A while ago, I had a brilliant idea for a piece of creative non-fiction.
As a teenager, I sang in a church choir - weekly rehearsals, two services every Sunday, plus occasional concerts and a whole slew of extra bits and bobs around Christmas and Easter. It was a good, though not exceptional, parish church choir. It was a lot of fun, a lot of hard work, and it took up loads of time. It also taught me an incredibly valuable life skill.
Perhaps (depending on your beliefs, and the prevailing Covid regulations wherever you live) you’ll go to a choral Christmas church service or carol concert in the next few weeks. The choir will appear to be perfectly rehearsed, calm and serene. Spoilers: they are likely none of those things.
“And it goes like this: sing Once in Royal David’s City in four-part harmony on autopilot, get to the choirstalls, make sure the trebles don’t set anyone on fire. Snuff out the candles properly, and put them somewhere safe without spilling melted wax while saying the prayer of preparation with half a mind.”
To be in a choir is to develop the art of appearing calm at all times, despite how very much things are not going to plan. It is to sing from memory while sorting out some problem that has arisen. It is to hold entire conversations across an aisle while using no more than an eyebrow. It is to switch seamlessly to an unrehearsed anthem for some unforeseen reason.
Anyway. My brilliant idea was to write about this, and about the firm foundation it gives you for coping with (apparent) serenity despite what life throws at you: maintain the appearance of calm, swear inaudibly, re-plan for the current situation and never, ever look surprised. I would write about this as a genuine life lesson, but also make it atmospheric, and funny, and even Christmassy.
In short, it was going to be amazing.
I thought about it every now and again, and eventually I wrote it. I revisited the various journal posts I wrote when I was still in the choir, and which I remembered as hilarious. I rewrote it.
I rewrote it again.
And it just… didn’t work. Beyond the basic premise that it teaches you to remain calm in adversity, there wasn’t a lot to say. The examples needed so much explanation that they became laboured. A lot of the chaos I remembered stemmed from me being roped in to swell Christmas numbers long after I’d officially left the choir - it was my own under-preparedness, rather than a general state of being.
There is nothing so disappointing as the gap between a piece of writing in conception, and the writing as it exists on the page. Nailing down the words often falls far short; emotional passages become stiff, wooden things that fail to capture the atmosphere that seemed so vivid.
I’ve often found myself putting off writing a story because I’m worried that I won’t do it justice. “I won’t write it now,” I think, “I’ll save it”.
This is, broadly speaking, a terrible idea. The thing, when written, might be a disappointment. But unwritten, it has no chance to be anything at all. Writing it once doesn’t preclude writing it a second time (or third, or fourth), and perhaps it will get better with each iteration. Perhaps you will learn, as I did this time, that it is never going to match your hopes. But perhaps you will slowly inch towards it being the story it was in your head.
Do not leave the things unwritten. Given them a chance in the world: write them at least once. Possibly many times. And accept that you will lose some along the way.