On the Siren Call of September
Or, on how I'm more of a Princess Margaret than an Ursula Le Guin
September and back to school doesn't mean much to you once you become an adult. Except, in fact, it does. It's a kind of muscle memory, a sense of starting again, a freshness, a renewal. It's the sense that this year might finally be the one where everything falls perfectly into place. It's a freshly-sharpened pencil, slight chill in the air, new shoes sort of a promise.
I, for one, cannot get enough of it.
Of course, for some of us, this time of year also has very practical back to school implications. I won't be stepping foot in any classrooms myself, but I have waved my daughters off to begin year six and year four. The school routine may be theirs, but the 9–3 schedule it enforces shapes my day, too.
This feels like a pleasant sort of jolt after a long six weeks without it. There's no real routine to my summer work schedule. The silver lining of only being able to work freelance, very part time, is that I have a lot of flexibility. It means that my few working hours can be fairly easily arranged around the children while they're off school for the summer. It still feels like a bit of a juggling act, but I know it's a far, far less precarious one than a lot of parents have to deal with.
So, I've spent six weeks drifting through days with little repeatable shape. I've been picking up my laptop when the children are out, or playing with friends, or embedded in activity of their own. Some days this meant any writing time was interrupted approximately every eight minutes with requests for snacks or permission to paint/craft/use a screen/message a friend. Some days I enjoyed long stretches of freedom. For one magical three day period, both children were engrossed in story projects of their own, which meant they were desperate to do 'writing club'. In that brief period, I had hours in which to sit and write with them – so long as I didn't mind breaking at regular intervals to spell words out or help brainstorm a story detail.
Over the school holidays, in amongst projects for freelance clients, I added 24,000 words to the current draft of my novel. I wrote them in dribs and drabs, fits and starts, at my desk, on the sofa, in bed, in the hammock, on holiday in Wales. I wrote with a view of the garden, with a view of the children playing, with a view of the children being bored, with a view of a sheep field. I wrote on days I felt called to write, and I wrote on days where I didn't feel like I had very much headspace at all. I wrote because I love to write, and I wrote because I wanted to have written.
Despite having such a lovely summer, and despite being very happy with my 24,000 words, I now feel the siren pull of a new September routine. Well, not just me; me and my inner perfectionist. She's already hard at work, crafting some ideal imagined schedule that, in truth, I know my faulty body would never allow.
Because, as much as I might like to think I could, I'll never be up like Ursula Le Guin and writing at my desk by 7.15am (with still enough energy remaining to be 'very stupid' after 8pm). If I were to compare my morning routine to anyone’s, I suppose it might be Princess Margaret’s – though without the cigarettes, the bath, the vodka cocktails or the lady's maid... and with general phone scrolling rather than newspapers. (Really, this is just a glamorous way for me to say that I have to start my days slowly if I’m to have any hope of getting through them.)
Still, despite all the evidence to the contrary, part of me is still holding out hope that this September will be the one where I can dictate my routine rather than having it dictate me. That this is the September when I suddenly become a super fast, super successful writer. That this is the September when I stumble on some kind of magical alchemy that cures me. I'm sure I'm not the only one with lofty autumn expectations. There are probably swarms of us, all imagining impossibly picture perfect routines and all getting frustrated when they don't fit into the actual realities of our lives.
After all, very few of us live in an absolute ideal. And so we have to build routines that account for partners, children, pets, (better) paid work, space constraints, illness, disability. But it's like anything else, I suppose. In practice, the messy realities of life often make for a much rounder, much more fulfilling experience than any imagined ideal. I'll take my Princess Margaret mornings, my usual writing spot on the sofa, my fleecy blanket, my three o'clock school run. I'll take the delightful interruptions, my view of the trees, the sound of my husband on video calls in the other room. I'll take a snuggled fluffball puppy, extra slow days when I need them, the general detritus of family life that always seems to pile up around me. I'll take it all – the good and the bad – because it's real and it's mine, in September and every other month of the year.
Now, if someone could just get a message to that effect to my inner perfectionist, that would be very much appreciated.
A final aside from me: this isn’t my only Substack post today! I’ve also written a guest post for the author Sarah Handyside and her Substack, Instructions for Heartbreak. I’d love for you to give it a read.