It’s perhaps not all that much of a secret, at least for those who regularly follow my writing, that my publishing habits are far from consistent. Whereas I may have momentary bursts from time-to-time, in which I’ll hash out a batch of weekly essays for a month or two, it doesn’t take long for me to start emitting radio silence.

This is a habit I find in a variety of my varying projects. It is one which stems far beyond my essay work, bleeding into all forms of my creative endeavors. For instance, I’ve currently got three separate novels on the go. Each one differs drastically in genre, writing style and story structure. They range from epistolaries about bullying in early childhood, to science fiction horrors about cosmic entities lurking in abandoned victorian hospitals. 

Historically, my theory for why I’ve often overwhelmed myself with multiple works of long-form fiction has been that the variety stops me from getting bored.

Admitting to “boredom” when it comes to creative projects does fill me with a fair deal of shame. After all, isn’t creativity meant to be the thing that thrills me? I’ve always told myself, if I got paid to write, I’d be the happiest human alive. It would mean I’d never have to work a day in my life from now until the end of my days. If I really do love expressing myself and building worlds as much as I claim, then surely I’d never get fed up with losing myself in a work of fiction my brain has conjured up.

For what it’s worth, to begin with, excitement really does take a hold of me. Seeing my characters and universes spring to life gets me all giddy and chipper. It’s all I’ll think about for days. I’ll tell all my loved ones about this rip roaring idea I’m cooking up, inviting them to read a sample when I’ve got it all written down. The plot twists, the drama, the friction between characters. Oh what a delight! Except as time moves forward, something shifts. The process becomes more monotonous and procedural. Suddenly I’m contributing paragraphs whenever I can get five minutes to myself. Before long, I’m 30,000 words into a project, and I’m drowning in an ocean of prose and half-remembered character arcs.

It’s around this point that I’ll skip on over to the next project, striving to chase that initial giddiness which once took hold. After all, that’s what drives me to write. It’s the excitement that draws me to the draft, not the completion of a project.

Except there is one area of writing where this issue seldom occurs, and it’s so peculiar that it’s making me start to wonder whether my theories of boredom are actually the true reason lurking behind my habitual procrastination. Perhaps this particular writing activty sheds light on a deeper reason as to why I run away from public projects the moment things start to feel more real. 

I’m referring, of course, to journaling. 

When I say journaling, I don’t mean the types of public blog posts where I reflect and pontificate over matters dancing about in my mind (this entry being just that). I’m referring to the rough, rugged and personal braindumps which sees me vomit up an entire tirade of thoughts, feelings recollections and memories onto a blank page. Journalling is a ritual I’ve been engaging in now since around 2018. Back when it all started, I was in something of a rut, for want of a better phrase. I’d just found out that a bundle of former school bullies of mine had been posting transphobic comments about me on X (then Twitter), and I was in the process of finding a therapist to try and make sense of the trauma those posts had unearthed from my past. Seeing as I was keen to communicate clearly with whoever I’d inevitably pay to address my poor mental health, I decided it wise for me to get a better handle on my internal landscape. It was at this moment, I started to log my thoughts in a password protected Word document intended for my eyes only.

Since then, my journaling habits have evolved into something of a self-disciplined beast. These days, it’s become a common place as taking a shower and drinking water. Each morning without fail, the first thing I do when I awake from my slumber is contribute an entry. Likewise, right before I drift off to sleep that following evening, I’ll hash out several thousand words before nodding off. It’s now transformed into a shambolic, tangential monolith of dumping ground; a means of me offloading all kinds of unwanted and unusual thoughts before starting or ending a day. 

On average, between 2018 and 2026, I’ve contribute between 150,000 and 200,000 words per year to this particular project, meaning there is a bible of documents stored on my PC that could make up a nine-volume series that peers into my very soul. Obviously I’d never dream of publishing these things in a million years. The weight of dirty laundry, rambling notions and nonsensical tangents on display in those things would be enough to crush anyone who dared to read them.

Fear not, however, for I am not proposing I go nuclear and spill all my secrets to the wider world. I value my privacy, plus I highly doubt anyone would find my 6am ramblings informative or entertaining in the slightest. My inner monologue may be dramatic, but it’s not the most interesting of dears when it’s running on autopilot. Publishing my journals would be daft and shameless in a manner I’d never be content with putting into practice . My point is, what is it about this particular form of writing that might be bypassing the desire to jump ship and abandon it altogether? Because while this is a very different and unstructured version of writing, it is still a form of it. I’m still stringing sentences together in a bid to communicate information and explore complex ideas. There’s elements of worldbuilding, character exposition and storytelling going on here. It’s just that instead of constructing it from scratch, I’m taking inspiration from real world people, experiences and thoughts. I’m chronicling my own life in first person. It’s storytelling, but a form of which my brain never seems to get bored of.

Why?

The cynical and critical side of my thinking has theorised that it might be down to being a self-centred sausage. Maybe I don’t get bored because it’s all about me, me, me baby. Fictional characters require me to apply attention to someone els entirely; someone who isn’t Amber. Similarly, penning essays on works that other people have made diverts away from the individual at the heart of my own life story. This argument suggests that I’m so far up my own backside, I can only write and talk about other people for a limited period of time before wanting to do someone else.

And look, maybe there’s a slither of truth somewhere within that theory, yet I don’t think it’s the primary reason why I’m able to sink hundreds of thousands of words into a single project on a consistently annual basis. I think it might be more down to the fact that journaling has a built in safety mechanism that makes it far easier to commit to:

It never aspires to become a public product.

I’m not suggesting such an activity is meaningless. My journal undoubtedly serves a purpose. It was indeed designed to serve as a tool; a task which I’d say it achieves perfectly well. As already mentioned, it’s a way to add clarity to my thoughts. It translates emotions and experiences into a language I can better understand. It’s also a useful way to document my life over the years. Looking back at entries I penned back in 2019 and 2020 reminds me of moments I thought I’d forgotten about. The good, the bad and the confusing, all captured in the words I put to page. But whilst it is a tool, it was never designed to serve a wider purpose in the world. My journal isn’t destined to be planned, edited, packaged and published. There’s no release date or second edition intended for this body of work. It is merely a piece of equipment intended to help me throughout my day-to-day life. 

A novel or an essay series, on the other hand, is something a little different. I’m crafting those for a reason. With those, I am fashioning together an assortment of shapes and symbols in the hope of them serving a function beyond my own daily life. With those projects, I am trying to entertain people, pass on my thoughts, and communicate ideas to a wider group of people. I’m making something that is intended to be consumed.

I wonder, could the consumable intent of these projects be the very thing that is scaring me away from finishing them? Is the notion that my novels and essay series have an ending in sight part of the problem? After all, when all is said and done, a cover will be published and a price tag will be applied. At least that’s the idea.

Similarly, my essays will become pages on a website; edited and listed for future readers to click on by and devour upon desire. When I release them into the world, they transform into something more than a completed word document. They become separate from me; a collection of words and concepts from a past version of my brain. Upon releasing them into the world, I lose the smallest part of them. My ideas become crystallised. They can be read, criticised, and countered. People can nod in agreement, or tut in dispute. If I change my opinion at a later date, those essays will still be out there, floating in the ether of the digital wasteland, attempting to persuade or delight those who cross paths with them.

Maybe there is a fear of my art becoming a product of sorts. Perhaps it’s born out of a fear that I’ll never be able to make any money out of the entities I engineer into existence. Maybe it’s the pressure to generate cash out of my words that pushes me away. After all, is building a career really the reason I like to write? When I was a little girl, excitedly cobbling together my haunted house book, was I really thinking about how it might one day buy me a fancy house? Certainly not! As I got older, however, I started to wonder whether I could turn this habit of mine into a job if I just got good enough at it. This is something that I’ll confess is almost always on the forefront of my mind whenever I start a new novel idea, or begin planning a new essay series. Perhaps this will be the one that will finally get the financial ball rolling, I’ll think to myself. Before long I’m raging at the quality of my efforts, telling myself it’s nowhere near good enough to be placed on a bookshelf or discussed at a literary convention.

In addition to career based ambitions, I suspect there may also be a fear of letting my readers down. When I talk to people about how I’m writing a shiny new novel or essay series, one of the most common reactions I receive is one of a warm curiosity.

”What’s it about?” they’ll wonder.

”How’d you come up with the idea?” they’ll continue.

“I’d love to read it someday,” they’ll enthuse. 

I suppose a lot of them may well be being polite. After all, I have many supportive folk in my life, who want me to feel empowered to work on the things they think make me happy. But what if they mean it? What if they are genuinely excited at the thought of me producing a work of fiction which they are more than keen to read? If it’s as muddled and lifeless as my inner critic thinks it all is when I’m 30,000 words in, those would-be readers will have to find that out the hard way; by forcing themselves to read each page whilst wondering why on earth they signed up to devour a banquet of such dullness.

It’s all psychological, of course. The fear of letting readers down is an anxiety many writers have cared to admit to. Speaking to authors at conventions and parties has made me realise that I’m not the only person on this planet with such angst weighing upon their writing efforts.

Journalling takes such a weight away for me, however. I don’t sit there wondering whether the prose is bad or the story flows properly. I’m not conscious of a discontented future reader or a lucrative price tag funding my holidays to Greece. There’s no vision of finding a publisher or attempting to get the thing promoted. It serves its purpose in the present, freeing me up to write without doubt or fear plaguing upon my conscience.

Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned here. Maybe I need to try and condition my brain to see my non-journal projects as another form of self-indulgent joy. After all, should I really be looking at my art and hoping it’ll one day become another job for me to do? Do I really want to be building worlds in the hope that they’ll eventually pay off my mortgage? Surely that shouldn’t be how I write. It saps the fun out of my efforts and amplifies the inner goblin in my head which forever tells me I’ll never be good enough. 

I should be telling stories because I want the pleasure of being able to read the very thing I’ve helped conjure into existence. The same goes for my essays. Heck, that’s the very reason I started this site in the first place. I love finding websites that do deep dives into pop culture and engages in self-reflective follies. Such sites serve as a lovely way of seeing the both art and the wider world in a new light. I love consuming such content, and therefore wanted to make my own version of that. The drive was the simply create the very thing I love discovering when browsing the web.

With that in mind, from here on, I intend to treat all of my writing projects as though they are personal works which have no intention of becoming something else at the end of their life cycle. If I work on a novel, I’m doing so because it’s a novel that I want to read. Similarly, if I plan an essay, it’s not so I can become some hotshot content creator which people would be willing to throw money at; I’m doing it because I want to read that particular essay. None of them need to be good, and none of them need to be profitable. They are there to satisfy my own brain. If others also enjoy the content in the process, then it should be a happy byproduct, not an absolute end goal that I have to score.

I’m not saying I’ll stick to this promise. Old habits do die hard,after all. Still, I will do my darndest to make it happen. Every chapter, essay or short story I pen will not be done to satisfy a daydream of making a fortune. I already have a career and full time job that pays for my books and bills. I don’t need to gain capital from my prose. I should write simply because I love writing, not because I want a new profession.