I’m not sure if this counts as a mid-life crisis, but in the last year or so I think I’ve lost my mojo.
In 2008 I felt on top of my game, on a steep learning curve, but one that I was forging up at quite a rate I might add. In 2009 there was a significant event which kinda scuppered that: fatherhood. Now, yeah, it was self-inflicted, but it had a significant impact on my ability to keep a thought let alone throw my entire concentration onto the page. In the the past 3 years this situation hasn’t changed, in fact it might have gotten worse. My concentration has been beaten up by a three year old looking for attention and a baby who is damn cute, but needs constant care (we’ve been to A&E twice already this year with no.2 son).
So my writing has certainly been a casualty of fatherhood. I’m not saying that it contributed to what happened with the split with Pan Macmillan – I think the cracks were showing before my first son was born – but the time I have to write and the energy I have to concentrate on it has been greatly reduced. I’ve suffered RSI (partially due to using the keyboard, but significantly contributed to by constantly picking up said children); I’ve had more child-introduced illnesses in the last two years than I had in the ten preceding them (due in no small part to the breeding ground that is the nursery – your pandemic’s incomparable ally!), not to mention untold sleepless nights due to restless kids wanting comforters or with fevers etc.
And then there’s the lack of time with Sarah, and my laughable social life (which is on life-support – I’ve been out five times so far this year, and 2 of those occasions were a wedding and a stag-do). I haven’t been to a writers’ convention in a couple of years and it’s doubtful I’ll get to one in the next year or so either.
And, of course, it’s hit us financially.
None of this is a surprise. Not really. Though perhaps I didn’t think it would hit the writing so hard. What I’m going through is what any new family goes through, and there will be sacrifices. I’m lucky that I haven’t had to sacrifice my writing completely. Sarah has been very understanding. But what I put down on the page takes longer to construct and I make more mistakes. With all the things I’m involved in at the moment, it might seem that my productivity is as high as usual, maybe higher, but all the hours of the day are being spent getting it there.
The edits of The Secret War have taken longer than expected, due to me taking on more responsibilities. Little projects have been marginalized - like "Our Writing World" for example. I wanted to do more with that, make it a bigger thing than it was, involving more writers and presenting it on a separate blog. But all the work involved made it prohibitive, even though it would have been really interesting.
It's these little losses that make my shoulders slump and wonder what I could have achieved if I wasn't going through fatherhood.
So ... do I regret it?
Actually, no, I don’t.
In fact it’s something I can live with quite easily. Because firstly I’m a father, secondly I’m a husband, and at some point down the line I can call myself a writer. It’s still very much what I do, and I get off on it – writing that is. I can still make some money from it, maybe not enough to say “sayonara” to the day-job, but enough to justify the time being spent on publicity and the non-writing stuff. And that’s okay. As long as I don’t burn myself out – which is the risk, especially when you can’t rely on your mojo to get you by.
But my family is everything. Every time I shout at my son for interrupting me while I write, I almost immediately go back and apologise to him for being angry. Because they are what is most important to me.
Yeah, I might have lost my mojo, but what I’ve gained is a family and that’s a sacrifice worth making – even for a writer.
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