#2 A Novel in a Year

Weeks 5-8 (an accident, being lost, and protecting your writing time)

Feb 23, 2024

Hello and this is a bonus post for you this week 😀

If you are new to The Best of Intentions, here is a quick introduction to this post as it is a little different to some of the other things I share in this newsletter.

Shortly before Christmas, I came across Louise Doughty’s ‘A Novel in a Year’ in my local library. 52 exercises to help develop a habit of writing, and to get the creative juices flowing.

Each month, you will receive a digest with my attempts at the ANIAY exercises. I will publish the completed exercises in their entirety or these will consist of a summary (this will vary based on what the tasks entail and also for brevity - something that I am not known for 😬).

I hope that you enjoy today’s post,

Sarah xx

And here is a link to January’s ANIAY:

#1 A Novel in a Year

Sarah Best

January 24, 2024

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Want to join me with some of these exercises, or have you already completed Doughty’s book? And how do you set time aside to write? Please let me know in the comments at the end of this post.

Week 5

This week, Doughty said to write about when you had an accident. She encourages you to write a straightforward account of it, without embellishment, as though you were telling someone over a cup of tea.

The broken ankle

I was sat on the sofa in the lounge watching TV with my right foot balanced on top of a pile of cushions. In little under an hour, my ankle had ballooned and turned a deep shade of purple.

Fast forward a few more hours and I was sat in a cubicle with my mum just off the entrance to A&E. While a doctor examined my foot, he asked me how the accident happened. This is what I told him.

I had been playing dobby (and for anyone unfamiliar with this, I am not referring to the elf in Harry Potter, but rather to a game of chase) with a friend from school and we had been running laps around the outside of my parent’s house. At one point, I jumped down a short flight of stone steps in the front garden, and twisted my body to the right to reach the path. My memory is hazy here. I don’t recall hitting the ground, or experiencing any pain, but I do remember a look of concern on my friend’s face when she caught up with me, which was easy to do given that I was lying on the ground with my ankle in a less than comfortable position.

An X-ray confirmed that I had chipped a bone in my right ankle and I was sent home with a plaster cast, but without crutches. Apparently, there weren’t many left in stock, and other people needed them more. You’re young and active, the doctor said, you’ll be fine to hop around, won’t you?

I was around the age of eight when the accident happened. So, I guess the doctor was right, I was young and up to that point had been pretty active, but it felt like he was trolling me by saying that I would be fine to get around without any support.

But there was some light on the horizon. My school was a 15-minute walk away, and both my parents worked, with my mum often out of the house before I had even had breakfast. A thought, a hopeful one, crossed my mind - surely, I would get some time off from school?

However, that light was extinguished when my mum said that she would drop me off each morning on her way to work. And the next day, I was so early to school that I was forced to sit on my own in the school reception as I had beaten most of the teachers there. I did this for a few days before one of the cleaning ladies took pity on me and began to unlock the door to my teacher’s classroom.

But then something else happened. I hadn’t realised that having a plaster cast could increase your popularity. Everyone, and I mean, everyone wanted to sign my cast – teachers, friends, the cleaner. And then a queue formed with the other children in my class who had never shown any interest in talking to me before; from the boys who would shove me in the lunch queue, to the girls who didn’t give me the time of day.

For a short time, my new found status of the ‘popular girl’ went to my head. And I lapped up the attention - do you need me to pick up your textbook from the other side of the room? How about the crayons? Do you want anything from the tuck shop? And I said yes to it all.

However, after a few weeks, much like the hopping around quickly lost its novelty, so did the cast itself. Once people had asked how the accident happened and signed my cast, what else was there to talk about?

And without the aid of crutches, I was pretty much stuck in the classroom during the day meaning that I missed music lessons (as these were held elsewhere in the school), and sports lessons. But worst of all, was spending my break and lunchtimes confined in the room, where I would watch the rest of the students through the windows on the playing fields. My feelings of longing and melancholy were not helped by having seen a Simpsons episode where Bart breaks his leg and was stuck in his bedroom - although at least he had some crutches to get around!

(I wish that there was a better quality clip of this).

After eight weeks, I was itching to have the cast taken off, but I wasn’t quite ready to dispose of it entirely. As it was removed, I asked the doctor if I could keep it. It acted as a reminder from when I was briefly popular. He then said that the plaster of paris would break down and could start to smell. So that was probably for the best.

Week 6

After completing week five’s task, Doughty recommends keeping a notebook to record similar events related to accidents and incidents - quirky, individual, or strange:

The essential point is that you do not, at this stage, give any particular thought to whether or not any of it might turn into an idea or be included in a novel.

While I generally keep a notebook in my bag, I have also started to keep voice-notes on my phone for when I am on the move.

Week 7

This week, Doughty asks you to write about a time when you got lost. She provides some suggestions, such as getting lost in a shop, or in the forests of Peru (quite different experiences, I’m sure), but she also proposes that you might interpret this task in a metaphorical sense.

I struggled with this task, torn between a few different avenues to take (with the week’s theme not being lost on me...), but like for all the exercises, Doughty advises not to overthink things. Therefore, I decided to focus on my recent-ish decision to leave teaching.

There is a sense that I am lacking in imagination when I say that the last time that I was feeling lost was related to my job. But I am not sure how else to describe it - if the shoe fits.

16 years was a long time to spend doing anything.

I remember reading somewhere that when you work in a place, or do a particular job for a long time, that you can become institutionalised. Certain tasks become like second nature and the broader familiarity of a location, and the people there provide their own comforts. But this can make it harder to leave or move on, as you don’t know anything different.

For me, the commute, the classes, and the routines. All of it became fused in my DNA.

And no sooner had I stopped doing the job and people were asking me - well, what’s next? But they might as well have been asking, who are you?

I did write some more for this, but considering the length of the previous exercise, I decided to keep it brief here.

gray barbwire in tilt shift lens — A border wall, but of a different sort - protecting your writing time. Photo by Lexis Chadwick on Unsplash

Week 8

A different sort of task this week – establishing a time to write and committing to it.

Doughty asks:

When is your core time? Where is the regular space in your life when nothing short of a nuclear disaster on your doorstep stops you from sitting down at your keyboard or with a pen and paper.

This was, by far the most challenging exercise of the four.

How can I priortise time to write? And how can I ensure that I stick to this?

Writing, and in particular, creative writing has always been something that I sacrificed when other things came up.

I know that when I fail to dedicate even a little time each week to creative writing (or any writing), certain ideas and connections begin to decay. Then it becomes harder to build the momentum for that project up once again. It all begins to feel like I am Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill, but each time starting further down the hill than when I started.

Therefore when I began ANIAY in January, I set an intention to do some creative writing each week, even if this was just an hour (ideally, more), and I schedule this in my calendar. During this time, I focus on the ANIYA exercises or other creative writing projects (i.e., short stories, poems, or research for a novel).

I am trying to pay more attention to what helps me write and how I can protect this time, but for now, I’ll finish this post with another quote from Doughty:

Look at your diary until your eyes water and work out exactly what (and where, and how) your core time is. Surround it with barbed wire.

How do you find time to write? And have you carved out your core writing time? I’d love to know how you do it (please help!)

The Best of Intentions with Sarah Best

#1 A Novel in a Year

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