FIGHTING FOG by Liz Manning

Sometimes writing is a real struggle. Ideas refuse to come. Thoughts refuse to coalesce. Sentences or paragraphs refuse to lead to the next.

It’s not so much writer’s block or the wall that marathon runners face. It’s much harder to grasp. It’s amorphous like fog – and how do you fight fog?

It’s as if the words or ideas are hiding, slipping out of my grasp before I can even pin them down with my keyboard. I take a step towards an echo of a thought, assuming I can at least decide on a direction for my writing, yet nothing clearer emerges – my vision is just clouded by more fog and the echo bounces round, fading away.

And if fog mists my vision like a great cataract, thick sludge stickily weighs down my thought processes like mud up to my ankles. Concentration elusive. Memory stuck. Confidence draining away.

I know that illness and fatigue are much to blame for my current stagnation. But, even if I acknowledge neither are my fault, the frustration is hard to shrug off.

So what does help?

Perhaps fog can be a useful metaphor. I picture times when I have driven in fog.

Firstly, slow down.

Adapt your driving to the conditions in which you find yourself. I remember crawling along a motorway in first gear, the visibility so poor. It was excruciating but necessary. And we reached our destination safely.

So take the writing process more slowly than usual. Don’t set yourself your usual targets – a blog written in one go, an exorbitant word count for the day. Set yourself smaller tasks. Break it down more. Abandon your self imposed deadline. For me this means leaving a blog post unfinished and returning to it later.

Secondly, drive appropriately for the distance you can see and don’t assume what’s ahead.

In my English A level, my teacher highlighted Cardinal Newman’s line within ‘Lead, Kindly Light’ as words of immense faith:

‘I do not ask to see

The distant scene; one step enough for me.’

I’m not so sure. That same verse talks of the dark night, ‘encircling gloom', and being ‘far from home’. Sometimes one step at a time is all we can cope with. Sometimes the next day, hour, task, is what we need the strength to get through. Nothing more.

But it’s good advice for literal and spiritual journeys, for foggy driving and foggy writers’ brains. Just concentrate on the bit immediately in front of you – read the definitions of the prompt word, write the one anecdote – and don’t worry about knowing the ending yet.

Finally, remember that sometimes conditions are just not suitable for driving. Last spring, we postponed our Cornish holiday because of snowstorms. As we drove down a day later, once the thaw had begun, passing abandoned vehicles and the remains of accidents, we felt relieved by our decision.

So it’s ok to pull over, to stop at some services and wait for conditions to clear, or to postpone for a while.

The world will not end if I take a break and do something else. Taking time for a coffee – the caffeine may help clear that foggy brain a bit anyway. Catching up on sleep. Looking after my health. Sometimes it’s ok to stop, take the pressure off, leave the writing for another day.

At some point the fog will lift.   

And who knows, maybe there’ll later prove to be some inspiration in it.

Liz Manning fits writing around being an Occupational Therapist, BB captain, wife, and mum to two adult sons. Or perhaps it's the other way round. She blogs regularly at https://thestufflifeismadeofblog.wordpress.com/