Australia Was Supposed to Be When I Became a Writer

When I moved to Australia in 2019, part of the plan was that I was finally going to have time to write. I was going to semi-retire, work less, enjoy life a little more, and actually do something serious with all these stories I'd been carrying around for years. It was a lovely plan. Future Me apparently had unlimited free time, perfect discipline, and none of those irritating things like bills, work, responsibilities, or reality getting in the way.

Then Reality Arrived

COVID happened. So much for semi-retirement. I had to keep working, life became life again, and writing went back to fitting into whatever cracks I could find around everything else. I'd write for a while, then stop. I'd research something, go back to the manuscript, get distracted by another piece of worldbuilding, then decide I should probably work on the author website for the books I hadn't actually finished yet. Perfectly logical. The annoying thing is that I was working on the books. That's something I tend to forget when I look back and tell myself I wasn't making any progress. I wrote. I researched. I changed characters and plots. I learned more about publishing. I pulled apart old ideas, kept the pieces that still worked, and quietly discarded a lot of things that didn't. Sometimes I'd have a burst where everything flowed and I'd wonder why I'd ever found writing difficult. Then I'd go weeks where I did almost everything connected with writing except actually write anything new.

The Problem Wasn't Just Time

For years I'd used lack of time as the explanation. If I had more time, I'd write. If work wasn't so demanding, I'd write. If I could semi-retire, I'd finally get serious about it. Australia was supposed to solve that problem for me, and eventually I had to admit something I didn't particularly want to hear. Time was only part of it. More time doesn't get rid of self-doubt. It doesn't erase the memory of somebody telling you your writing is crap. It doesn't make the words cooperate, and it definitely doesn't stop you from reading something you wrote yesterday and wondering whether you've suddenly forgotten how the English language works. Sometimes having more time just gives you more time to convince yourself that you don't know what you're doing.

Coming Back Anyway

Still, I kept coming back to it. Not every day. Not according to some wonderfully disciplined routine where I wake up at five in the morning, meditate, drink a perfectly prepared coffee, and write two thousand words before breakfast. I've read enough writing advice to know that's apparently how civilisation collapses if you don't do it, but somehow we've survived. I wrote when I could. I researched when I couldn't. Sometimes I disappeared down completely unnecessary rabbit holes. Sometimes I produced good work. Sometimes I produced stuff that eventually got ripped out again. But I kept coming back. I'm starting to think that matters a lot more than waiting for life to finally give you permission to call yourself a writer.