The Third Day of a Holiday

I doubt if this universal law is confined to schoolteachers, but it is common knowledge amongst those mad enough to be sent out as a verification process for the parable of the sower, that by the end of term, your ability to use words with more than one syllable is…in Ofsted speak…a word with four syllables.

One is then plunged into, say, a family holiday. Day one is travelling and putting up a tent. Enough said. Day two, you may have your eyes open, and words may form, but someone has found the automaton switch. You are your avatar. But some time on Day three, maybe by 5.30pm, glass of something in hand, your soul comes tapping at the door ‘Remember me? Can I come in?’ and you remember what it is to be signed up to the human race.

I was a teacher for zillions of years. 

Now six years into retirement, and yet this morning, I realised I had succumbed to ‘pressure’, as a writer! My heart rate was slightly raised, and I’d become organically linked to my laptop. And if not on a laptop, I could be found staring wildly at the pile of books just bought as part of the recommended reading for a Master's in Creative Writing course. On top of entering the end-game of promoting my debut novel, I have, since the last week of September, become a commuter to and from Exeter, and a post-graduate student sitting at the feet of two excellent, engaging lecturers.

The stretching involved has been hugely enjoyable…and if you’re ‘out there’ considering doing a Master's, thus far I can only report good things. Yes, the car broke down, yes, the carparking app didn’t work, yes, a train was cancelled, and yes, I made the first lecture by the skin of my last remaining teeth, nevertheless…I’m glad I’ve taken the plunge.

But I hadn’t noticed, an old familiar friend, pressure, had crept up on me, along with a degree of hidden anxiety: worrying about the November release date and the work that has to be tackled before launching a book, or stewing over the battle we all have with creativity…it’s not mechanical like a tap. And yet one is expected to write poems and prose at will.

I think this is the purpose of this post: a four-letter word…STOP. Or maybe ‘stop and think’.

Pressure is a conjuring trick. It makes you respond by either ‘ploughing on’ or ‘giving up’ or at least wanting to.

I was lucky. Or God had mercy. It was whilst talking to a friend that I realised that I needed to ‘reach the third day’. Not, sadly, by catching a flight to Cuba, or driving to an Airbnb in Cornwall, but simply by delaying the launch date to 2026. 

One simple decision, and my heart rate fell back to normal. Breathing became deeper. I have the same commitments but a more realistic timeline. 

I wonder if this is speaking to any fellow writers? Particularly those of us who are ‘retired’ and therefore have no right to complain, surely, of pressure!