tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48298271516086699782024-03-13T04:08:13.689+00:00Under the bookshelfOdd thoughts and images from an undercover writerSJ Butlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04099936549941907117noreply@blogger.comBlogger145125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-75966549534962425282023-04-17T12:02:00.002+01:002023-04-17T12:02:46.158+01:00On becoming an author - and where to find me now<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipItocvPFno7SqwWB3v8zrw33VMvYIaBf8yPLYuXDesjMfoER2KiY2o_PZfX0FiQtAY1tqVAdBupKGOhEdaLvPCRRWEJb8bxydDwUGrNOAKZJv8y_SjkdjRKNOTcIk3KKKeq97hShkgzGN-zsEe51WA4dCRh_7iDVqsuZ7fndh-kLIVLpdpChLip0f5A/s1080/Starling%20cover%20reveal_graphic2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipItocvPFno7SqwWB3v8zrw33VMvYIaBf8yPLYuXDesjMfoER2KiY2o_PZfX0FiQtAY1tqVAdBupKGOhEdaLvPCRRWEJb8bxydDwUGrNOAKZJv8y_SjkdjRKNOTcIk3KKKeq97hShkgzGN-zsEe51WA4dCRh_7iDVqsuZ7fndh-kLIVLpdpChLip0f5A/s320/Starling%20cover%20reveal_graphic2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>Hello! I'm sorry if you've been visiting this blog and finding it rather quiet. </p><p>Since I last wrote a post here, I've become an author: my first novel, <i>Starling</i>, was published by Fairlight Books in September 2022 and it's been wonderful (and terrifying sometimes, but mostly wonderful).</p><p>It was time to come out from under my bookshelf so I made myself a proper author's website and that's where you'll find me from now on.</p><p>I'm at <a href="http://sarahjanebutlerauthor.co.uk">sarahjanebutlerauthor.co.uk</a> I hope you'll come and say hello.</p><p>Thank you for reading my under the bookshelf blogs!</p>SJ Butlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04099936549941907117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-48534640533220466672021-10-23T17:27:00.001+01:002021-10-23T17:27:14.463+01:00How Dad killed the neighbours' hens by accident, and other missing stories<p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgwrlwFW4xbzIonrtrElybzOQd7v9BLT42TZEBFnQCbJXrUf27FS_AkdbUotaDaIc4tsvSwJr3uvOfDmX1PRrgH-0JtFyciH74S9qz_YhAgjBK8HH_nnxYGA4kM18OVyggSB1xQC5tepG3cqOzMToh4wTkEJ6h0DujyX7lyEHHt3wEWb2J-qyJjczvSlA=s2048" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgwrlwFW4xbzIonrtrElybzOQd7v9BLT42TZEBFnQCbJXrUf27FS_AkdbUotaDaIc4tsvSwJr3uvOfDmX1PRrgH-0JtFyciH74S9qz_YhAgjBK8HH_nnxYGA4kM18OVyggSB1xQC5tepG3cqOzMToh4wTkEJ6h0DujyX7lyEHHt3wEWb2J-qyJjczvSlA=s320" width="240" /></a></div><p><br /></p>This has been a hard week. My beloved Dad has dementia, and last week he fell four times, once on the stairs. He quite suddenly stopped being able to walk across a room without three of us helping him.<p></p><p>I'll cut a long story short (that's what Dad always says, though he's never knowingly told any story the short way). Yesterday, we finally admitted we couldn't cope at home as a family any more. Dad has moved to a care home. </p><p>I don't think anyone's happy. Relieved, because Dad is safe. And he's with people who are kind and look after him - he's been in this home before while Mum rested, so we're reassured he's with good people.</p><p>But Dad's suddenly not at home. <i>In</i> a home is not the same as <i>at</i> home. He's baffled, and so, I think, are all of us. The shape of our family has changed, geographically - Dad is semi-detached. We have to ask permission to visit (these are Covid times). We can't make his favourite meal if he's sad. We can't take a mug of tea out to the bench in the garden and watch the wind in the trees.</p><p>Today, I settled down to make Dad a photo album that he can share with his new carers, and that we can look at together. It has photos of all of us over the years and I hope it will help him know we're here, he's at the centre of our family, and we love him.</p><p>But the earliest photo I have is the one at the top of this piece - of me and my Dad, six weeks after I was born. And isn't that shocking? Dad was 32 then. He'd been a little boy, had his appendix ripped out (his brutal scar still shocks medics), lived in London through the war, made explosives in the family greenhouse and killed the neighbours' chickens, ridden a motorbike, worked in his Dad's building firm, climbed rocks and mountains, done his national service on Gibraltar in the tunnels, come home and trained as a civil engineer, worked in London's sewers, met Mum, gone to jazz clubs, married Mum ... And I have not one photo of any of this. It's as if I think Dad's life began the day I was born.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgeV1THho8j3pVfuiF9OirwK1iYWwJMzzs6DmeETW6OGWAmFiJ8YINR79gOqodMro861Zk3P6z1Bwxvmtb5uLnyX_Hf3gF9ap07erC7WbemkCtmgNNX-cnneiDOW6DSUYNbKIm0aBdcYAwO2oMb3T4XpUDynY6j3Mdhs2p7yJzpVJHqe6P6gl4E66VQOw=s2048" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgeV1THho8j3pVfuiF9OirwK1iYWwJMzzs6DmeETW6OGWAmFiJ8YINR79gOqodMro861Zk3P6z1Bwxvmtb5uLnyX_Hf3gF9ap07erC7WbemkCtmgNNX-cnneiDOW6DSUYNbKIm0aBdcYAwO2oMb3T4XpUDynY6j3Mdhs2p7yJzpVJHqe6P6gl4E66VQOw=s320" width="240" /></a></div><p></p><p>So, maybe it's displacement, a way for me to understand what has happened. But I'm going to sit down with Mum and start Dad's album where it should begin. We'll pull out all the oldest photos from their oldest albums, as if we're remembering for Dad what has slipped out of reach in his own mind. I know somewhere there's a photo of a very small Dad in a terrible home-knitted one-piece swim suit that sagged like an old sofa as soon as it got wet, and I'm looking forward to laughing about it with him very soon.</p><p><br /></p>SJ Butlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04099936549941907117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-24258553922331786662021-08-27T10:19:00.001+01:002021-08-27T10:19:13.245+01:00On the significance of putting on my purple cardigan<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-m7-PQa4Byro/YSiroXl9AiI/AAAAAAAAAXo/Z9cKYsN24Xs3Gieo8IZphjqUA5aqdwigQCLcBGAsYHQ/IMG_3728.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-m7-PQa4Byro/YSiroXl9AiI/AAAAAAAAAXo/Z9cKYsN24Xs3Gieo8IZphjqUA5aqdwigQCLcBGAsYHQ/w240-h320/IMG_3728.HEIC" width="240" /></a></div><p><br /></p>I have just put on my Writing Cardigan. I don't really have writing fetishes - I can write anywhere, any time. I like to have coffee, but it's not essential. In the past I've written daily while the potatoes or pasta boil for dinner. I've written a whole scene in a cafe in the half hour before an appointment with a funeral director. I've dictated dialogue into my phone in the middle of the woods. But I do love my Writing Cardigan. It's old, bobbly, purple and growing new holes every year, and it brings me great comfort and warmth on this slightly autumnal late August morning.<p></p><p>It tells me that I am settling in for the long haul, and that I'm not going to leave the house today.</p><p>It reminds me that I love writing, and inside my head is a good place to be, even if it's messy and tangled sometimes, and the work is difficult and I may have to try many, many different ways of writing some of this book to make it the best it can be. I'm happy here, and lucky to have my Purple Cardigan, and this work.</p><p>I put my Purple Cardigan on today because I'm deep into a big rewrite of my novel. I'm stripping out a major plot element that was right at the time, and now it isn't. The book's going to be massively better off without it</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-uEmeoytxCI0/YSiroQGig4I/AAAAAAAAAXs/SZv5ryZcVxwkKIHbv26ai6BdWv7qyhS4gCLcBGAsYHQ/IMG_3727.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-uEmeoytxCI0/YSiroQGig4I/AAAAAAAAAXs/SZv5ryZcVxwkKIHbv26ai6BdWv7qyhS4gCLcBGAsYHQ/w240-h320/IMG_3727.HEIC" width="240" /></a></div><p><br /></p>When I look at the manuscript on which I've marked all the changes to make, I'm fine. Every post-it marks a cut, a change, or a scene to write and it's a lot, but it's amazing that I have this chance to make my book even better, knowing that in a year it will be published, and I'm so glad to be separating out the wheat from the chaff.<p></p><p>If you've ever done that for real - separating wheat from its chaff - you'll know that it's really satisfying. It's also ridiculously time consuming if you do it grain by grain, by hand, which is what I'm doing in my novel right now.</p><p>But I'm writing every day - from breakfast till lunch - and that's amazing after so many years of cramming it into the edges of my life.</p><p>Putting on my Purple Cardigan is a signifier to myself that I'm lucky, and deeply happy to be taking the time I need to do this work.<br /><br /></p>SJ Butlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04099936549941907117noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-68433934928047873632021-07-22T13:12:00.000+01:002021-07-22T13:12:01.983+01:00Medway: how did I not know about the estuary?<br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-irQHf75r0TQ/YPld5M4zwwI/AAAAAAAAAWo/0d73YqOfc9MI1O2VhTicP7ccixfCxsjeACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_3077.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-irQHf75r0TQ/YPld5M4zwwI/AAAAAAAAAWo/0d73YqOfc9MI1O2VhTicP7ccixfCxsjeACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_3077.HEIC" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>How have I never seen the Medway estuary before? </p><p>I live near the upper river where the banks are a single-span bridge apart. Sometimes I paddle further downstream under the medieval arches of East Farleigh and Teston. The river can be wild here, uncontrollable, but I can always see the other side.</p><p>For most people it's easy to ignore the river up here unless you live in a flooding place. The catchment is vast and invisible but if you track the narrow valleys of the high Weald you can see how every one carries a stream that brings its water to the sea.</p><p>I've been following one of them for over a year now, and finally, a week ago, I reached the estuary. It was a revelation. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V61OFhrxuks/YPlc5ajpdtI/AAAAAAAAAWA/smC8jl35Bdky1ksRDGXjgehu97Uf-5OBQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_3015.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V61OFhrxuks/YPlc5ajpdtI/AAAAAAAAAWA/smC8jl35Bdky1ksRDGXjgehu97Uf-5OBQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_3015.HEIC" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>I made a seven-day journey to get there and on the third day I escaped the traffic roar of the Medway towns to drop down to the Strand in Gillingham.</p><p>There were benches looking out, people sitting in ones and twos. Children paddling in the shallows. Black-headed gulls squawking and diving. A lone tender puttering out to a boat moored in the deeper water. A small island hid the far side but I could see cranes, crate-shaped buildings, industrial chimneys.</p><p>I sat for hours looking out over the mudflats and the water, simply enjoying the vastness of the light and the space.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8WxJrkrIaoY/YPlc6VogqSI/AAAAAAAAAWE/QIc50KTLILsZLkDZjf6mfpxezRu_rNmUQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_3031.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8WxJrkrIaoY/YPlc6VogqSI/AAAAAAAAAWE/QIc50KTLILsZLkDZjf6mfpxezRu_rNmUQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_3031.HEIC" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>How strange that this water begins as small, earthy streams in our hilly fields.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pVXtjnQlC9w/YPlgBGeBKhI/AAAAAAAAAW4/K-HBw_8Ka5o-LcLHSWWXoj1fuw38xkEqgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/2021-05-07%2B08.48.45.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pVXtjnQlC9w/YPlgBGeBKhI/AAAAAAAAAW4/K-HBw_8Ka5o-LcLHSWWXoj1fuw38xkEqgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/2021-05-07%2B08.48.45.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>Strange too, to be looking out over somewhere that is so out of reach to me, unless I grow wings, or float.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1-tx2ucxv78/YPlc7O5LI-I/AAAAAAAAAWM/dWKjRA7sRFQEzCui-qcG5znxUIsbDnI0wCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_3045.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1-tx2ucxv78/YPlc7O5LI-I/AAAAAAAAAWM/dWKjRA7sRFQEzCui-qcG5znxUIsbDnI0wCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_3045.HEIC" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_odlv3mudg0/YPlc60iLivI/AAAAAAAAAWI/52KbBVFgHsUNo5ohY4yEgmCyXd523wXLgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_3042.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_odlv3mudg0/YPlc60iLivI/AAAAAAAAAWI/52KbBVFgHsUNo5ohY4yEgmCyXd523wXLgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_3042.HEIC" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>I've found a place I think I love (even in the pouring rain) and that I want to get to know better. I'll certainly be back.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BLDNbqQuq6Y/YPleyLJBFXI/AAAAAAAAAWw/SXp4HW-PbEUTdMQv6xQA7Nz5Zy_21JElwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1066/Email%2Bsignature%2Bimage%2Bcropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="266" data-original-width="1066" height="160" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BLDNbqQuq6Y/YPleyLJBFXI/AAAAAAAAAWw/SXp4HW-PbEUTdMQv6xQA7Nz5Zy_21JElwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h160/Email%2Bsignature%2Bimage%2Bcropped.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><a href="http://underthebookshelf.blogspot.com/p/slow-medway.html">More about my Slow Medway project. </a></p><p><br /></p><br />SJ Butlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04099936549941907117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-40304344592837764202021-05-24T17:55:00.001+01:002021-05-24T17:55:25.717+01:00Starling's on her way<br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cVflkjpJ9fY/YKvYr20fI6I/AAAAAAAAAUM/XGgkk4ue5BAbz9GSRpum82N9P3JIM_qhgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_2486.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cVflkjpJ9fY/YKvYr20fI6I/AAAAAAAAAUM/XGgkk4ue5BAbz9GSRpum82N9P3JIM_qhgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_2486.HEIC" /></a></div><p>I am the happiest writer. Today I signed a publishing agreement with the lovely people at <a href="https://www.fairlightbooks.co.uk" target="_blank">Fairlight Books</a> to publish my first novel, <i>Starling</i>, in 2022. </p><p>I'm utterly amazed and delighted. Way back in December 2013 I started work on <i>Starling</i> with a picture in my mind of a formidable woman living off-grid. Mar is right-thinking, radical, fierce and determined. She's awesome in every sense of the word and I was a bit scared of her. Still am, if I'm honest. What would it be like to be her daughter, I wondered? Starling was born, always on the move, always watching Mar, always ready to run.</p><p></p><p>Nineteen years later, when the novel opens, Starling and Mar are holed up in a wood in their van, out of petrol, money and friends. Then Mar simply leaves. Starling can skin a rabbit, make nettle stew, fell a tree, but is it enough to survive - to live - when she's alone in a world she's learned to distrust and despise?</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w4I9DSDjNbM/YKvYr5HDeNI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/m3wNMUKRXRgeGvkS-UVdL7EnhOsnMFvEgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_2487.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w4I9DSDjNbM/YKvYr5HDeNI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/m3wNMUKRXRgeGvkS-UVdL7EnhOsnMFvEgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_2487.HEIC" /></a></div><p></p><p>I love my characters and am so happy I'm going to spend the next six months immersed in their story, working with the Fairlight team to finish the novel I first dreamed of writing over seven years ago. (This is my bulging and battered notebook, full of the ideas that fed <i>Starling</i>.) </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-l9n5kK8XX3s/YKvYrBmIrII/AAAAAAAAAUI/ff1znwcpHDUixtILo092MgR8H9ANd6lSgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_2488.heic" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1183" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-l9n5kK8XX3s/YKvYrBmIrII/AAAAAAAAAUI/ff1znwcpHDUixtILo092MgR8H9ANd6lSgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_2488.heic" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>It's been quite a month. I've tidied away all my copywriting files and cleared my diary. With the Arts Council grant supporting my Slow Medway project for the next year and Fairlight's commitment to Starling, I am going to write full time from next week. As I said, I am one very happy writer.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>SJ Butlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04099936549941907117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-1253491671436360452021-05-09T21:41:00.002+01:002021-05-09T21:41:31.225+01:00Slow Medway: finding the river<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d-oo1VurE5c/YJhB0dC5UoI/AAAAAAAAATY/SZw4c59lvMwe_Y8goGQwnJ9o3hb3gtIVwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_2302.heic" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d-oo1VurE5c/YJhB0dC5UoI/AAAAAAAAATY/SZw4c59lvMwe_Y8goGQwnJ9o3hb3gtIVwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_2302.heic" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p style="text-align: left;">This, though I'd be amazed if you can tell, is a sketch of the patterns on the surface of the River Medway where the water surges fast just below the weir at Chafford and splits around a small grassy island. It makes so many different shapes and movements in one short stretch of water - I was glad I'd forgotten my phone because it made me really look at what the water was doing. Though I'd no idea what was happening beneath the surface - I was tempted for a moment to jump in and feel it for myself.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I made the sketch last Sunday, huddled against a pillbox out of a searingly bitter wind, in celebration of something truly amazing.</p><p>I've been given an Arts Council grant to write a book. I still can't quite believe it. My book's about the River Medway, my slow journey down it from my home to the sea, how my life has been touched by the river ever since I was a baby, and how I'm still not sure whether I have any right to lay claim to it. </p><p>I've been thinking about memory, place, identity and time for a while now. My Dad was the River Engineer, but his memory has flowed away, leaving only faint marks where once he had such deep knowledge and love for the river. </p><p>I've lived near the river for much of my life - sometimes on its banks, sometimes just over the hill. I'm aware of it, always checking its level when I drive over a bridge, noticing the saturation of the soil, swimming in it every summer, paddling up and down it all my adult life, almost drowning in it one January, finding my deepest calm when I slip into its olive, silty waters.</p><p>And yet. I'm never sure what the river means to me. <span style="text-align: left;">I've never been sure if I belong. It was my Dad who was the engineer who had to manage the horrific floods of 1968. My husband is the elite canoeist. Others know far more than I do about the river's ecology. Everywhere I go there are Keep Out signs.</span></p><p>What does it actually mean, to feel you belong somewhere? How would I know if I belong? Does anyone? <i>Can</i> we belong to a place?</p><p>I've been very slowly travelling down the Medway for the past year, starting from the cattle pond in the field over the road. It's the source of a tiny tributary and it took me a long time to walk the handful of miles to the main river. We were all locked down, and my ME was bad. I'd walk a mile at a time, then come home to rest.</p><p>And once I recovered, I was back to work so my Medway journey had to fit into the gaps in my life, as writing always has. But with one email from the Arts Council, I'm liberated. I'm going to spend the next year exploring the river from my tiny tributary to the estuary. (That's my tributary below, turning fast into a bigger stream.) I'll return to places I think I know well, and on out to the tidal reaches and marshes that feel as exotic as anywhere I've ever been. I'll talk and listen to people whose lives are deeply connected to the river. And I'll wander, and wonder, about rivers and people, time and memory.</p><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SkCluDWNb2Y/YJhB06xgCKI/AAAAAAAAATc/1x-4_SnoZmoaqDksq2WTCIl9JJfrypfGQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_2315.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SkCluDWNb2Y/YJhB06xgCKI/AAAAAAAAATc/1x-4_SnoZmoaqDksq2WTCIl9JJfrypfGQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_2315.HEIC" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9AtWASiEWFc/YJhB1cugcBI/AAAAAAAAATg/46JScE-Gu00Q9MnXvGNvt9RdlHeX5Zf_QCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_2320.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9AtWASiEWFc/YJhB1cugcBI/AAAAAAAAATg/46JScE-Gu00Q9MnXvGNvt9RdlHeX5Zf_QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_2320.HEIC" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eLz6Qon7I3o/YJhB2HjyHBI/AAAAAAAAATk/SUF-h-6lxYcslP1Bann2I_HKykoCztVlACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_2321.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eLz6Qon7I3o/YJhB2HjyHBI/AAAAAAAAATk/SUF-h-6lxYcslP1Bann2I_HKykoCztVlACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_2321.HEIC" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p><br /></p>SJ Butlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04099936549941907117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-74229261238522558642020-12-19T11:59:00.004+00:002020-12-19T11:59:25.318+00:00Slow water: on writing, swimming and time<p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-w19mhOcNgZw/X93mtz1O0nI/AAAAAAAAAPA/OzTdZzN82Uk6tU4YTJQjt25nn_AaVcSvQCLcBGAsYHQ/Ardyn%2BSea%2BSwim%2Bimage.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Sea Swim by Ardyn Halter" data-original-height="570" data-original-width="605" height="376" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-w19mhOcNgZw/X93mtz1O0nI/AAAAAAAAAPA/OzTdZzN82Uk6tU4YTJQjt25nn_AaVcSvQCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h376/Ardyn%2BSea%2BSwim%2Bimage.png" title="Sea Swim by Ardyn Halter" width="400" /></a></div><br />This year the world slowed down around me, and I slowed too: my body told me it was time to stay close to home, and by mid-summer I was ill enough that walking half a mile was plenty.<p></p><p>But I was looking far beyond the small fields I could wander in. A piece of luck linked me with the artist Ardyn Halter, 3000 miles away in Israel. Together we were asked to explore the idea of <a href="https://www.eamesfineart.com/viewing-room/31-a-common-place-connecting-people-through-art-words-and-a-common/" target="_blank">A Common Place, </a> alongside writers and artists from across the world, brought together by the <a href="https://www.eamesfineart.com" target="_blank">Eames Gallery</a> and <a href="https://www.26.org.uk" target="_blank">26</a>.</p><p>Our pairings were random - our names literally pulled from two hats and called out over Zoom in late June as the heat rose outside and the roads stayed empty. Though the world beyond our doors was closed we were making connections - and the next day Ardyn and I spoke for the first time.</p><p>Ardyn lives in Israel and I'm East Sussex, and we didn't know each other's work before that first conversation. How did we begin to find our common place? I'm not sure I remember exactly, but my notes are scattered across the page ... </p><p>WATER</p><p><span> <span> </span></span>read the water</p><p>strong waves</p><p><span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span>fear of below</p><p>different person each time</p><p><span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>LAYERS</p><p>coming home</p><p>what colour is feeling?</p><p>maps</p><p>memories</p><p>joy and chemistry</p><p><span> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span> </span></span></span></span></span></span>never entering same water twice</p><p>Some current had pulled our conversation to the water we share - my local, silty river Medway, and the Mediterranean where Ardyn swims daily before dawn. Since the beginning of this year I've been slowly travelling down the Medway towards the sea - swimming, walking, canoeing my way down the river I've known intimately since I was a baby, to a sea I barely know. That sea is connected to all sea, just as the land beneath my feet here, miles inland, flows into the river and on to the sea. This time of year - mid-December - I can clearly hear the water in the soil trickling into the tiny tributaries that gather over the fields and carry this morning's rain all the way to Israel, maybe, if it doesn't get distracted.</p><p>Water is slow, even when it moves fast - the rivers are filling and moving quickly after a week of rain here, but on every bend, there's an eddy, a nook where water pauses. Early sun lifts mist from the fields, carrying the water back into the air. Air, earth, water, all one.</p><p>My route down the river has slowed right down. I'm getting stronger and can walk a handful of miles now, but the world outside is closed again - I've almost reached Rochester, but it's out of bounds. So, like the water beneath my feet, I'm trickling slowly, wandering almost at random in the fields, up the hills and down the valleys where the streams gather.</p><p>But just look at the painting that Ardyn made, Sea Swim. Isn't it utterly gorgeous? It has all the emotion and sensation of the moment swimmer and sea come together. I love it.</p><p>And I have a poem, Flow, written after a summer of slow swimming in cool water on searingly hot days. My one constraint was that it must be 62 words exactly. It grew from rough notes made on a day after a walk along a tiny stream, thinking about tides, and from every swim I've ever slipped into:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-oeTa6x07SXI/X93n6KC9rbI/AAAAAAAAAPI/3YxG_f1h9pMbBtlIun05tz3fHXhc83nNACLcBGAsYHQ/SJB%2BFlow%2Bat%2BEames%2Bimage.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="570" data-original-width="605" height="376" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-oeTa6x07SXI/X93n6KC9rbI/AAAAAAAAAPI/3YxG_f1h9pMbBtlIun05tz3fHXhc83nNACLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h376/SJB%2BFlow%2Bat%2BEames%2Bimage.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />A Common Place is at the Eames Fine Art Gallery until 24 December 2020.<p></p>SJ Butlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04099936549941907117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-60084770984470378602020-05-31T17:22:00.000+01:002020-05-31T17:22:07.122+01:00Wild gardening a year on<br />
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It's the last day of May and I wanted to make a record of our garden because it's bringing me so much happiness.<br />
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I'm a lazy gardener - my greatest pleasure is admiring someone else's gorgeous borders instead of sweating over my own. I grow vegetables because they're much easier than herbaceous borders and you can eat them, but the rest of the garden is down to my husband (pruning, path-laying, pond-digging, rock wall-building). Also, I've a strong feeling that much modern gardening is about control and fear of the wild, beyond us and inside. Just looking at all the brightly coloured strimmers and choppers and plastic grass makes me very sad inside.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m5MCsZVRtGg/XtPQqQOU0TI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/JNUX6BHcvoQky0Zf0nmULjHHfqFbarBoACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/IMG_9557.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m5MCsZVRtGg/XtPQqQOU0TI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/JNUX6BHcvoQky0Zf0nmULjHHfqFbarBoACLcBGAsYHQ/s200/IMG_9557.JPG" width="200" /></a>Until last year we had a lawn. It was a hassle and boring to look at. We wondered what would grow if we didn't cut the grass, so we left it to do its own thing - our own No Mow May but for a whole year. We mowed paths through it partly so that the garden still worked for us and partly so that the untidiness looked intentional, and then because we found that the mown paths grew different wild flowers as long as we didn't mow them often.<br />
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The result was a complete joy.<br />
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This year it's even better. We have more flowers, far more insects, and more birds too. The newts have been joined by frogs, and a huge toad jumped over the path in front of me yesterday.<br />
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On 18 April I surveyed the wild flowers in the garden, and found 26 species. It's not a fancy garden and it's not huge - maybe a third of an acre, with a chunk of it used for growing vegetables (and drying washing) and another chunk paved - but it was packed with variety. Today, some of those flowers have died back and others have taken their places. I'll survey them this week, but today I'll sit at the grassy table at the top of the garden and enjoy them.<br />
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<br />SJ Butlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04099936549941907117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-80851970485074630302020-05-10T15:39:00.000+01:002020-05-11T09:02:30.494+01:00On finishing my novel (spoiler: it's set during a pandemic)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last week I finished the novel that I started in December 2013. Six and a bit years of ups and downs, loss of confidence, moments of great happiness in writing, and finally a manuscript that I've placed in a folder called FINAL.<br />
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Trigger warning: this isn't one of my blogs about walking in the fields. My novel is set during a modern viral pandemic.<br />
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Seven years ago I had my appendix out and was pretty ill for a while. I was thoughtful about mortality. I read Pepys's diaries in bed each night and was mesmerised by his telling of living through the Plague in London in 1665. It first appears there on 7 June:<br />
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"This day, much against my Will, I did in Drury lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and 'Lord have mercy upon us' writ there - which was a sad sight to me, being the first of that kind that to my remembrance I ever saw."</blockquote>
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I'd read Camus's La Peste as a student and the diary brought it back. Camus's telling of a town locked down in desperation sits deep in my subconscious even if I no longer remember it in detail. It's one of those books that changes you invisibly.<br />
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How would we respond now to such a plague, I wondered?<br />
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My characters were clear in my mind from the start: a mother and her 19-year-old daughter who live on the road in their van. The mother is absolutely sure in her convictions, fuelled by anger about modern society. She rejects it all, refuses to engage with anyone except her daughter. I find such people mesmerising and terrifying: I don't know how to handle such righteous rage and tend to hide from it. I wondered what it would be like to be her daughter, trapped in a van in a wood in winter with love and anger.<br />
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I read Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year, and my heart travelled with the people who had nowhere to go but were forced to wander from town to town hoping that someone would leave supplies out for them: no one would let them in.<br />
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If such an infectious and fatal illness struck us now, how would the people I live among behave? Would they allow my child to come home, possibly bringing sickness and death? Who would I open my door to?<br />
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What would happen to my characters, out on the road? So free and yet so vulnerable?<br />
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I began to research plagues and pandemics. I filled notebooks and folders. My shelves filled with jolly titles like The New Plagues.<br />
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By 2016 I was wading through papers by virologists and epidemiologists.<br />
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They had titles like, 'World invests too little and is underprepared for disease outbreak' (BMJ, 2016; 352: i225).<br />
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And, 'Seven reasons we're at more risk than ever of a global pandemic' (CNN, 2016).<br />
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And, 'The Threat of Pandemic Influenza: Are We Ready?' (National Academies Press, 2005). (The answer is a resounding no.)<br />
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I downloaded the UK's public health plans for a flu pandemic. They never seemed to consider a non-flu pandemic in their planning.<br />
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At the top of one set of plans I scribbled: 'BUT IS THIS AN UNDERESTIMATE?'<br />
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It was utterly plain to me - with my O level in Biology and a degree in French - that our government was horrifically unprepared for a pandemic, even though it identified a flu pandemic as the number one threat to our country, far above terrorism.<br />
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Politics kept winning over science. Our politicians didn't want to invest in public health, or strong infrastructure, or relieving poverty so that people and communities were healthier. They shouted about crime and foreigners and scroungers, and they cut funding to hospitals and social care, and they pushed more and more people into poverty.<br />
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Pandemic? Who cares, they effectively said. They ignored what scientists had been telling them for years because it would have meant spending money on things they didn't value.<br />
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So when the news came from Wuhan at the start of this year, I knew what was coming. I couldn't do anything about it. I felt helpless. Weeks before widespread panic buying I bought flour, pasta, coffee, oil, tinned tomatoes and chocolate and put them in a box under the stairs. I remembered reading a US epidemiologist who said he had two months' supplies at home and was planning to hide out with his family for as long as it took. Now, of course, two months seems laughable.<br />
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I watched the news and kept writing. I was in the revisions by now, sorting out plot quirks and clunky dialogue.<br />
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By the time we were locked down, I had an almost final version. One of my lovely readers sat with it in the middle of the night while feeding his baby, waking each morning unsure what was real - my book or the news on the radio.<br />
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Last week I read it through one last time.<br />
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'My' virus is far nastier than COVID-19. It spreads faster and kills more people. It's carried initially by domestic cats, and it starts right here in the UK. It's entirely plausible and judging by the way our government has responded to COVID-19 - and is still responding right now - we'd be utterly devastated by it.<br />
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I'm angry. We knew this was coming. No one can 'beat' a virus, but we could have been prepared. We could have saved so many lives and we still need to.<br />
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I'm afraid too. My parents are in their 80s. Their domiciliary carers have no PPE (not necessary, says government advice, though one of the carers is off sick with COVID-19). My son is in the shielded group because he has an underlying health condition. It doesn't make him any less my son, any less valuable. If he catches COVID-19 I may never see him again.<br />
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This has been such a strange time. People keep saying that, and it has become a cliche, but it is no less true. I have been happy writing and I am proud of my novel. It's about so much more than the facts of pandemics and viruses: it's about people and how they live together even in the strangest times, and it's about trust and hope.<br />
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Hope isn't enough to keep us safe, but it's so important. Here's hoping for better times.SJ Butlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04099936549941907117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-84383680288924908232020-02-26T18:52:00.000+00:002020-02-26T18:53:26.489+00:00One field is all I need<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's down a short and often very muddy farm track, just past the gate in the photo above and it has a well trodden path through it that could take me in all kinds of directions. But often I don't go much further.<br />
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Years ago I'd stop in this field - it wasn't my favourite then - because I didn't have the energy to walk more than ten minutes from the house. Now, sometimes I can walk miles, sometimes I can't.<br />
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Sometimes now I dawdle there so long anyway that I never get out even if I did mean to walk over the small hill to the farm beyond, or up to the heathland reserve where the buzzards live.<br />
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Sometimes I know I'm going to the field and no further, and that's ok. Today was one of those days.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-crO95NlAyNU/Xla3ZlkRclI/AAAAAAAAAFc/-yJddMw5CPUA4kCAKbLL5cp2fVAJoZLmwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/From%2Bstile%2B8681.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-crO95NlAyNU/Xla3ZlkRclI/AAAAAAAAAFc/-yJddMw5CPUA4kCAKbLL5cp2fVAJoZLmwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/From%2Bstile%2B8681.jpg" width="320" /></a>It's February. It's been raining for weeks so the mud is deep and oozy, red where the iron in our soil has bled. The trees are still bare, but there are shoots, and catkins, and the birds are singing springtime songs from the hedges.<br />
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There are sometimes cattle in the field, but not often. It's too small and lumpy and wet to grow a crop in. There's a shallow dampness that's not quite a stream, with marshy plants and ground that never sets hard even in summer.<br />
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There's a telephone wire from which a pair of kestrels swoop into the clumpy grass come high summer.<br />
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There are huge oaks, cities in their own right, where I'll see woodpeckers later, and saw jays saving their acorns last autumn. Today the trees are splendid, their dinosaur trunks vast and warm under my hands.<br />
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There's a stream big enough to paddle in but it's on the other side of the narrow wood that runs alongside the field. Magic happens on this side. The field is only metres wide between the skimpy wood and a rough hedge. Birds leap across the gap between wood and hedge, linking their hideaways and their food and their song perches.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2yjWO5hPCgs/Xla3bsGQFvI/AAAAAAAAAFs/EdOJy4UHeoolH21gWye8S27GeSgayDiFACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Oak%2Blight%2BIMG_8697.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2yjWO5hPCgs/Xla3bsGQFvI/AAAAAAAAAFs/EdOJy4UHeoolH21gWye8S27GeSgayDiFACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Oak%2Blight%2BIMG_8697.jpg" width="400" /></a>Today, I went out in the late afternoon, low sun coming from a high blue sky that turned suddenly black, with a wind that rattled the branches and flung hailstones into my ears, and I couldn't have asked for more.<br />
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<br />SJ Butlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04099936549941907117noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-84725506028580969462019-10-25T13:42:00.000+01:002019-10-25T13:42:46.269+01:00Jura's unreal wildness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm writing this, as often, to work out what I think about something. It's our last day on the Isle of Jura and the others have gone for a walk leaving me with the log burner, a pot of coffee and a table with a stunning view over the Sound of Jura to Kintyre.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sxqlu-ABPnc/XbLoUceu8LI/AAAAAAAAADM/3BrPwvgiuIUD0DsZipGeBB2BTNfkfoZYACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/IMG_8239.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sxqlu-ABPnc/XbLoUceu8LI/AAAAAAAAADM/3BrPwvgiuIUD0DsZipGeBB2BTNfkfoZYACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_8239.JPG" width="240" /></a>It's beautiful. That's what everyone keeps saying. Sweeping hillsides, the Paps rearing up in the background, sea eagles swooping over our heads, huge skies, incredible.<br />
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And yet I'm finding Jura hard to love. Is it me, or is it Jura?<br />
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Here's a nice piece of timing. As I wrote the line above, my son sent me a link to Tracey Ullman's sketch, 'You Woke?'. Tracey is leading group therapy for young people so woke that they can no longer have fun. Ouch.<br />
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But here's a thing. Jura is owned almost entirely by a very small group of people for whom it is a playground. One has created a private golf course, looked after by 25 staff, but played on by no one. Most of the rest of the island consists of a handful of private estates managed for deer stalking. While we have the right to roam, thanks to Scotland's access legislation, in fact if you pick a line across a hill there's every chance you'll come up against an impenetrable deer fence. The estates call the shots when it comes to where we can go. This is a very strange form of wilderness.<br />
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The deer eat everything: Jura's hills are bare of trees and shrubs because no shoot or sapling can survive such a concentration of deer: there's a 14-pointer stag in the garden, for goodness sake, and thousands across the island as a whole. We've met them everywhere we've been.<br />
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In the small folds of land around farms and houses, outside the deer estates, Jura is stunning, with ancient woodlands hanging with lichens and ferns. These parcels of land show just what Jura has lost, but could regain if the deer-stalkers did not determine the ecology of the land.<br />
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And yet, in the Jura Hotel, I asked where people work who live on the island, and those estates employ many people. The population is growing: six babies were born this year. Visitors come to see its strange bleakness. We are here to find peace on an island with only about 200 residents and one road, and expanses of unpopulated country. And we've found that.<br />
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Do I need to get over myself? Maybe. I'll make another coffee and check the sea for whales, but this is a weird place.SJ Butlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04099936549941907117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-7404819780430888112019-09-19T21:44:00.000+01:002019-09-19T21:44:21.675+01:00Thinking about the wild<br />
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That's me in a beech copse not far from home. It's one of my favourite places, especially in summer when the light is sea-green and always on the move. It's only a giant's stride from one side to the other, but it feels somehow a secret place even though I know plenty of people pass through because there's a path worn through the leaf litter, and invisible kids have made camps out of sticks.<br />
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I'm not sure I'd call it wild, but I'm thinking about that. Wild things live there, and it's a very different-feeling place at midnight. And if I lie on that leaf litter and look mighty closely at the soil, I see all kinds of things getting on with their lives, completely indifferent to me.<br />
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I'm wondering if it's that indifference that makes a place wild, however small or close to home?<br />
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My beech copse is a long way from Ardnamurchan, where we spent a little bit of this summer, as far west as you can go on the mainland before you have to swim.<br />
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One day I walked alone to the top of this small mountain, and it felt wild, though the sun shone and I had a cinnamon bun in my bag.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jg-tTfKHH5U/XYPgeXHQV8I/AAAAAAAAABk/dh4GAnhPzhk0cQIdrJmDxzYmVexzHiEUgCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/2019-07-13%2B12.11.00.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jg-tTfKHH5U/XYPgeXHQV8I/AAAAAAAAABk/dh4GAnhPzhk0cQIdrJmDxzYmVexzHiEUgCK4BGAYYCw/s200/2019-07-13%2B12.11.00.jpg" width="200" /></a>It was so little visited that there were no paths so I wound my way up through bogs and heather and over rocky lumps, up to the top from where I could see nothing but clear blue sky, hills, islands fading out to the horizon, and all around, the endless sea. And below me a pair of small lochs.<br />
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They were too tempting, so I scrambled down, stripped, and swam, safe in the knowledge that there was no one at all on the mountain to see.<br />
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That small mountain felt deeply wild, though I was never more than an hour from the village out of sight below the ridge. Is wildness all relative? My wild is your home? Your terror is my happiness?<br />
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I've been reading books on walking in the wild, on finding its edges, on loss, and death and rebirth in those edge places, on the creatures and plants that live in our wild places, on how we are as humans in the wild, and what earthworms taste like. Everyone's wild is their own, I'm finding, because it depends what you bring to it: grief, a warm bun, a bunch of strangers, or the person you love, a question, a desire for space, a need to know ...<br />
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I'm teaching a short course in a few weeks where we'll explore some of the latest writing about the wild and the natural world. I'll be sharing some of the best of the books I've been reading, and we'll write, finding words for the wild we seek, love, and fear. I can't wait.<br />
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<a href="https://bit.ly/2lXJC80">Writing the Wild, University of Kent at Tonbridge</a><br />
Two weeks: October 9 and 16<br />
1.30 to 4.30<br />
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<br />SJ Butlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04099936549941907117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-40858552430617027372019-02-08T16:34:00.000+00:002019-02-08T16:34:26.506+00:00My homemade writing retreat: can I write a novel at home and not be distracted?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">This is for all the writers who have ever despaired of having enough time and space to write at home, and who can’t go on a retreat. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I’m part way through a novel. I have a first draft of 80,000 words, and 20,000 words of a much better second draft that I wrote last month. This post is about how I made space to write those 20,000 words, despite the odds - and mostly despite the reasons I gave myself for not writing them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">1: I apply for a writer's residency</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I applied for a writing residency – a whole month in a Scottish castle cut off from the world*. It was a glorious thought that I might actually get to do this. It was also a terrifying thought, because what if I realised part way that I couldn’t write for a whole month? More importantly, what if there was a crisis at home and I wasn’t there to sort it out?</span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">These are stupid reasons to be afraid of a writing retreat. They are also excellent reasons to go on one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">Why are they stupid reasons? One, I am a professional writer - I write copy for my clients every day and have done for decades. Of course I can write every day. Two, I should get over myself. I am not the only person who can sort out crises, even if I think I am.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">Anyway, it didn’t matter because I didn’t get the residency. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">2: Crisis: I don't get the residency</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">And what did I feel when I heard that I wouldn’t be retreating to that castle with my laptop and notes and nothing else to do but write?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I thought, I’ll never be able to finish my novel now.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I allowed myself to think this for a while. In a way, maybe it was comforting. It gave me a good reason for not finishing the novel I started five – yes, five – years ago.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">Then I thought, but I like my novel. I think it could be good. It certainly is inside my head and some of the bits I’ve written already, I’m pretty pleased with. People whose opinions I value have liked what they read. (Not my mother-in-law, who demanded to see the first page, and put it down after one paragraph.) I know I can write the novel I have in my head and my notebooks, if only I have time and energy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">Ah, there’s the drag. Time and energy. I don’t seem to have enough of either to write a novel. But who does? Other people write novels. They don’t all hang out in castles with food laid on and nothing else to do but write. We are not all Virginia Woolf with a room and an income and people who cook and clean.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">Again, I told myself to get over myself. Be more Sarah, less Virginia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">Then I got realistic. I do struggle to write in amongst the morass of my daily life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">3: Real reasons I find it hard to write a novel</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">Creativity </span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I write copy every day for a living, so by the evening the last thing I want to do is wiggle that mouse and get writing again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I can hear you larks telling me to get up and write my novel before I start work. No. That is not an option. More on exhaustion later. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">Writing fiction is hard, much harder than writing copy. There are many days when I tell myself I’m not in the right mood to write fiction. I’ve learnt to ignore this voice. It’s a devil voice that does not have my best interests at heart. I can always write something. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">Time</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">Do I have enough of it? No, I don’t. I’m 55 and I don’t have time to waste. I’m not planning on being a one-novel wonder. I have things to say, think about, explore, and I don’t have time to lose.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">On the other hand, there are meals to cook, friends and family to love, fields to walk. I volunteer half a day a week. I campaign for the Green Party. I grow vegetables. I read. They are all important to me. They all take time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I also need time doing nothing in order to write; time when I think about what I’m going to write next; and time when I don’t think about it but am thinking about it on some other level. Without this, I begin to write clunky, emotionally empty words that merely move the plot on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">Family crises</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">Aren’t they a strong reason for not being able to write? Well, yes. They are. And there have been quite a few. They’re mostly other people’s crises, so I shan’t go into detail but they’ve been hospital serious, might not survive serious, and some have gone on for years. Some are still happening.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">They have stopped me writing, though never completely. I can write poems in the thick of pretty much anything, and do because sometimes they’re the only way I make sense of pretty much anything. But it really isn’t possible to write a novel if you’re setting up care packages, or being alongside someone who is so ill they’re not sure how much they want to be here. Or at least it isn’t for me – maybe some people can power on through no matter what’s going on. I run out of mental and emotional energy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">Energy</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I know I’m supposed to be so desperate to write this novel that I’ll sit up till three in the morning, night after night, weeping with exhaustion but determined to go on … but I’ve been that woman. More than 20 years ago I got ME, probably in part because I was that woman. These days, merely writing from 9 to 5 every day exhausts me. So, no I won’t write at dawn, nor into the night. If I do, I become too ill to write at all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">4: I make a decision to value my writing, because if I don’t …</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">When I didn’t get a place in that castle for a whole, glorious month, I allowed myself to feel sad (possibly even sorry for myself); and then I gave myself a talking to. If I didn’t think my novel was important enough to carve out time and space to write it, sure as hell no one else would.</span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I told myself to value my writing. To stop talking about how important it is to me, and to do something about it. I decided to prove how much I care about being able to write by putting aside everything else and writing for a month. I'm sorry if I sound like a self-help book. I don't read them because they're so bloody annoying and self-satisfied. Feel free to be annoyed with me. But please bear with me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I’m not so privileged that I can throw in my work for ever. I have to earn money to pay bills. But I had a long time away from work recently because I was ill and that taught me that I can become obsessed by the need to work before anything else.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I can also be obsessed with the idea that the people I love need me to be available at all times of the day or night. It’s possible that they think this too, but it isn’t true.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">5: A radical plan to retreat and write for a month at home</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I decided to retreat and write at home. After all, it’s warm, dry and has good armchairs and an excellent library. I like it here.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I took January off from work. I told all my clients that I wasn’t available – no, not even for a quick phonecall and no, not for any emails either. I’d be back in February. I was working on a huge, complex project and needed to concentrate. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I told my family that I was only going to speak to them in the evenings and at weekends.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I told my friends that I’d see them in February. I turned down invitations. I turned down offers of cake.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I cleared my desk of all family admin (and when you have power of attorney for three people as well as your own household to run, that can be a fair pile of crap).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">6: How did writing for a month at home go?</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">Well, not everyone completely understood the ‘I’m not talking to you this month’ thing straight away, but I was firm. By the end of the month, my phone was silent. My email ghostly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">My clients seemed – remarkably – to think it was cool that I was off writing a novel. They haven’t abandoned me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">And it was heaven. From the first day to the last – four glorious weeks – I wrote. I sorted out gaping plot holes. I talked to myself, worked out characters’ voices and quirks, found out how to write them, found my voice for this story.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I wrote 20,000 words in this new voice, from a new point of view, and those words are massively better than those of the first draft.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I didn’t feel lonely, despite seeing and speaking to pretty much no one. My husband – who doesn’t write and finds most of what I read, let alone write, mystifying – was my perfect companion. (I did see a sudden splurge of people on my mum’s 80<sup>th </sup>birthday, and it was lovely, but I was glad to be back writing the next day.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I felt deeply happy. Deeply sure that I was doing something good and that I was right to be retreating from the world and writing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">Maybe surprisingly, it wasn't hard to write at home, despite the cornucopia of distractions around me. It hadn't been easy to set aside this month for writing and I knew it would end all too soon, so every day I was glad to write.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I dreaded the end of the month.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">7: Three lessons learned from my home writing retreat</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I’m back at work. I feared that on day one at my desk every client alive would wake up to my presence and clamour for my undivided attention. Again, get over yourself, Sarah. They were busy doing their own things. We’ve made plans for the weeks ahead. Work is coming in, but not in a deluge.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">Take a break</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">On that first day, I tried writing the next scene of my novel after work, to keep up the momentum. It was no good. I wrote it but I was exhausted – almost certainly because a month of intensive writing was exhausting. I should know this by now but I’m a slow learner. Three days of feeling like a mouldy dishcloth later, I cut myself some slack and took a day off. I spent it at a friend’s funeral, but a day off writing was what I needed. Big lesson – I can take days off. This is a long haul, I can’t do it all without a break.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">Edit as I go: that's the way I write</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">And that’s connected to another important lesson learned. I had hoped to finish the second draft in one month, but three weeks in I realised that I don’t write that fast. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I felt bad about this but then I had some luck. I found out that I’m not alone. Not everyone churns out page after page in an unstoppable, fabulous flow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I stopped reading fiction part way through the month and turned to my heap of unread magazines and journals. In a <i><a href="https://mslexia.co.uk/" target="_blank">mslexia</a></i> from 2016, <a href="http://www.alison-moore.com/" target="_blank">Alison Moore</a> said, ‘I need to know that what I’ve written so far is as right as I can get it. I have to tidy up as I go along, which is how I keep moving forwards as smoothly as possible; I don’t like the feeling that I’m leaving a bigger and bigger mess behind me.’ I love Alison Moore’s work, so if it works for her, that’s good for me too. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">It's ok to write slowly</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">In the same edition, the equally lovely writer <a href="https://www.emmahealey.co.uk/" target="_blank">Emma Healey</a> said, ‘I write in 500 word bursts, working very intensely, then I run out of energy. It’s infuriating, because the book builds so slowly. But if I force myself to write more - if I’ve missed a day, for example, and try to catch up – then it’s useless.’ It was such a relief when I read that. I’d been beating myself up for being so slow. Surely I could do more, faster? No, I’ve learned that if I’m writing completely new words, 500 is pretty much my maximum too. More if I’m rewriting, maybe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">And one more lesson</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">There’s an irony here. I’m writing this blog post when I could be writing the novel. But that’s another thing I’ve learned. I live in the world, and while a month away from it is utterly wonderful, I can’t ignore the world forever. I’m no Salinger. (In lots of ways; I’m not comparing my writing to Salinger’s.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">But I will step back from the world a little. I’ll give myself time to think and write. I’ll spend less time working. Less time sitting about chatting. I won’t read anything that’s not worth reading. <o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I won’t be blogging for a while.</span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">I will finish this novel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">*Hawthornden: lovely <a href="https://lithub.com/inside-the-ultimate-writers-retreat/" target="_blank">LitHub</a> piece about Hawthornden's fellowships. They were quite right not to choose me – I sent work (not from this novel) that I didn’t love as an example of what I wanted to do better next time. Foolish me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-7744184792064721382018-10-31T23:12:00.000+00:002018-10-31T23:12:46.057+00:00In the dark, time has a different shape: Halloween thoughts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm writing this sitting by the woodstove, it's dark outside, the winter's cold is coming, though the wind has stilled, and the day is almost over. I've been reading Sarah Moss's new novel, Ghost Wall, set out on the moors of Northumbria where ancient people made sacrifices in the peat bogs and I'm glad to be indoors. It's Halloween and not a night to be out among the spirits.<br />
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I'm not superstitious, but there's a strange change in the way I feel about being out when the light falls early. I was up on the Ashdown Forest this afternoon - it's not a forest in the modern sense, but high open heathland with vast views to both the North and South Downs. The Forest feels as if it goes on forever, though it's only about ten square miles, but it rises above all the surrounding farmland and villages so when I'm up there I feel as if I'm in another world.<br />
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By the time I parked at Old Lodge it was almost 3.30 and the sun was already low. I didn't hurry, but when the light began to fade I turned back. The Forest may be small, but it's easy to find yourself further from home than you thought, and when it's dark the heathland feels enormous.<br />
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All the time I was there I saw no one, though I could hear cars along the High Road. I saw a buzzard, crows, ponies grazing, a black deer that watched me from a stand of Scots pines. The ground was still dry from the long hot summer, the heather scratchy on my shins when I left the path to explore a lump that might have been a tumulus.<br />
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There were iron age people here, before the Romans. They left their marks in hill forts and tracks and burial mounds. When I was a teenager I spent weeks up here excavating one fort, found an ancient nutshell in the midden beyond the fort's walls, post holes, stones carefully laid, the residues from smelting. I smoked my first cigar in the Hatch Inn, drove madly down and off the Forest to collect my A level results, and back to celebrate my leaving.<br />
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We were a practical lot, archaeology being almost entirely manual labour - digging, scraping, barrowing huge amounts of spoil. And we lived on site, camping where the Romans must have lain when they arrived, laughing about the legionnaire who walked the walls, whom no one saw or believed in.<br />
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It was easy to laugh when it was light, or sat round the fire close together, the Forest invisible beyond our circle of crackling light and heat. But on the long walk up the road from the pub, with no street lights, no houses, no torches, it felt different. It was dark, truly and deeply dark, and time seemed somehow fluid, as if all the people who had ever been here might still be walking among us.<br />
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It's a luxury to experience dark like that.<br />
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Sometimes, I wait till late, when no one else will be out wandering and I walk away from the lights of the village and into the dark of the woods. If there is no moon I can barely see the trees, except where they are silhouetted against the faint orange glow from the town, so I turn away and walk south and once again I can feel the strange lightness of true dark.<br />
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It has no weight, it is limitless. I am untethered and invisible within it. There is nothing to fear.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-77652643732782072092018-08-21T09:57:00.000+01:002018-08-21T09:57:36.842+01:00When life feels complicated ...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Three fields from my house is a fallen oak. This vast exposed root it all that's left of its hundreds of years of bending in storms, drinking up rain, reaching up to spring sun, drying out in mid-summer heat, sending out thousands of leaves every spring, letting go every autumn, feeling the old leaves rejoining it slowly through the soil, dropping the branch that lightning struck, resisting the beetles and the woodpecker that followed them, reaching out to its companion - an oak its equal in size just along the field path, sharing knowledge and maybe joy, knowing this is the year to make acorns and smother the ground in them, feeling a new tree emerge and start to talk through its roots, hearing the buzz of thousands of insects, the craak of the crows in its top, and finally, very slowly, coming to an end.<br />
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This is the oak I used to pass, and it's still glorious in its complexity, its strength and its uniqueness.<br />
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One day I want to be an oak.<br />
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PS The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben changed my understanding of oaks and all other trees for ever.<br />
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PPS Van Gogh definitely looked long and hard at a dead oak root.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-3969281604812793582018-07-03T12:29:00.001+01:002018-07-03T13:11:34.188+01:00Things I'm not growing out of<div class="" style="clear: both;">
A little while ago my Mum and my hairdresser laughed at me (we've known each other a long time). They thought I was mad because I was excited about going camping in Cornwall.</div>
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My Mum said she grew out of camping long ago. My hairdresser loathes all thought of it.</div>
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Fair enough, but this summer I've been rediscovering the things I love to do, and they're making me quite inordinately happy. (I wasn't well last summer. Being confined to the sofa made me realise how much I missed these things.)</div>
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They don't seem childish to me, and I wonder why we're supposed to grow out of them? Who on earth wants to be grown up if it means no more ...</div>
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If that's being grown up, I think I'll take my time getting there. It's time for a swim ...</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-35862425746809679872018-06-18T19:44:00.000+01:002018-06-29T19:33:15.296+01:00The Wild Garden: an unexpected poem in a window<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last month <a href="https://www.sarahsalway.co.uk/poetry-shops-and-tunbridge-wells/" target="_blank">Sarah Salway</a> , poet and writer and bringer together of poets and writers, asked me to write something for the Poetry Trail she created for the inaugural <a href="http://tunbridgewellspoetryfestival.co.uk/poetry-trail/" target="_blank">Tunbridge Wells Poetry Festival</a>. </div>
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Sarah paired nineteen local poets with nineteen shops in the old part of the town, giving me the Oxfam Bookshop because I volunteer there for an afternoon each week. It's fertile soil for a poet, with a wonderful collection of customers, and an incredibly idiosyncratic mix of books. </div>
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(Show me a town's charity bookshop and I'll show you its soul. It may not be what you expect.)</div>
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I didn't know what I'd write - character sketches don't come easy to me; wit neither. On my next shift I pulled The Wild Garden at random off the Old and Interesting shelf behind the till purely because I liked the colour of its cover. I opened it and the inscription on the fly leaf gave me a little shiver - here was a treasure shared between friends more than a hundred years ago.</div>
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The title page sounded a little dry, though:<br />
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But the author's preface was pure joy, and my poem was begun.<br />
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As ever, the poem was a surprise to me - I never know what's in my head until it appears on the page. I wrote most of it quite quickly over the following week, and edited it among the spring wild flowers of Cornwall:</div>
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A week later I came home to see my poem in the window of the Oxfam Bookshop, surrounded by flowers, books about gardens and books of poetry, and felt deeply honoured. I saw people all over the place peering into shop windows at poems of all kinds, and it made me very happy - even happier when I sold two poetry books out of our window in my first hour back in the shop. </div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-32595716624987035922018-02-08T16:10:00.000+00:002018-02-08T16:10:26.724+00:00Solitude and writing in Paris<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YtZEKqT1ZSY/WnxqNath6QI/AAAAAAAABCQ/K8xHu9458a8ZJRDIRFduK4S7zRF6FI8zQCLcBGAs/s1600/2018-02-06%2B18.40.03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YtZEKqT1ZSY/WnxqNath6QI/AAAAAAAABCQ/K8xHu9458a8ZJRDIRFduK4S7zRF6FI8zQCLcBGAs/s640/2018-02-06%2B18.40.03.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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I've just spent a week in Paris, alone, writing and not-writing, and it was difficult and wonderful in equal measure.<br />
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I normally write pretty much anywhere I happen to be: I write in my office and in my kitchen, on trains and planes, in libraries and cafés. I'm not bothered by noise much, and I've written stuff I'm proud of while sat alongside my family watching television. So I don't need silence or solitude to write.<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dVf5ibmJ7Bs/WnxqLrmFX6I/AAAAAAAABCE/uZ5lUDaaQOUJI7dMfzNTwWrePn-FsEqqQCLcBGAs/s1600/2018-02-06%2B14.35.52.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gl83aYcjgB0/WnxqLpRQNxI/AAAAAAAABCI/O6f99KH4KqwsnzxaGQLgWcaMfPcnhDAYQCLcBGAs/s1600/2018-02-06%2B13.16.44.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gl83aYcjgB0/WnxqLpRQNxI/AAAAAAAABCI/O6f99KH4KqwsnzxaGQLgWcaMfPcnhDAYQCLcBGAs/s320/2018-02-06%2B13.16.44.jpg" width="240" /></a><br />
But Paris gave me a whole week alone, and I'd been longing for it. It felt wantonly extravagant, and essential.<br />
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It <i>was</i> harder than I remembered to be so alone. I spoke to almost no one except to buy coffee and food and one day I didn't speak at all. For a week I had no meaningful conversations: there was no emotional weight to anything that I said or that was said to me.<br />
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I missed my family and friends. It was strange and discombobulating to be in a city full of people, not one of whom knew or cared about me.<br />
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It might be easy to wonder if you exist if you have to live in such solitude for long.<br />
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I can see how appalling loneliness must be.<br />
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But for me, this was a brief interlude. And while no one in Paris cared about me, I equally didn't care about them, except in a general kind of way. And it was a huge relief, once I settled into my solitude, to have no responsibility except to myself. How often can any of us say that?<br />
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It was a luxury, and I took it seriously. I read, walked, looked at people and buildings and art. I walked more. It felt vital to be out, letting whatever I came across come in.<br />
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The very difficulty of being alone seemed to strip the wires of my mind of their usual insulation. I was alert and vulnerable. And being exposed emotionally made me open to the hidden currents of the story I was writing.<br />
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I'd been worrying at the story for ages. I knew something was missing, and I even knew what but I didn't know how I was going to write it. On the fourth morning in Paris I woke at five o'clock knowing exactly what to do - an idea came into my mind out of nowhere that transforms and completes the story in just the way I'd been looking for.<br />
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I'm sure that extended time alone allows me to find things I don't know are there.<br />
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There are small pleasures too that I only see when alone: the rhythms of a café as day turns to night, wisps of song coming down the stairwell as the snow falls in the dark outside, the golden sandals my neighbour left outside his front door.<br />
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When I was young, I dreamed of being a poet living in a Parisian garret. I'd have friends, of course, and we'd sit in cafés and laugh and argue about life and poems and friendship, but mostly I'd stare moodily out of my tiny window and write.<br />
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This last week, I lived a little of that dream. I didn't look moodily out of the window, because I was enjoying writing so much: that's what I didn't know when I was young. I enjoy writing, as well as finding it terrifying and hard work.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EKGGZTsM4rs/WnxqLkPVLvI/AAAAAAAABCM/h0OiyXlonIERKNRue0RA2NlGQOA9TFguACLcBGAs/s1600/2018-02-06%2B14.16.04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EKGGZTsM4rs/WnxqLkPVLvI/AAAAAAAABCM/h0OiyXlonIERKNRue0RA2NlGQOA9TFguACLcBGAs/s320/2018-02-06%2B14.16.04.jpg" width="240" /></a>And that's the thing. Last week I felt disconnected from the people around me and alone. It wasn't easy. But I'm glad I didn't spend it in a cosy writer's retreat where I could chat to other writers in the evening - though I've been on retreats like these, and I love them, and would gladly go again. But writing, for me, is also about fear, and risk, and exploration so sometimes I have to get a bit uncomfortable and look at things that aren't beautiful, and to feel a little fear.<br />
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As a coda, I found this poem, '<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/55070/bryant-park-at-dusk" target="_blank">Bryant Park at Dusk</a>', by Geoffrey Brock, which catches the pleasure of solitude perfectly in his description of a lone woman reading in the park as night falls: <span style="font-family: adobe-garamond-pro; font-size: 20px; text-indent: -1em;"> </span><br />
<span style="text-indent: -1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="text-indent: -1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And what I loved was this:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The way, when dusk had darkened her pages,<br /> As if expecting a kiss,<br />She closed her eyes and threw her head back,<br /> Book open on her lap.<br />Perhaps she was thinking about her story,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 20px; text-indent: -1em;"> </span><span style="text-indent: -1em;"> Or the fall air, or a nap.</span></span><br />
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The whole poem's up on the Poetry Foundation website.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-40957409300494241982018-01-26T12:38:00.000+00:002018-01-26T12:39:02.191+00:00Why we talk about the weather<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
This morning I awoke to mist. A pale sun shone from behind the swirling grey so I set off straight after breakfast, before the gloom could lift and spoil the effect.<br />
<br />
As I set off across the fields I met other walkers, all wrapped up like me in boots and coats and hats, and all but one entirely cheerful.<br />
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I knew none of them, but we greeted each other with enthusiasm. 'I think it's going to lift!' 'I saw the sun an hour ago.' 'It's good to be out in it. I'm gardening later so I hope the sun comes out.' Only one said as we slipped towards each other in ankle-deep mud, 'It's disgusting, isn't it?'<br />
<br />
I think she was referring to the mud, but if she was, she was bending the English rule: when you meet a stranger, talk about the weather. You don't even need to say you're talking about the weather. 'Gorgeous, isn't it?' can only mean the weather to an English person, no matter how stunning the view.<br />
<br />
I've been reading social anthropologist <a href="http://www.sirc.org/about/kate_fox.html" target="_blank">Kate Fox</a>'s 'Watching the English': there's a whole chapter on weather talk, and it's revelatory. We talk about the weather because we're so awkward about greetings. We comment to a passer-by on the fog, or the ice, or the sun not because these weather features are fascinating, but because it's a safe way to say, 'I'm friendly, I'm happy to chat a little bit if you are.'<br />
<br />
We don't want to chat long - that would be weird. It's fine to exchange just one sentence each and then pass on. But don't we feel better for that short exchange?<br />
<br />
I walk most days and pretty much everyone I pass will either comment on the weather, or say 'Morning.' You don't often say 'Hello,' unless you know someone. If you don't want to talk at all (maybe you're deep in thought, or something awful's just happened) it's ok to walk past in silence - but only if you look down and don't meet the other person's eye. And it's not really ok even then.<br />
<br />
The weirdest and most unsettling behaviour is when someone walks past you, looks at you, and says nothing. That makes me feel genuinely uncomfortable because that person either doesn't know the rules, or does know them and is consciously breaking them - and in either case, their behaviour is odd, unpredictable and unfriendly.<br />
<br />
That's the thing (and you people from towns who laugh at us country people greeting strangers in the middle of nowhere, just listen). Greeting someone means you're letting them know you don't mean them harm. Whether you're a woman walking alone or a group of burly blokes, when you meet on a path in the woods, commenting on the fog helps everyone relax.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-56160564899572504912018-01-26T12:09:00.000+00:002018-01-26T12:09:02.421+00:00An interval between the acts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
There's been an interval. I hope you've all been enjoying your favourite refreshment (mine's usually a tiny pot of strawberry ice-cream) and scanning your programme (did you work out who on earth that woman with the glasses is?). I hope you've enjoyed the play enough to return for the next act.<br />
<br />
While I'm not foolish or vain enough to think that anyone has noticed, the length of the interval between my last post and this has bothered me. With every week that's passed I've felt this post needed to be ever more splendid, to justify my absence.<br />
<br />
But the thing about intervals is that no one in the audience knows what's going on behind the closed curtains. On the stage the actors and crew may be running about madly shifting sets, changing costumes, mopping the floor of the broken glass from the last scene - but we all understand that it's out of sight, essential for the next act, but our job as the audience is to look away.<br />
<br />
And so all I'm going to say is that for the last six months I've been recovering, working a little, writing a little. I've done a lot of thinking. I did a whole load of boring stuff too.<br />
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The next act is about to begin, and I don't know what's going to happen any more than you do.<br />
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Curtain's up!<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-71443511363316284662017-07-22T13:23:00.001+01:002017-07-22T13:23:20.380+01:00Time out: the difficult but essential art of doing nothing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
My doctor has told me I need a break. Doesn't that sound luxurious? I pictured lying on a sofa all day, looking out of a window at a blue sea. Perhaps people would bring me cups of tea and cake?<br />
<br />
And for a week or so I did lie on the sofa because ironically I was exhausted from working flat out to clear my desk in order to have a rest. No one brought me tea, because no one's here during the day. I cooked dinner because I like cooking, even though I swayed as I chopped and stirred. I did a little light invoicing, sorted out my aunt's accounts, answered a few emails. Nothing demanding, but it didn't feel like I was resting.<br />
<br />
I googled 'medical definition of rest'. The long and the short of it is that there isn't a definition of rest. It could mean complete inactivity, but rarely does. It could even mean going for a run each day.<br />
<br />
The challenge is what to do if you're meant to be resting.<br />
<br />
If I were well and needed a rest, I'd probably head up a mountain, or get on my bike and cycle all day. I might catch a train and wander round galleries and see new plays. I'd probably get in the car and visit far off friends. (I definitely wouldn't be here at my desk.) But I can't do any of these things because doing any of them would exhaust me: working flat out for months with a gastric infection and then Reactive Arthritis has drained me physically and mentally.<br />
<br />
I can't even rewrite my novel (it's been sitting in first draft on my desk for months) because I don't have the energy. I have to tell myself this is ok: how come I can't do like a proper ailing artist and create great work from my sick bed? Well, maybe because I'm not a proper ailing artist: I intend to get well, to regain my energy, and then I'll write. (And did Proust and Keats run a household or earn their share of the bills? Did they have families demanding their attention? I think not. I shan't research this further because quite simply I don't want to know about someone who did all of this while really ill - it's not helpful.)<br />
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<br />
So this is what my life looks like at the moment, and I'm not complaining: I read in my hammock, watch the bees on the lavender, let the clouds scud past. I listen to podcasts. Friends come and we talk over coffee. Each day I walk a mile, extremely slowly. I have learned to identify some butterflies: the gatekeeper, the meadow brown, the ringlet and the black admiral. I have belatedly planted out my beans, sweet corn and courgettes, so late that they probably won't fruit, but each day I check them. I maintain the tomato plants in the greenhouse. I don't do my accounts, answer work emails, worry if various members of my family are ok. I am learning not to respond whenever someone asks me to do something. That's really hard but I can feel that it's the right thing to do.<br />
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Best of all, I've begun to think about my novel and how I'm going to rewrite it. I'm happy thinking about it, planning, writing notes. In the meantime I'm writing tiny things every day: a fragment overheard, the bones of a poem, the opening of a story. It feels so good, I think I'm beginning to recover. Maybe what I needed all along was to allow myself time and space to think and write? Maybe resting is essential to creativity? And both are essential to my health?<br />
<br />
I think I've found the answer. The art of resting is to give yourself permission to rest. It's that simple.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-84604529903250547832017-03-14T11:49:00.001+00:002017-03-14T11:49:28.503+00:00On being an inexperienced tourist in Costa Rica<br />
Last month I left my favourite earrings on a bedside table in Costa Rica.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4JINuC7w26Q/WMfMOu25AWI/AAAAAAAAA-k/zmDu0xrY8SY5MI8dreQSCoJ2gZEwS5lhACLcB/s1600/CR%2Bcoconuts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4JINuC7w26Q/WMfMOu25AWI/AAAAAAAAA-k/zmDu0xrY8SY5MI8dreQSCoJ2gZEwS5lhACLcB/s320/CR%2Bcoconuts.jpg" width="240" /></a>Get you, I hear you say. Fancy writer type, always gadding about in exotic places.<br />
<br />
Except I'm really not fancy - this was my first ever trip to the Tropics - and I'm not sure Costa Rica is exotic. I'm not sure what exotic is any more.<br />
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Don't get me wrong: every single day we were there, we stopped and thought how amazing it was to be there. But while it felt wonderful to sit beneath a palm tree with monkeys leaping above our heads and Caribbean waves crashing at our feet, it didn't feel odd or out of this world - we were very much in it.<br />
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I'd expected to feel discombobulated by being so far away from home - and I wasn't. I think I expected it to be more strange, more uncomfortable and harder to understand.<br />
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It was outrageously hot, so hot that the second you stepped out of a cold shower you were drenched in perspiration again. But that was ok: more than ok, it made us sit, be still, take time to watch, to listen, to read, to do nothing.<br />
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Oh, the sheer, glorious luxury of doing nothing in a beautiful place.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9ak45mkgjMM/WMfMm7iIt0I/AAAAAAAAA_A/VZ6btK5zCBY5teU4MKERx4KI9SMKjBIBgCLcB/s1600/CR%2Bhammocks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9ak45mkgjMM/WMfMm7iIt0I/AAAAAAAAA_A/VZ6btK5zCBY5teU4MKERx4KI9SMKjBIBgCLcB/s400/CR%2Bhammocks.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">La Leona Eco-lodge, Corcovado, on the Pacific</td></tr>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xRnXhb6sR4Q/WMfMNZhy6XI/AAAAAAAAA-g/7HEjW0-E2vgNNJaAShXjb9bqyxnSID-nACLcB/s1600/CR%2Bbananas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xRnXhb6sR4Q/WMfMNZhy6XI/AAAAAAAAA-g/7HEjW0-E2vgNNJaAShXjb9bqyxnSID-nACLcB/s200/CR%2Bbananas.jpg" width="150" /></a>And there were bananas growing everywhere, and street stalls sold coconuts instead of chestnuts. And the sea was warm. And there were hummingbirds - which have to be the most beautiful creatures I've ever seen.<br />
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And scarlet macaws are ridiculous, like pantomime birds painted by three-year-olds.<br />
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And it was hot. Did I mention that?<br />
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And there were spider monkeys in the trees just below our tent in the Corcovado. And tapirs, and anteaters and toucans and tarantulas and fer de lance vipers, and a puma that kept out of sight but was thrillingly there, somewhere, in the deep rainforest right behind us.<br />
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Obviously, at home, we don't have these things. But we have trees, and flowers and birds and furry animals, and sea all round us. So I'm familiar with the concept of wildlife even if not with the tropical specifics. And people really do seem much the same everywhere - mostly friendly, with the odd grumpy sod.<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NmJMH7iQd5A/WMaJlkf4x3I/AAAAAAAAA-Q/8T4D7ypwMX4Z_xY_m5dKFAuvfN1xC8qxgCLcB/s1600/Costa%2BRica%2Benvelope.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="145" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NmJMH7iQd5A/WMaJlkf4x3I/AAAAAAAAA-Q/8T4D7ypwMX4Z_xY_m5dKFAuvfN1xC8qxgCLcB/s640/Costa%2BRica%2Benvelope.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
Some things took a bit of getting used to. The addresses, or lack of them for one thing. This is the envelope that brought my earrings back to me from the Mar Inn. Just look at their address - 100 metres north of the ICE power company. That's it. Useful if you know where the ICE is, but otherwise rubbish, and definitely no good at all on a sat nav.<br />
<br />
So, you drive to a town and ask. And that's ok because 99 per cent of the people you meet are utterly delightful and very happy to help, even if they have no idea where the place you're looking for is either.<br />
<br />
You meet a lot of helpful people this way, and that's always good, and reassuring.<br />
<br />
And maybe that's the thing. Costa Ricans speak Spanish so I could get by without a phrasebook. Is my failure to be disorientated just down to sharing a familiar language?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AYLJ2JXW5OY/WMfMOzs1vbI/AAAAAAAAA-o/iOQ3cVRHYA8W92o82hz30Qpnnwhl0o45QCLcB/s1600/CR%2BCaribbean%2BTortuguero.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AYLJ2JXW5OY/WMfMOzs1vbI/AAAAAAAAA-o/iOQ3cVRHYA8W92o82hz30Qpnnwhl0o45QCLcB/s320/CR%2BCaribbean%2BTortuguero.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Caribbean at Tortuguero</td></tr>
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Or is it because Costa Ricans speak Spanish because for a long time the country was a Spanish colony, and maybe they're culturally quite close to Europeans? I've no idea if they really are - I wouldn't presume to comment on Tico culture after three weeks - but I never felt out of joint with the people round me, or puzzled by their behaviour, or their clothes, or the images on TV. The comedy bullfight in La Fortuna was odd, but not that odd. You don't see many men cycling in 35 degree heat in wellies and wielding a machete in Sussex, but it made sense - lycra's rubbish in the heat and a micro bike pump is no good at all in a snake-infested verge.<br />
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The thing is, I lived in Spain for three months in my 20s, and it really was disorientating. It was my first time living abroad (I was studying at university) and living there, rather than travelling around or lazing on a beach, showed me just how un-Spanish I was. For example, back then, most women students at the university in Granada lived at home, and were often chaperoned by male family members when they went out - but you wouldn't know that if you just visited for a few days to wander round the Albaicín or eat churros on the plazas.<br />
<br />
You also wouldn't know that the Guardia Civil were terrifying back then and when they marched in the Easter parade, people stepped back and looked at the ground to avoid their eyes. It was only a few years since Franco died, and they were his men still. But if you'd driven into Granada to admire the Alhambra, you wouldn't know that.<br />
<br />
I lived in France after that, and found hidden differences there too: they loved Benny Hill, for example. Saw it as a statement of French-ness to drive through red lights because the law must always be challenged. Except that everything was centralised and republican France has a class system just as powerful as Britain's, only it's a secret.<br />
<br />
So I know when I visit a place as a tourist that I really have no idea what's going on in front of me. I'll interpret it on my terms, see what I expect to see: in Spain I expected women my age to be independent like me, so I wouldn't have noticed that almost none lived away from home. I knew other people's police weren't as jolly as the British police - and I didn't have many illusions about our police, this being the early 80s, the time of the miners' strikes - but it wouldn't occur to me that they might have taken your brother and tortured him because he said something negative about the government.<br />
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It's easy to glide through a strange country and not to notice just how strange it is.<br />
<br />
And I suspect that's what I did in Costa Rica. Could I have seen more, understood more? Probably, though it takes time: I'm not the kind of person who just demands of someone that they tell me what life is really like for them. The woman serving me breakfast in her hotel, or the farm worker sitting down the counter from me in the soda don't owe me that truth and I have no right to ask it unless we build some kind of relationship, however fleeting.<br />
<br />
I talked to people, of course. The woman in the hotel and I laughed about how our children wanted us to learn new things and how we resisted them. The man in the soda was on his break, reading the paper, so I didn't interrupt him. Our guide in the lodge in the Corcovado told us all about his ultra-marathons, and how much he loved his job even though his mum wanted him to go back and study more and live near home again. The duty manager and I agreed that even if you have problems in your own life, you don't bring them to work: your clients don't want to know about them. She didn't tell me more, because I was her client.<br />
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I began to see glimpses of some people's lives in Costa Rica. That to get on, you went to San José to the university, away from home. Everyone we met who worked in tourism had a degree, was fluent in English, and took their work completely seriously: selling holidays to foreigners seems to be the future. I never heard anyone complain. But I saw that even with a post-graduate degree in Biology you might have to work mornings taking tourists on rainforest tours and the afternoon labouring on a neighbour's building site, because work is hard to come by and never well paid, and everyone round you is competing for that same sweaty tourist dollar. But despite that, you really do say 'Pura vida!' and mean it - life is cool, let's be glad. That families work together: so many places we stayed in were run by brothers, sisters, parents, spouses all living and working together and pooling their skills. I can't imagine that.<br />
<br />
I can't imagine either living in a country where the land is fundamentally not friendly.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MsheyyW4Fzg/WMfMshyG7SI/AAAAAAAAA_E/WSlrP-wR0kcqKSe83GK9fPXJ6tydYtQDQCLcB/s1600/CR%2Bsnake%2Bposter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MsheyyW4Fzg/WMfMshyG7SI/AAAAAAAAA_E/WSlrP-wR0kcqKSe83GK9fPXJ6tydYtQDQCLcB/s200/CR%2Bsnake%2Bposter.jpg" width="150" /></a>The snakes definitely aren't. In Costa Rica I discovered why snakes are symbols of fear and deviousness. They are many and they are everywhere, and there's one called the fer de lance that's both aggressive and super-venomous. It's skinny and brown and hides in the leaves by the side of a track, senses you with heat-seeking pits by its eyes, and strikes just because it can. And then you die (unless you're lucky and near a hospital, which we mostly weren't). And don't think you'll spot it before it spots you, because you won't - a fer der lance is perfectly camouflaged. We never saw one, though we knew they were there, and that was frightening.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5fbtRZCac4Q/WMfMXn7ibiI/AAAAAAAAA-w/Nt_4G72mXIQBeehKSD1fifu8FsNwYpO6gCLcB/s1600/CR%2Bcroc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5fbtRZCac4Q/WMfMXn7ibiI/AAAAAAAAA-w/Nt_4G72mXIQBeehKSD1fifu8FsNwYpO6gCLcB/s200/CR%2Bcroc.jpg" width="200" /></a>I'm not used to being frightened by the natural world. At home there's no wild creature that's out to get me. None that can harm me even by mistake, really, though I hear a pike bite can be painful.<br />
<br />
In Costa Rica, you can't just sit on the grass for a rest, or walk over to that interesting tree to look at its massive roots, or take a stroll after sunset to see what's over the hill. Even the guides are cautious about leaving the track.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Turrialba volcano at dawn</td></tr>
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And of course the earth might quake, or a volcano blow its top.<br />
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Costa Rica isn't cuddly.<br />
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Its danger is packaged up for our easy consumption though: the snakes and spiders and pumas aren't the only reason you don't just head on up a hill to see what's on the other side. That hill is probably in a reserve, a national park, or on private land, and you can't explore it without a ticket. Entry to a national park costs $15 (£12), a tour with a guide double that - plus your entry ticket. The guides are brilliant, and we would never have spotted half the animals without them, but if you're used to having the right to walk on any open land, it feels odd to pay for every step you take off the road.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7-pWMwMWS4w/WMfMaIc1M3I/AAAAAAAAA-0/w0TvQgjxsBgAKopzu3y0SHfJX6V_5rThACLcB/s1600/CR%2Bgold%2Bdigger%2Bgrave.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7-pWMwMWS4w/WMfMaIc1M3I/AAAAAAAAA-0/w0TvQgjxsBgAKopzu3y0SHfJX6V_5rThACLcB/s320/CR%2Bgold%2Bdigger%2Bgrave.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gold-digger's grave in Corcovado - settlement closed when National Park created in 1970s</td></tr>
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Of course, this does mean that Costa Rica's wonderful and precious environment is well protected, and it earns the country vital currency. But it's odd to know so clearly, almost every minute, that your role in Costa Rica is to spend money.<br />
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I think maybe the key to being a good holidaymaker is to suspend your disbelief? Perhaps being a good tourist is a bit like going to the theatre: you know there's manic activity in the wings but it's your job to ignore it and believe what you see.<br />
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I was almost successful, and I do believe that Costa Rica is outrageously beautiful, and the people wonderfully friendly. But I kept seeing glints of even more interesting things in the wings, and never quite worked out what they were.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-82146898915771958962016-11-28T12:16:00.001+00:002016-11-28T12:18:25.501+00:00How I finished the first draft of my novel<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MC1hB7OxKAk/WDwUWZEmWvI/AAAAAAAAA9A/2WOf1QKbE2M8MJOBqMpPvRFE81HY2Vb9ACK4B/s1600/IMG_2921.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MC1hB7OxKAk/WDwUWZEmWvI/AAAAAAAAA9A/2WOf1QKbE2M8MJOBqMpPvRFE81HY2Vb9ACK4B/s320/IMG_2921.JPG" width="240" /></a>Yup, I finally finished the first draft. Here it is, emerging from the printer yesterday.</div>
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Note that you can't actually see the pages, and that's no accident - they're not ready for anyone to read yet. Not even me: I'm finding it hard to resist, but I've sworn to myself to put the script aside until after Christmas. By January I hope I'll come to it with less love and understanding, and can be as brutal as I need to be for the second draft.</div>
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It feels like I started this book a long, long time ago - possibly because I started thinking about it years before I wrote a word.</div>
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Then, over a year or two, I wrote a whole load of words that I deleted straight away. I couldn't work out where my story was going or who would tell it.</div>
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So in September 2015, I booted myself into action on the 12-week online course at the <a href="https://www.unthankschool.com/" target="_blank">Unthank School</a>. This was intense - especially as I was working pretty flat out at the time - but I committed to writing something every day for those twelve weeks, and I did. Sometimes I only managed 20 minutes while the potatoes boiled for dinner, but I always wrote. I mapped out my plot, got to know my main characters, wrote 5,000 words, rewrote them completely, in a new voice and from a new point of view, and by the end of December I had over 15,000 words.</div>
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Maybe I'm a wimp, but after Christmas, I collapsed a little bit. I confess I didn't have the steam to keep on writing every day.</div>
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And I was beginning to find it hard to dive into the novel and clamber straight out again before my hair was even wet. (I promise I use better metaphors than that in the novel.)</div>
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But I did keep on writing in the nooks and crannies of my life and by the early summer I had almost 55,000 words. The end was in sight, but I really, really wanted to write the rest in one go, not in little bits and pieces.</div>
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I booked August off (I'm self-employed so that meant telling precious clients I wouldn't be around, and earning nothing for four weeks - no small deal). But I spent most of it sorting out care for a beloved aunt. To make myself feel a tiny bit better I skidaddled off to Hastings on my own for four days of nothing but writing, and was briefly very happy. Then I returned to my desk and wrote almost nothing of the novel for a couple of months.</div>
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I was deeply frustrated, and felt that my novel and I were in danger of falling out of love. I knew I had to immerse myself in it, but daily life (mine at least) just doesn't allow for immersion.</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pn_vWl4Uj-0/WDwcwrJrf9I/AAAAAAAAA9c/B-e1LWe4uIIitR0KtNNErBB0cjXPwJYegCK4B/s1600/Photo%2B16-11-2016%252C%2B18%2B43%2B28.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pn_vWl4Uj-0/WDwcwrJrf9I/AAAAAAAAA9c/B-e1LWe4uIIitR0KtNNErBB0cjXPwJYegCK4B/s320/Photo%2B16-11-2016%252C%2B18%2B43%2B28.jpg" width="180" /></a>So I booked myself onto a writers' retreat - ten days in Spain, at <a href="http://www.casa-ana.com/" target="_blank">Casa Ana</a> - and told myself that I'd write and write while I was there, and that if it was humanly possible, I'd finish before I came home.</div>
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And I did. Casa Ana turned out to be perfect for me: high in the mountains of the Alpujarra, remote, silent, almost empty. My fellow writers were warm and generous, we were mollycoddled from dawn till dusk, and everyone was there to work: it was easy to write all day, from before breakfast till dinner in the evening. (And the food was wonderful!)</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fE_oWNSZcQU/WDwdA_udJBI/AAAAAAAAA9k/PjrVwVFeDtspV8Ep8kN8qBO_f8XIpo92ACK4B/s1600/Photo%2B17-11-2016%252C%2B16%2B09%2B56.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fE_oWNSZcQU/WDwdA_udJBI/AAAAAAAAA9k/PjrVwVFeDtspV8Ep8kN8qBO_f8XIpo92ACK4B/s320/Photo%2B17-11-2016%252C%2B16%2B09%2B56.jpg" width="320" /></a>I'd been afraid I wouldn't be able to write for more than a couple of hours a day, because at home that's all I seem to have the stamina for. But Casa Ana proved that if I have no responsibility other than to writing, I can focus completely on it without feeling the need to run away. I didn't stick to my desk all that time - I walked every day, and I lay on my bed and thought about my characters and what was happening to them. But I didn't think about anything else. It was heaven. And I finished the first draft at five o'clock on my last day. The ending's a bit shonky but that's ok, it's a first draft and I know I can make it better.</div>
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So I'm happy. But I'm also feeling a bit flat - I'm missing being inside my story, and I'm sort of hesitating about celebrating because I know I haven't finished really. But I'll be back with the novel soon enough, and I'm pretty sure I've done the hard part. (Could be beginner's naivety, but I'm feeling positive so don't pop my balloon, please.)</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--b1TSIzz9mE/WDwa0s_KiUI/AAAAAAAAA9Q/krfhkH6KzIEkQVNlxpsFFuiLeKaN0Y5MgCK4B/s1600/IMG_2932.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/--b1TSIzz9mE/WDwa0s_KiUI/AAAAAAAAA9Q/krfhkH6KzIEkQVNlxpsFFuiLeKaN0Y5MgCK4B/s200/IMG_2932.JPG" width="150" /></a>And in the meantime, I'm celebrating a little bit. Here's the piece of jewellery by <a href="http://www.karajewellery.co.uk/" target="_blank">Kara</a> that I bought this time last year. I promised myself I'd only wear it when I'd completed the first draft. It's heavy on my arm, and I love it. Now it's reminding me of the work I still have to do, and I can't wait.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-2885566780582869842016-10-19T15:02:00.000+01:002016-10-19T17:58:49.583+01:00I win a weighty prize!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rhAkYm8ZO8Q/WAd69GYNKmI/AAAAAAAAA8g/V3euqmIm2owkHhNpnFB4JMdtWu_0uE5LgCK4B/s1600/SarahButler-cert2%2Bcopy%2Bsmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rhAkYm8ZO8Q/WAd69GYNKmI/AAAAAAAAA8g/V3euqmIm2owkHhNpnFB4JMdtWu_0uE5LgCK4B/s400/SarahButler-cert2%2Bcopy%2Bsmall.jpg" title="(c) Elise Valmorbida" width="300" /></a></div>
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Yesterday I had coffee (and a rather nice cookie) with <a href="https://www.facebook.com/elise.valmorbida/" target="_blank">Elise Valmorbida</a> and we talked translation, writing in another language and the joys of taking yourself away to write. And that was good enough for me, but the reason why we met yesterday was even more wonderful:<br />
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I won a prize!<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gIg9rJhJiHk/WAd6_IyRoaI/AAAAAAAAA8o/10wjkyZ8r0UqJcHPjK6COwifdlUXqJXYwCK4B/s1600/SarahButler-trophy%2Bcopy%2Bsmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gIg9rJhJiHk/WAd6_IyRoaI/AAAAAAAAA8o/10wjkyZ8r0UqJcHPjK6COwifdlUXqJXYwCK4B/s400/SarahButler-trophy%2Bcopy%2Bsmall.jpg" title="(c) Elise Valmorbida" width="272" /></a></div>
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The trophy is an amazing object in itself - the real piece of letterpress from which my certificate was printed. It weighs a ton, and I can't quite move my fingers yet from carrying it home yesterday. It's sitting on my desk right now, making my day feel extremely splendid.<br />
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Winning this award was pretty much a complete surprise. Over a year ago I wrote a poem about the matron's mallet at the <a href="http://foundlingmuseum.org.uk/" target="_blank">Foundling Museum</a>. (I blogged about it <a href="http://underthebookshelf.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/a-foundling-pulling-poem-from-almost.html" target="_blank">here</a>.) I read my poem there last autumn, and it was a pleasure.<br />
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I didn't really think about the poem again until a couple of weeks ago when an email pinged into my inbox telling me I'd been shortlisted by <a href="https://26.org.uk/" target="_blank">26</a> for their award for the best piece of writing on a 26 project. Could I come to the annual 26 shindig, Wordstock, in case I won?<br />
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Sadly I couldn't as I already had plans. A few days later, sworn to secrecy, another email arrived. Could I possibly make a short acceptance video?<br />
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Good lord - I'd won!<br />
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Now winning an award is wonderful - even if you've read your work aloud to a polite audience <i>and</i> your mum says it's jolly good, it's hard to believe it really is worth anything (or at least I found it hard to believe it) until a team of judges picks it out and says, yes, we really like this!<br />
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So thank you, 26, I'm thrilled.<br />
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And thank you Elise, for that other huge positive of winning an award - getting to meet a wonderful writer and spend a seriously civilised morning together over coffee.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4829827151608669978.post-84905682018338785342016-09-27T10:57:00.000+01:002016-09-27T10:57:06.508+01:00I need more time, or is that an excuse?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fckbKZR9CFs/V-o91-6fJyI/AAAAAAAAA78/9gpGRcUAG5ohWAVrDD4Sg0OP07gAfSqgwCK4B/s1600/2016-08-24%2B14.16.46.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fckbKZR9CFs/V-o91-6fJyI/AAAAAAAAA78/9gpGRcUAG5ohWAVrDD4Sg0OP07gAfSqgwCK4B/s640/2016-08-24%2B14.16.46.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
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Last month I wrote about taking August off to write. It didn't go quite according to plan and I'm wondering if that's because I'm not dedicated enough to my writing. Maybe I'm not really a writer, deep inside? Do I need to be more single-minded, more disciplined? More obsessed?<br />
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A writer I respect once told me that writing must come first, always. It took me years to get over her dictum because I knew that a sad child or an ill partner would always come first for me, so I believed I couldn't be a proper writer.<br />
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The thing is, that life has a tendency of happening at you even if your main character is teetering on the brink and desperately needs you to write the next scene.<br />
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Real though my characters are to me, they don't die if I ignore them for a few weeks. They just get a bit pale and I get frustrated.<br />
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So here's what happened with my glorious month off. I spent the first two weeks of it sorting out family stuff that popped up the moment I cleared my desk. Very neat timing, very frustrating, but needs must.<br />
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Or must they? I'm willing to bet that Virginia Woolf and James Joyce and all those people I think of as serious writers didn't abandon their manuscripts for weeks while they drove around the country sorting out care packages, or interrogating GPs, or comforting someone whose life's about to change completely. Or, come to that, buying the weekly shop and cooking the evening meals.<br />
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The thing is, these things I do are part of me, so they're also part of me as a writer. I don't write domestic dramas, but I do write stories with people in them and everything I do feeds my writing.<br />
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The problem is finding time and space to think about my story and put the resulting words on the page.<br />
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Not writing for those first two weeks of August was awful. I got angry. I felt bad about being angry but I'm just not going to write a novel when someone I love is struggling. In the third week of August though, things calmed down and I wrote and wrote.<br />
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Then I had one week left. Just one week - I'd hoped to finish my first draft over the summer and there was no way, absolutely no way I could do that. What's more my house would be full of people, and I'd never be able to concentrate - I wanted to be able to wander around talking to myself, lie on the floor to think, write at midnight or ten in the morning, whatever it took. So I took a deep breath, rented a flat in Hastings for four days, and caught the train with a bag holding my laptop and a swimming costume, and told my family that I was running away.<br />
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I think they understood. My family is a lovely family.<br />
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Hastings was heaven. I wrote, I thought, I wrote and I thought. I swam and walked up the cliffs. I slept after breakfast and dreamed of my characters and no one interrupted them. I talked to no one except some old friends with whom I had supper one night, and Deborah behind the bar of the Crown pub opposite, who made me excellent coffee each morning. That's all the human contact I needed.<br />
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I'm back now, and working again. But a month away from my desk - even if half of it wasn't spent writing - has given me a fresh determination to finish my novel. I took a couple of hours off yesterday to write and I'll do the same today.<br />
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That's a piece of chocolate and Guinness cake, by the way, and some of the best coffee Tunbridge Wells can provide. Thank you Black Dog café, top writing spot of yesterday.<br />
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The thing is, I suspect that writing slow suits me. I've only just understood my second main character's motivation. I began to see it last week while watching a bunch of people at a neighbouring breakfast table in a conference centre play power over their muesli. I spent the next few days driving up and down the country listening to old, old music, with that scene simmering in my mind. It's on the page now, transplanted and transformed and I know what's happening in my story far better. Sometimes a good story just takes time, and I'm ok with that.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0