write a book-length work. It’s been an interesting year. I’ve learned from giants—first, award-winning memoirist and teacher extraordinaire Patti Miller at the Faber Writing Academy; then, New York Times best-selling novelist Karen Joy Fowler, and award-winning novelist and academic Nike Sulway, at Springfield Farm Creative Writing Workshop & Retreat. I’ve connected with inspiring and supportive groups of fellow writers. I’ve enjoyed unexpected successes (including a very unexpected award) and weathered periods of not-writing (from which I later learned that even when I’m not writing, I’m writing). Summing up the year, I would say that I’ve tussled with writing, in a way I hadn’t before.
So, how much of a book-length work have I written?
As of the end of September 2020, I’m about to complete the first draft of my memoir, In Two Minds. It tells the story of how, in 2017, I came to lose the mind I’d known all my life and acquire a completely different one, and of what I’ve learned from that extraordinary experience. Combining personal account with philosophy of self and mind, and neuroscience, it explores surprising diversities of the human mind. It’s a big ask, but, ultimately, my aim is that In Two Minds sheds light on one of the most profound questions of human experience—What makes me who I am? I’m on track to complete the second draft in early 2021.
I’m also 20,000 words into a magical realist novel that’s turning out to have a complex life of its own. My relationship to this book is very different from the memoir. Whereas I feel I’m definitely writing the memoir, my work on the novel seems more like that of a cat herder—I’m working up a sweat trying to bring my characters and locations and symbolism and cultural references and literary influences into some sort of order that works. It’s a lot. (Especially as I’m trying to do it with a mind that’s still a stranger to me.)
And why have I started this blog?
It’s a good question. There are many writing blogs out there, and, as yet, I have nothing to teach, and no writing or publishing secrets to share. I suppose it’s this … At the beginning of the year I joined the world-wide community of people who’ve taken on the challenge of tussling with writing as a major part of their life. This blog is the story of my tussle—with writing and, eventually, with publishing. I hope to gain some insight by writing about writing, and I hope it offers something of interest, perhaps of comfort—and, ideally, a few laughs—to its readers.
Welcome to The Tussle.