#2: Stupid o'clock
Footpaths • Tuesday 17 June 2025
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Last month, I saw a note by
about Ursula K Le Guin’s writing routine:It’s comforting to share writing habits with others, and I can especially relate to stupid o’clock, an hour that seems to get earlier and earlier each year. I tried to write something sensible last night, but it was like running uphill through mud in the pouring rain. I gave up after five minutes and went back to being stupid.
Writing’s like running downhill; can’t stop if you want to.
That’s our Camille Desmoulins in A Place of Greater Safety. Writing rarely feels like that for me. More like an uphill climb, sometimes a vertical scramble, with rare places to stop to rest your legs and take in the view. You’ve got to keep going, though. Otherwise, you’ll turn back and never see what’s hidden at the top.
I wrote 1,000 words this morning. I would start much earlier, but I am in charge of the kids from 6 am to about 8.30. Mimi (two) has become an obsessive puzzler. She sits doing a 24-piece jigsaw over and over again, merrily babbling away. Zack (four) is creating worlds with sticky tape, lost in his own mad game. One of the delights in having two children is watching how different they are.
I don’t really get the appeal of jigsaws. I’d be over with Zack and the sticky tape. I wonder what Mimi would say is the attraction of doing the same puzzle over and over. I think about my own re-reading. Something I heard somewhere recently:
The first reading is just preparation for the second.
Or something like that. There’s loads online about the virtues of re-reading. It can be quite pompous and pious, so I enjoyed finding this rebuttal, “Against Rereading” – even if I don’t agree with any of it. I’m very interested in the act of repetition. Life is iterative more than it is ever new, and I am fascinated by all those revisits and returns.
Books at my bedside
Currently listening to The Magic Mountain (Thomas Mann). Started the biography of Penelope Fitzgerald by Hermione Lee. Also made a start on A Short History of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart by Terri Ochiagha and John Mullan’s How Novels Work.
When training to care for very small children (many years ago) I was taught that repetition makes them feel safe. The world is very large and very unpredictable to a two year old. So much is out of her control so she enjoys doing things she can control over and over again. They are always the same (unless a piece goes missing!) which feels safe to her. Hearing the same story makes her feel safe, it always ends the same way.
Enjoy Hermione Lee on PF- such an interesting and unusual author.
Camille reminds me of Hamilton. “why do you write like you’re running out of time?” I certainly don’t feel that way about writing but it does describe my work life!