What do I do to make sense of my work? Well, first, I make sure I keep writing. My daily goal is 1000 words a day. Some days I don’t write a thing, and some days, I only write 500 words, or less. But most week days, I do manage more than 500 words, and some days, even 1000.

The other thing I do is to keep a writing journal. Sometimes this is about the writing, the job, the project – whatever I’m working on – and sometimes it’s just about processing all the stuff that’s going around my head at any one time. Sometimes this stuff is creating confusion, because it’s connected with personal turmoil, unnecessary preoccupation, or sadness, or whatever else will pull you out of a good writing moment. So I deal with it, I push it into line by acknowledging it, by making it real, by writing it, longhand, on the page. Hopefully, after a few pages of furious writing, I can put it to rest, and get back to the writing I need to do to advance my project.

Thirdly, I blog. I blog to isolate particular ideas, and to formalise them in some way, so that when I return to the project, I am more aware of my purpose, or my understanding of my purpose, I guess.

But what I am most enthralled by is the element of risk and unpredictability that comes with writing. The possibility of discovery. It’s like a prospecting trip. Here I am, on a promising but unkempt piece of land, swinging my metal detector from side to side, hoping for something that will trigger the sensor. When the sensor is triggered, the rush of excitement is real, and addictive. Will it be a good find? Did I strike gold? Rarely, gold is found, but the rarity of the moment, the unpredictability, keeps me going back time and time again, like a gambling addict.

I have a roadmap of sorts: my experience, my notes, which are a somewhat haphazard way of documenting this slippery, intangible process. But it is something that builds, and the more I try to make sense of the process using as many tools as I can that work for me, the more the landscape looks familiar, less alien. I know what to expect even when that means crossing the park at night. Something that’s not that pleasant, but that you need to do when you know your destination is on the other side. The points of interest are often in the creases and the folds, in the shadows, not in the smooth, open road.

So, in making sense of writing, that sense comes with acceptance of unpredictability. How I manage the inevitable disappointments of writing is to keep turning up to the page, because when I don’t turn up, I miss it. And when I don’t turn up, my odds of scoring gold diminish.