Where does a book begin?

On the mostly slow but sometimes sudden emergence of creative ideas

Last night I spent the night in my writing hut. It was my first overnight stay, and following a full day of working on my next book, it was such a treat to lie in bed listening to the rain hammering on the roof, staring up at the darkness through the stargazing window, tucked up all cosy. Lulled into a deep sleep by the music of the weather, I woke this morning with such a rush of clarity I had to scramble for my notebook to capture it before I’d even put my glasses on, lest it all vanish.

I have made more progress on this latest book in the past twenty-four hours than in the past six months (although it’s also fair to say that all the work I have put in up to this point made the past twenty-four hours of revelations possible). There is just something about immersing yourself in your creative project, going from being deep in the idea, into sleep, and then back into the idea without interruption, which takes you a level further into it.

And with that I feel that finally the work of writing this next book has begun in earnest. But it’s not the actual beginning, of course. As I sit here sipping my tea and staring out at a huge sky of misty nothingness, I’m wondering when, exactly, this book began. When does any creative project begin? (This question matters, because I think the answer is ‘very far back’ which means the decisions we make day to day now, affect the kinds of creative projects we might bring to life as future versions of ourselves).

I am trying to feel my way through the paths in my mind back to this particular book’s origin moment. I meander back past the major milestones: the research trip last summer which untangled a number of knots and offered a conversation which stopped me in my tracks; the signing of the book deal at the kitchen table of a small Japanese house positioned just by the entrance to Ise Naiku, the inner sanctum of Ise Grand Shrine; further back to the day I emailed my agent to say, I have something new to show you; back further still with the text I sent Mr K from the train on my way back from an inspiring trip to London the Christmas before last, after a year off writing books, saying “I think it’s time.” All of these have been important milestones on the road towards getting this book out in the world (which itself still lies many milestones in the future), but they are far from the beginning, which reaches much further back.

I guess it could have been the day I added the title of this book to my list of possible book ideas several years ago, following a conversation with an architect friend in Tokyo when I was researching Wabi Sabi, which came out in 2018. Or perhaps it began with my very first book, as each one leads to the next. Or perhaps it was the thought that led me to ordering the book I don’t remember ordering, which fell off my shelf a couple of weeks ago and turns out to be central to what I am writing about, and which still contained the dispatch note addressed to me at a house I lived in before having children, dated 2012.

Maybe it was even further back than that, in the moment I was captivated by a conversation with someone on a back street in Kyoto in my late teens which woke me up to the thing I am now writing about in my late forties.

Actually it probably began three decades ago on a boat in the middle of the Bay of Biscay when I had a pre-university aha moment that I should choose a feeling instead of a career goal as the guiding light for the rest of my life, and that my grand adventure should begin with studying Japanese, a decision which opened me up to a lifetime of asking questions and seeking beauty.

Who knows where a book – or any creative project - actually begins? Everything is so inextricably connected to everything else, and can often be traced back to the tiniest decisions which turn out to be those that shift entire trajectories. The places we go, the books we read, the conversations we have. We have to be living in the world to begin the kinds of projects which need us to step away from the world in order to finish them.

However hard it is to identify the true origin of anything, there are times along the way when you can feel a shift into a new phase of a thing’s creation, and today is one of those days.

Which is all to say that as of today I am heading into the writing cave for the next few months, until early summer. I should add that by ‘going into the writing cave’ I don’t mean going to a specific physical place (although other than when I’m on long walks, on my yoga mat or staring into space with a coffee in my hand, I’ll mostly be in here). What I mean is turning away from all distraction as far as possible. I mean absolutely no interviews or book blurbing for the next six months. I mean a strict out of office message, and no new projects, and checking email only a couple of times a week. I mean minimum social media, and definitely no scrolling. I mean a gentle discipline, self-imposed, to create as much space for noticing the world as possible, and for writing about it.

Besides a small number of key work commitments including my upcoming writing immersion Ink+Flame (which I will be both leading and participating in as I use it to help me write this book), and my ongoing weekly commitment to my beautiful writing community SoulCircle on Substack, I will be largely invisible for the next few months. I have written about this before. It’s a radical act in the modern world, but it makes all the difference.

As a small business owner this is not an ideal decision. As an author with book deadline it is, for me and the way I work, the only decision. My capacity for deep thinking is inversely proportional to the time I spend on social media, caught up in email trails and delivering things for other people.

This means ignoring all the data showing me that I am vanishing from everyone’s feeds. It means minimising the promotional activities which take so much energy and attention, which means having no income expectations for the duration. (Hello ebb and flow, and always saving as much as possible and never spending the money that is owed to the tax man, and also that is what book advances are for…) It means making the tough choice to not respond to being tagged, or direct messaged, and it means apologising in advance for all the Substack Notes I will miss, the sweet notes I won’t respond to. It means being unavailable, and feeling a little bad about it but knowing that I can better serve more people in the long run by writing a meaningful book.

But while I may not be so present in chatty spaces, I want to keep offering thoughtful essays, and so over the coming weeks I am going to be sharing missives based on extracts from my books, starting with a three-essay series on How to Be A Fearless Writer. This series will explore what I call the three states of writing, an understanding of which changes everything about the place of fear in the writing process. I will post these three once a week starting this Thursday, and each will be accompanied by an original meditation, which I hope you very much enjoy.

Perhaps you might like to consider where your most significant creative project began, tracing it back through all the decision moments and serendipitous occurrences that led to it being where it is right now. What might that tell you about any decisions you are facing right now, and how they might lead to new projects in the future?

Beth Xx

P.S. INK+FLAME starts next Monday January 26. It’s an incredibly powerful seven-week live writing and Substack growth immersion. If you’d like to join you can get one of the last few places here. This is likely to be the last time I ever run this class live due to my own writing commitments, so don’t miss it.

Image Holly Bobbins