On keeping going when things get hard

And not beating yourself up for not producing perfect words

I really do enjoy writing. I’m comfortable with words. I like the way that they feel in my mind. My inner monologue never ceases and I like it that way, because sometimes my inner monologue becomes an outer monologue that people can read and, hopefully, enjoy. Maybe even find value in.

I also quite enjoy editing. My husband, Kevin, is a lapsed journalist and we often edit each other’s work. I enjoy polishing up a piece of prose, making sure it flows to a satisfying close. Having spent quite a while working for the BBC, Kevin’s style tends towards shorter sentences which often need to be combined to remove any unintended brusqueness. I, on the other hand, overuse commas — most of my self-editing is removing the little blighters and inserting whichever form of dash I feel is most appealing in the moment.

I don’t have much of a grasp of formal grammar. I just instinctively know what’s right and what isn’t. What reads well and what’s clunky. When to use ‘which’ and when to use ‘that’. I honestly could not explain the rules of English grammar to you, so I have no real idea of why you should sometimes use ‘which’ and sometimes ‘that’, except that it’s maybe something to do with specificity. Please don’t explain it to me in the comments, because I don’t actually care.

Recently, I decided that my Welsh was good enough to write a simple, short book to help myself and other learners expand their vocabulary. So I started writing Adar yr Ardd, writing 200 words each about a dozen common (and less common) British birds. I had to look up a lot of vocab, but the process was really satisfying. Eventually I had about 2500 words in Welsh along with images of each bird that I’d annotated in Canva. There are even jokes. I was feeling really, really good about it.

I found a lovely translator willing to edit it for me.

And then, oh gods and little fishes, my confidence crumbled. There are just so. many. mistakes. So, so many. I woke up in the middle of the night after seeing that first tranche of edits and found myself descending into a shame spiral. I felt humiliated. Embarrassed that I had had the audacity to think that I was good enough to write a book in Welsh.

Then I had to mentally slap myself, because thinking like that is ridiculous.

(I also need to emphasise that this reaction had absolutely nothing to do with my wonderful editor, who is being incredibly kind, generous and supportive.)

I still cringe when I see the huge number of edits coming through, but I also need to remember that I am a learner. The whole point of this project is to learn more.

I’m so used to being able to just look at a sentence in English and know whether it’s good or could be improved. This doesn’t mean that everything I write is perfect — there isn’t a writer on this planet whose work couldn’t be improved by a good editor. But I am quite good at spotting my own mistakes.

I have not yet developed that instinct in Welsh. That’s understandable, because I have not written much in Welsh. My recent focus has been on improving my aural comprehension and on speaking more fluently. Writing is a very different activity. You can get away with missing a mutation or screwing up a preposition in speech. Writing requires precision and I do not yet have that skill.

I suppose I could just stop writing in Welsh and immediately feel better. I could retreat into my comfort zone and only write in English. But I won’t develop my writing skills unless I keep on writing. I know full well that I won’t actually go back to all my grammar books and work methodically through them like I probably should. I’ve had most of them over 25 years and I still haven’t finished them, so let’s be honest about whether that’s a viable plan. It’s not.

Which means I need to cut myself some slack, stop beating myself up for not having written better Welsh, and just get on and write more. I am looking hard at these edits and looking for mistakes I make repeatedly so that I can eliminate them from my next book. But, as with most crises of confidence, the only way out is through.