by jonathan champ

Daily pages make such a difference to the way I approach my writing. A liminal space between journalling, brainstorming, outlining and freewriting – at best. At worst, a daily reflection on the things that I am not doing. I went back over some of my pages for the past couple of years, and the central theme is ‘not writing’.

The procrastinator in me sees an opportunity in this. Rather than, oh, I don’t know, doing the work, maybe I can turn this into another meta-avoidance. If I’m deconstructing all the effort that goes into doing writing-adjacent activity, don’t I get to claim a little of that for me?

The last few weeks have involved setting writing goals for the year – committing to an outline for my new horror project, notes on a novel adaptation, deadlines for comps and submissions. I’ve added and deleted from that list – more than once – the idea of a ‘not writing’ podcast. All of the shared pain and pleasure of the tasks that sit around writing. The story is the thing, but the stories we tell ourselves while making the thing are just as much a part of the process. And isn’t that worthy of some examination?