Beside me, in an old, much-used mug, sits a cooling cup of coffee. A vanilla latte packet with half a teaspoon of extra coffee granules and one and a half teaspoons of sugar. I never ask anyone else to make my coffee because it is too particular. I’m particular. (Not too particular, but on the verge.)
As I’ve aged, I still resent some aspects of my particularity, but I’ve come to accept more of them. In fact, one of my particularities that I resent, but now better understand is my incessant urge to procrastinate. I’m doing it as I type right now, in fact.
I woke up this morning with a newly resurrected urge to create my writing portfolio. I say ‘newly resurrected’ because this project is something I have attempted many times before. You can guess the outcome of these attempts based on today’s motivation. So, I woke up with a slight spring in my step and proceeded to do everything else except write.
To slowly ease into the morning, I finished an issue of The New Yorker, not the most recent, but a few weeks old. I’ve been trying to keep up, as reading the issues gives me a sense of intellectual purpose. After finishing said issue, I am now only three weeks behind, instead of four. I then started the next issue I’ve been delayed with and started to come up with a tantalising novel idea.
There is a fear at this moment to share said idea. I don’t want you to steal it. What I will say, is that I like the idea, but it will be a long and difficult project. It will require a vast amount of research and synthesisation. It could possibly take years or decades. Is it worth it? I think so. It could lead to me being the literary incarnation of George Orwell that is read in secondary schools in 100 years’ time. No pressure. Except, that is a lot of pressure! It is no wonder that my writing portfolio remains absent after so many years of anticipation.
I’ve wanted to be a writer since at least 2015, probably before. It began as a wish to be a travel blogger, but later morphed into a catch-all term for endless variations of fictional and non-fictional texts. I have so many ideas in my head; yet, the page remains blank. So, this morning I decided I’d write something, because showing up and being consistent is more important than being perfect.
That decision was made two hours ago and I didn’t write anything in that time. What did I do, you ask? Well, I played with the cats, I walked on the treadmill, I made a coffee, and I decided to re-read through all my previous blog posts to ‘remember’ myself. After that anthropological experiment, I opened up a blank page ready to get started.
That endless, hauntingly white, blank page stared back at me.
Then, I started to spiral. The idea of creating a ‘writing portfolio’ is so hefty. How do I know what would be best to include? What if I write something today that doesn’t align with the writer I want to be in ten years’ time? That paralysing thought process often stops me from writing anything. That need for perfectionism is so engrained in my identity that I can’t convey my identity for fear of conveying it wrongly.
I stared back at that blank page and wondered what I could write about. I’d recently watched The Grand Budapest Hotel, so I could write a film review. I enjoyed the film, but I didn’t feel I had very much to say about it. I considered writing an essay about my thoughts on leaving teaching, since it’s been over a month now, but that feels too vulnerable at the moment. The fear of creating wrongly is ever present. I worry that I will spend so much time creating a writing portfolio that I don’t like or that doesn’t feel like me. The importance of being a writer and creating consistently is clear to me, but the pressure to decide what to write about and whether it is a worthy subject stalls the process. Then, in my indecision, hours, days, months, years pass before I build the courage to try again.
What would life look like, if that version of myself from 2015 had written something consistently every day? The sheer volume of written work would outweigh the fear of inept creation. I don’t think that the writing would remain stylistically consistent throughout a decade. I don’t believe the content would stay within a niche field, as that version of myself has grown and developed into the person I am today. Whoever the version of myself in 2036 is going to be will also theoretically be very different to who I am now.
This idea then becomes the crux of my decision, or indecision. Do I allow the blank page to scare me into inaction, or do I push through and create imperfectly, but consistently?
So, after two hours and a blank page before me, I decided to write. In ten years, will this essay be formative in my writer identity and portfolio? It might. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. This is my writing, my portfolio, my identity. There is no ‘wrong’. There is only create and adapt. Now, I’ll finish drinking my cold coffee and maybe write something else.
Delaney Oertly 