Layer upon Layer

You didn’t receive this at 6am (UK time).

That’s because I didn’t write it and schedule it like normal.

I have just penned this down.

With a question mark around my own routine.

When I started writing this Substack I gave myself the template.

I would write weekly and the publishing of these articles would be 6am on Friday.

I tend to write across the week, not just on here.

I tend to write on my walks, and when I see inspiration.

I share these writings on different platforms.

I also started writing my book again.

The other day, I wrote a poem following a heated back and forth on X because someone assumed I wasn’t as British as them.

I told them I didn’t want to be.

I wanted to be as British as me.

Then I wrote a poem about my story being my home.

It felt good to leave that back and forth and realign myself in a medium of expression I was comfortable with.

But I also noticed one thing.

People don’t really see any of the edits one goes through to feel comfortable enough to let their writing go into the world.

I think I had around ten edits for that poem.

I wanted it to rhyme, and I wanted it to capture the feeling of what I was trying to explain beyond the surface layer.

I felt it also needed another layer.

The one where it shows that this practice has been lived in for a few years now and it is not like my first book where it was a little all over the place.

A practice is created when one continues to try, experiment and let go of their work.

Whether that means sharing it on public platforms or keeping it to oneself, the success of a practice, I’ve learnt, is to just continue.

But I am slowly realising I can describe it as having layers too.

I keep visualising the concept of a house.

The foundation is the early effort where you are brave enough to write at all.

Then you share it with people.

And then you keep returning to build on what you started.

I am now at the stage in my practice where the layers have accumulated.

But I don’t feel I have arrived at any destination with them.

The more I write, the more I want to write.

I want to explore more, and I also find that I consistently worry that I will get bored of the routine I have created.

This delay in sending this to you, away from the schedule is ringing alarm bells, because there is this internal fear that I will lose the routine altogether.

Describing a practice as a continuous path and a layered experience feels truer.

Layer comes from the Old English word lǣg / licgan meaning ‘to lie down’, and it is from this root that forms the idea of something that rests upon something else.

This evolved into the Middle English leire or layere referring to the stratum or level, especially in physical contexts like earth or construction.

The concept evolved further into the Early Modern English word layer to mean layers of material, layers of food or structure, and layered physical arrangements.

But the concept of something resting upon something else has been maintained right from its root.

This is why the word layers work for a writing practice.

Effort upon effort rests on these time and miles of writing, editing, publishing and going again.

Sending this to you feels reassuring that the routine won’t go any time soon.

I will try again to schedule it on time for next week. A time that I decided when I created the template around the writing.

But it has to be said, nothing will take away from the joy of sharing words.

On this continuous path of a practice built on layer upon layer of continued experimentation.