How Long Do You Keep Going?

Chums, all my chairs are in disarray.

I’ve spent the last few blog posts talking about rooms, about counting chairs at launches, about who fills them and what that means. At the moment, I couldn’t tell you where half of mine are. They’ve been dragged into the garden, repurposed for makeshift dens, covered in snack crumbs, or abandoned halfway through some elaborate game that made perfect sense at the time.

I’ve just had three weeks off. School holidays. Two children, ten and twelve, who operate on a schedule that bears absolutely no resemblance to a writing routine. It’s been full and noisy and, in flashes, very funny. Also relentless.

I did not write anything. Well, a gazillion texts, many of which were in various activities group chats. Anyway, like every holiday, I tell myself it’s fine. Good, even. Healthy. Step away from the stories, live a bit, gather material. All the things we say when we’re trying not to feel slightly unmoored. I am very good at giving that advice. Less good at following it without a running commentary in my own head.

By week two, I was starting to itch a bit. Not dramatically. Just that low-level sense that something had slipped out of place. By week three, I had that familiar, slightly uncomfortable thought: what if I don’t quite get back into it?

This is the bit of writing life that sits in the middle and doesn’t get talked about as much. Not the highs, not the obvious lows, but the long stretch of keeping something going while everything else in your life carries on being busy and demanding and entirely indifferent to whether you’ve hit your word count. I have a running analogy I use a lot with friends, but I’ll stick to my chairs for this post. Other than to say, like running, you’ve got to keep going regularly.

Very few writers work in ideal conditions. We are writing around things. Around work, around family, around the admin of being a person, stealing time in odd corners of the day and hoping it adds up to something that looks vaguely like a body of work. When my boys are at their various sports, I usually read, run or write.

After a break, though, it’s not picking up the writing thread that’s the struggle. It’s the self-doubt, especially when you’re a writer who needs other work to pay the bills. It can feel really selfish to squeeze in the writing dream between the children and the job. I can’t help but ask myself: how long do you keep going like this?

It’s not a question I particularly enjoy asking myself, but there it is, tucked in behind everything else. Because writing, for all its joys, does ask quite a lot of you. Time I don’t really have. Attention when my brain is already full. A level of care about something that may or may not translate into anything tangible.

I’ve achieved some things, brilliant things I always dreamt of. I’m published. I’ve given talks about my writing. I’ve loved every moment of that. Other goals remain stubbornly out of reach. I understand more about how the industry works now, which is both useful and slightly deflating. I know how much depends on timing, context, persistence, and a fair bit of luck.

Alongside all of that, my actual life is happening. The children are growing, timetables and activities shifting, my work evolving. My energy levels are not what they were, hello perimenopause. The shape of my day is not designed with long, uninterrupted stretches of creative focus in mind.

For me, sustaining a creative practice has become less about momentum and more about… I don’t know… returning. Keeping hold of a thread, even if it’s a bit frayed at times. I’ve learnt to write in bursts. To pick something up and put it down again quickly. To lose the thread and find it later, or not. To accept that some days the writing simply doesn’t happen, and that this is not a moral failing.

Last week, I had a real wobble about whether I should try at all, still.

That’s where burnout sits, I think. Not in a dramatic collapse, but in the slow accumulation of trying to hold everything at once. I push to keep the practice going. I feel guilty when I don’t, and frustrated when the work doesn’t move. I look sideways at other people and wonder how they are managing to produce more, do more, be more visible, when they seem to have just as many balls in the air as I do.

And because I try to be a sensible person who occasionally thinks things through, I ask the slightly sharper question: is this still sustainable? Or more pointedly, should I stop?

There’s a narrative in creative work that says you don’t ask that. You just keep going. Persistence is everything. Success belongs to those who refuse to give up. And yes, there is truth in that. Things take time. Work develops slowly. Progress doesn’t always show up as it’s happening. But there’s also some unhelpful mind chatter about clinging too tightly to a version of the dream you had at the beginning.

The past three weeks have been a bit of a reset in that sense. Not by design, just by circumstance. Some Big Life Things happened. The routine fell away, and with it, some of the momentum I rely on to feel like I’m “doing enough.” Which left me with a slightly uncomfortable question: if the structure drops, do I still choose this?

The answer, in spite of it all, is yes.

Even when I’m not writing, I’m still writing in my head. Not in any organised, productive way. Just noticing things. Turning over phrases. Catching a line and holding onto it for later. Pondering a story, a plot point, a character flaw. It’s still there, running quietly in the background. That doesn’t feel like something I can switch off.

So perhaps the question shifts a bit. Not “should I stop?” because I can’t. It’s too much a part of me. I will always write, one way or another. This is where I’ve been circling, slightly irritably, if I’m honest. I don’t have a neat answer for how to make it all hang together smoothly. I wish I did. It would make things much easier.

What I do have is the slightly inconvenient truth that even when I’m not writing, I’m still… doing it. Not properly. Not in a way that would count towards anything. But it’s there. I’m noticing things, storing lines, turning phrases over while I’m making dinner or walking somewhere or half-listening to someone explain something very important about Fortnite.

That hasn’t gone away. It doesn’t seem particularly interested in whether I’ve had a productive week or not. Which makes the idea of “stopping” feel a bit theoretical. I don’t know if there’s a neat trajectory waiting if I just keep going long enough. I don’t know if the version of “making it” I had in my head at the start even fits my life now, if I’m being honest about it.

What I do know is that the writing itself hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s still there, slightly annoyingly constant. It still feels like something I come back to, even when I’ve drifted off for a bit. So maybe that’s the thing I hold onto. Not the outcome, not the imagined end point, but the fact that I seem to be someone who writes. Even in a scrappy, interrupted, not-very-impressive way some weeks. Which is not a grand conclusion. I’m aware of that.

It doesn’t solve the bigger questions about ambition or direction or whether I’m using my time in the most sensible way. Those are still there, hovering about, waiting for a moment when I’m tired enough to take them too seriously. But it does take a bit of the pressure off.

It means a three-week gap doesn’t have to turn into some kind of existential verdict on whether I’m still “doing this properly.” It means I can come back to the desk slightly out of rhythm and just… start again. Which is why I’ve turned this into a wee blog post.

So I’ll move a few of the chairs back into place. Ignore the ones that are still upside down in the garden. Sit down anyway, with a cuppa.

For now, that seems like a decent enough way to keep going.