Notes on a Writing Life / 80

December 14 2025

Dear All,

As this is my eightieth newsletter and the last one of this year, I’m going to indulge in a backward look across the year, as well as perhaps dare a forward look.

This time last year, we in the US were teetering on the edge of changes so profound and disturbing that we’d not been able to imagine them.  January 20 began an era of what felt like a series of electric shocks, and they continued during the first 100 days of the new regime here.

Personally and collectively, we felt knocked sideways – alarmed, ashamed and helpless. I’m glad to say that since then, we have picked ourselves up somewhat, protested en masse, witnessed acts of extraordinary courage by individual people, supported each other in the best ways we could.  It hasn’t been enough, of course, but it’s ongoing.  I have gained support and encouragement from many: in the media, Rebecca Solnit, Dan Rather, Heather Cox Richardson, the astrologer Pam Gregory - people I have never met but read regularly and who give me not exactly comfort, but reasons to hope.  Hope, as Rebecca Solnit has said, is not a feeling but an attitude.

I left the US in June, glad to be able to take time out in Europe and England.  As the plane rose out of Atlanta airport heading for Paris, I felt relief to be airborne.  My time in Paris was restorative; I wrote, saw friends, walked in parks, went to films, sat in cafes – and read e-mails from those who were still in the US, where ICE was ramping up its attacks on immigrants and fear walked the streets of cities, including my own. People in Europe asked me – will you go back? I wasn’t at all sure. My own country, even though in a political mess too, called to me. I spent weeks alone in Dorset, walking, thinking, writing a bit, swimming, at home in a way that I am really not anywhere else; it’s the place of my childhood.  I visited friends in Deal, in London, in Oxford.  I have a UK passport, I could return; they assured me, welcomed me, made suggestions. I spent time with my adult children, and spent a happy week with my brother’s family in our loved place in Dorset. I went to Amsterdam and stayed for peaceful days with my niece and her little family there. I went back to Paris. I felt loved, accepted, supported, everywhere I went. It was a time of grace.

I’m so grateful for this loving support from you all on that side of the pond; you know who you are.

At last, I left London in September on a flight back to the US, uncertain of what I might find, uncertain of my own ability to be here. My husband met me at the airport in Key West and drove me home through the streets of this town where we have lived for 30 years now, my home port as he once called it. And I found I was at home here, too.  I met friends on the street, saw my neighbors, settled back into my studio, went to swim in the ocean, and after a week or two of adjustment, realized that I can be at home both here and there, and that wherever I am, I can be wholly present. Whatever is going on, it’s not going to throw me off course for long. In Key West, we say – we don’t run from storms, we prepare for them.

I’ve been re-reading Pico Iyer’s book “Aflame” about his visits to a Californian monastery, choosing times of silence in the midst of a busy, travelling life. He says that the point of those times alone and with monks is to be able to go back into the world, changed. It’s not, for him, to be permanently monastic, but to balance out a busy life.  I feel that my time alone in Paris and in England, and my connections with all the loved people on that side of the Atlantic, gave me the ability to come back, and be here, and face along with my fellows, Americans, immigrants like myself, what this country is going through after 250 years as a nation.

Day by day, hour by hour, we choose our point of view.  I’m choosing hope – not exactly optimism, but the hope that believes in an underlying sanity in this universe. It’s a daily discipline, much like Pico’s choice of daily choosing silence, in order to take the quiet fire of it into the outside world.

Affectionately, and bon courage - Ros

PS.  While I was in France, I met up with Nadine Pinède and David Rothenberg and one evening in Paris we hatched a delicious plan, for a retreat in Arles for May 2026.  Here’s the website address:  comingtooursensesretreat.com

While I was in England I signed a contract with Jaynie Royal at Regal House, NC, for my new novel, “Indigo Sky At Noon”, to be published in 2027.  Michael Walmer in Shetland has also brought out a new edition, 50 years on from its first appearance, of my short story collection “No Such Thing As a Free Lunch.”

Sometimes the writing life appears to have its own quiet momentum, running like the underground river Bièvre under the streets of Paris…even if the writer herself may feel that she has gone astray.

Notes on a Writing Life / 79

November 14 2025

Dear All,

I named this newsletter “Notes on a Writing Life” a few years ago, when I began its monthly entries – but what, I suddenly think, is a writing life, exactly?  Margaret Atwood, whose witty and informative “ Book of Lives, a memoir of sorts” I am now reading, says that a memoir of a writer’s life is bound to be boring, as it will be “I wrote a book. Then I wrote another book. Then, another. And another…”  But as her own new book shows, it’s the bits in between that are interesting – i.e. the life of the person who’s doing the writing.  But that could be boring, too, unless the writer has an unusually interesting life – which they don’t, because they are spending their time sitting at a desk…  A conundrum.

Anyway, this week I received a letter from Canada from a woman I don’t know, but who knows I’m here and was a friend of Marie-Claire Blais.  It’s a first-day envelope with a picture Marie-Claire on the front, a stamp with a photo of her when young, and a quote from her on the back in French and English.  “On écrit parce qu’on a une vision du monde et on veut le partager avec le plus de monde possible. Il y a ce besoin de communiquer et de décrire l’univers.” “We write because we have a vision of the world and we want to share it with as many people as possible.  There is this need to communicate and to describe the universe.” Canadians do everything twice, once in each language.

It shows me too how Canadians treat their prized female authors – Margaret Atwood has already had a stamp with her on it.  Not like here, in the US, where stamps have to be sporty, or animals, or patriotic, or show men doing things.  In England, we finally got around to Jane Austen’s picture on a bank note, 200 years after her death.

So, what do writers do when they are not writing?  Answer: sit around talking to friends, drink, eat, travel, try to pay the bills, fall in love, have kids or not, and occasionally try to sort out the world, which in some places lands them in jail.

We also exhort other people to write.  And this brings me to further news of our Retreat in Arles, coming up this summer, called “Coming To Our Senses.”  I’m so much looking forward to hanging out with the extraordinarily nice people who have signed up so far.  We will be attempted to “write our senses” – describe the universe, as Marie-Claire says, but in a particular and very focused way.  We will start by going and listening to birds.  How do you describe birdsong?  Then, having meals. How write of taste, and sensation?  Do you resort to metaphors – “this wine tastes of old leather shoes and blackcurrant with a dash of sea spray” or simply cop out, like Shelley in his “To a Skylark?”  “Hail to thee, blithe spirit/bird thou never wert” has always seemed to me a feeble way of describing a bird.  “Bird thou wert” would be more honest – but I imagine he simply had to abstract the poor bird and make it into something other-worldly.  We won’t be doing much of the other-worldly – rather looking closely, listening closely, tasting carefully, paying attention to the actual world, the world of Arles, France, and its surroundings in May 2026, and the world of our own sensations.

I hope I have convinced you to think of coming to join us. It’s going to be enormous fun.  I’ll end with a quote from Shelley’s friend Keats, in his “Ode to a Nightingale” where he moves on to the wine tasting part: “O for a beaker full of the warm South/ full of the true, the blissful Hippocrene/with beaded bubbles winking at the brim…”  Here’s to it.  Santé.

Affectionately, Ros

Notes on a Writing Life / 78

October 14 2025

Dear All,

The season is changing here in Key West, with days of autumn rain and a drop in temperature at last. People say that we don’t have seasons here, but it’s not true; you feel the change in the sound of rain on leaves, a tiny breath of air on skin, the shape of clouds, the color of the ocean, darkness at morning and evening, and the sweep and brilliance of sunsets. Living here makes you aware, not of a dramatic change but a subtle one, a shift of emphasis, a taste of newness.

With the fall here, so close to the equator that sometimes even the trees get confused about when to flower, my thoughts turn to spring in Provence and our Coming To Our Senses retreat in Arles, next May. Some of you will have received news of it already, and several people have signed up, so I’m delighted to think that we will be there from May 16 to 23, in the city to which Van Gogh came to live the last years of his life. Light matters to painters; it mattered especially to the Impressionists and those who painted out of doors, en plein air, like Cézanne and Van Gogh. Artists have always gathered where the light is. For Van Gogh, it was transformative; you only have to look at his early paintings of gleaners and potato pickers on winter days in the Netherlands and then his paintings in the South of France to see that.

Light is also what draws people to Key West. Elizabeth Bishop wrote to Robert Lowell, “When somebody says ‘beautiful’ about Key West, you really should take it with a grain of salt... the ‘beauty’ is just the light, or something equally perverse.” Perverse or not, the effects of the light remain.

Leonard Cohen sang, “There’s a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” We crave the light, and we know it comes and goes. Primitive peoples waited in tension through the winter to see if the light would return. When you arrive in Provence, the light seems to crack you open a little bit; when you arrive in Key West, especially in winter, the clarity of the light gives us the deep blue of the sky, the brilliance of flowers, the color of the water.

And I notice, belatedly, that I write about it all the time. (Light Over Islands, Indigo Sky at Noon.) It’s probably why I came to live here.

The information about the Arles retreat went out to many of you a day or two ago, with instructions about how to sign up and join us if the spirit moves you, so I won’t repeat it all here. But here is our website, with all the details about us, about the place, about the event: www.comingtooursensesretreat.com

I do hope some of you will be able to join us and experience, as well as the early summer light of Provence, the joy of listening to birdsong, celebrating our senses, writing what we see, hear, and feel.

Affectionately,
Ros

P.S. My 50-year-old collection of short stories No Such Thing As A Free Lunch is now available from Michael Walmer, Sandness Press, Little Pradies, 13a Melby, Sandness, Shetland ZE2 9PL; through UK bookshops, Ingram in the US, and Amazon, reprinted with an introduction by the novelist A.L. Kennedy.

Notes on a Writing Life / 77

September 14 2025

Dear All,

I first came here to our family’s Paris apartment in the 5th arrondissement in 2008, and stayed for most of the summer, writing a novel.  I’ve sat at this round table beside the window for so many summers, working on fiction and poetry, then clearing the table to have dinner with friends. Now, these years later, I’m packing it all up, preparing to sell.  In between, books and poems, dinners and lunches, meetings with new and old friends, family visits, and most importantly, time alone.  The place fits me like a glove, as someone once said, creating a useful cliché in the days when everyone wore gloves. And now I’m peeling it off, or peeling myself off: I’m sending packages, taking piles of books to give to the local library, sorting CD’s, emptying cupboards and closets.  I’ve done this before in life, emptied my own house in Edinburgh, helped to empty my mother’s house after her death, and here I am doing it again. It’s never easy, for someone who likes to create an ambiance, rather than take one apart. Nostalgia can stop me in my tracks. Rereading everyone’s entries in the visitors’ book we’ve kept for friends who have come here. Remembering that restaurant, that exhibition, the time the vacuum cleaner broke, the noise the old washer used to make; the men in the courtyard down below who used to take sausages and cheese out at 8 am with a trundling sound, to drive it all over Paris. The way the poplar in the courtyard has grown.  The geraniums in the window box and how I’m always exhorting people to water them.  The view of the Paris sky over the rooftops at dawn, the water running down gutters, the clang of the downstairs door.  Memories crowd in, and it feels hard. I think of Elizabeth Bishop’s great poem about loss “The art of losing isn’t hard to master…”  I think, yes it is, and know that she felt that too.

Then a friend reminds me that behind every loss, there is something new waiting.  Sadness is only half the story; you let go, and happiness of a different sort may come, another point of view, another place, another opportunity.  A poet friend gave me his new book of poems this week, “Un Pas De Coté” – a step aside – and in it I find his theme, that one step to the side can give you a new view, shed a new light, make you notice something you haven’t seen before, glimpse a way through.

Emptying out – a suitable activity perhaps for this time of life.  (How many of us dread the idea that someone younger will find after our death, a meaningless pile of clutter?)  I play Rachmaninov at full volume and cry as I work; then I laugh at the drama, and move on.  The sky of September is blue and wild with white puffy clouds that scoot before the wind, and the leaves are beginning to fall, and chestnuts litter the pavements.  The markets are full of mushrooms and nuts and carts full of different sorts of apples. I love it all, and yet am leaving it. I’ll be back – but not here, not in this place where so much life has been lived, where I have been so consistently happy. I’ll be a visitor, not a semi-resident.  Change happens, and more change. The moon eclipsed last week, after turning red above the street, I’ll be back in the US next week, and as another French friend wrote: “quant à l'avenir – qui sait?”  Who knows what the future will bring?

 Meanwhile, our plans for the Coming to Our Senses Retreat in Arles, May 16–23, 2026, are moving ahead, and we’re putting the final touches in place. I’ll be joined by David Rothenberg and Nadine Pinede for a week of deep listening, mindful reconnection, and creative renewal. You can sign up on our landing page now to be added to the list, and we’ll be updating the site soon with full registration and details: comingtooursensesretreat.com

It’s going to be such a treat, and I’m looking forward to it already.

Affectionately, Ros

Notes on a Writing Life / 76

August 14 2025

Dear All,

I am writing from the quiet and leafy greenness of rural Dorset, which is where this particular “camino” is – but it could almost have been in Galicia, in Spain, or in south-western France, where I walked the way to Santiago de Compostela on two occasions; in 2010 with my brother and sister-in-law and friends going from Astorga in northern Spain to Santiago, and in 2018 with another brother, taking the way from Le Puy to Conques, in France.  Last year, I led a writing retreat close to the Camino, at Flores del Camino, and walked some of the way together with the group.  So, the Camino de Santiago de Compostela has been in my life, on and off, for some time.

One of the traditional starting-points for the pilgrimage in the Middle Ages was Arles, in southern France.  So, it seems a fitting place for another ‘retreat’ which will take place in May of next year, 2026.  Our idea of a retreat based on “Coming to Our Senses” may resonate in more ways than one; it’s about paying attention to what our five – or more – senses tell us: hearing, feeling, seeing, smelling, tasting, about general awareness to our sensual selves and the place on the planet where we find ourselves, as well as about place, memory, history.  David, Nadine and I met in France earlier this year, and decided that a retreat using our shared talents, in a beautiful, historically fascinating place rich in birdsong (see below) might be just what the doctor ordered for many of us in this time of complicated and stressful events.  (I’m particularly fascinated by David Rothenberg’s approach to birdsong and music; only recently did I discover that my gloom about there being no more dawn chorus these days was connected to my own hearing loss and need for good hearing aids!)

After the 6-day retreat, there will also be an opportunity for people to walk out of Arles on the Camino – individual bookings in advance – with b&bs along the way.

Here are some of the details.  Our web page will be available shortly.

COMING TO OUR SENSES
A retreat for deep listening, mindful reconnection, and creative renewal

May 16-24, 2026 | Arles, France
10 participants · 3 guides · 8 days

“The world is full of music, and all we have to do is stop and listen.”
— David Rothenberg, Grammy-award winning musician, author, and philosopher

Slow down. Pay Attention. Everything is Connected.

In the flowering warmth of May, Coming to Our Senses invites you to step out of noise and into resonance. This intimate retreat in Provence is a sensorial journey back to the natural world—and back to yourself.

Experience the magic of dawn birdsong with interspecies musician David Rothenberg, author Why Birds Sing. Visit a glorious bird sanctuary in the Camargue and its languorous beaches at Ste Marie de la Mer. Listen to the secret sounds of ponds and the primeval rhythm of cicadas. Learn to use all your senses to write about place. Discover what made Arles a muse to Van Gogh and others, and why it still inspires creatives around the world

For six days, we gather as travelers, seekers, and creatives to attune to the wisdom of birdsong, water, place, and the body’s quiet knowing. Through guided soundwalks, generative writing, and embodied practices, we remember what it means to use all our senses to reconnect with the natural world.

This is not a retreat of escape. It’s a retreat of return.

THE EXPERIENCE
Led by a small team of renowned creatives, Coming to Our Senses weaves sound, writing,
visual awareness, history, and place into a living experience of presence.

Deep Listening & Soundwalks with David Rothenberg
  Explore silence, vibration, and wild soundscapes with award-winning musician,
author & philosopher of nature.

Writing in Place with Rosalind Brackenbury
Craft and uncover stories of place, memory, and belonging with award-winning novelist
and writing guide. Be inspired by Arles as a starting point for the Camino de Santiago.

Arles as Creative Muse with Nadine Pinede
  Discover Arles as muse for Vincent Van Gogh and his deep connection to the natural world.
Nurture your own resilience in the face of life challenges with inner compassion,
delight, rewilding, and poetry.

Shared Meals & curated excursions: Slow food, local flavors, and a rhythm that honors rest and reconnection.

Les bureaux d'Actes Sud, à Arles. © Gérard Julien / AFP

Special outings, such as:
* Savor a private meal with France’s former Culture Minister and founder of an innovative school that centers learning through the natural world
* Tour France’s celebrated publishing house and bookstore Actes Sud, with the editor of their imprint dedicated to books on nature
* Visit a unique bird sanctuary and the unspoiled beaches of the Camargue
* Enjoy a private screening of Nightingales in Berlin, followed by a talk with its subject, David Rothenberg
* Tour the Frank Gehry designed LUMA tower and art complex
* Take in the exhibits at the Fondation Van Gogh

WHO THIS IS FOR
Those who wonder why birds sing, and why they sing together at dawn. Those who long to turn down the volume and slow down the pace of their lives by reconnecting to the ancient rhythms of the natural world.

We welcome curious, sensitive souls, including solo travelers, educators, artists, and seekers—ready to slow down and rediscover their senses. You do not need to be a writer or musician—only willing to listen deeply, look intelligently, be open to new sensations, and show up as you are.

This retreat will be limited to 10 participants.

WHO WE ARE
David Rothenberg is known for his work playing live with birds, whales, bugs, and ponds, performing concerts with these more-than-human musicians, teaching, and writing books about it, like Why Birds Sing, Bug Music, and Survival of the Beautiful. He has more than forty recordings out, including One Dark Night I Left My Silent House  and Lost Steps. He has performed or recorded with Pauline Oliveros, Peter Gabriel, and Suzanne Vega. In 2024 he won a Grammy Award as part of For the Birds, in the category of Best Boxed Set. Whale Music and Secret Sounds of Ponds are his latest books. Rothenberg has been teaching this kind of thing for more than three decades, to musicians and non-musicians alike.

Nadine Pinede is a lover of nature, the arts, slow food—and lavender. She writes prose and poetry for curious readers of all ages. Her books include an upcoming anthology of Black poets and nature, When the Mapou Sings, An Invisible Geography, and several nonfiction books for children. Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times and CNN.com, her fiction in Haiti Noir and her poetry on National Public Radio. Nadine teaches creative writing for the Miami Book Fair and the Highlights Foundation and leads a series on Self-compassion for Creatives for the Writing Barn. She is the first Rhodes scholar of Haitian descent and has worked with environmental activists throughout Haiti and Latin America. Her recent diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome inspired her to create “Coming to Our Senses.”

Rosalind Brackenbury has published poetry, novels and non-fiction and has taught Creative Writing workshops in the UK, the US and Australia.  She was Writing Fellow in 2007 and 2012 at the College of William and Mary, VA, and was Key West’s Poet Laureate in 2015-2017.  She currently teaches creativity classes based on Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way at the Studios of Key West, as well as generative poetry and fiction workshops.  She bases her classes and workshops on the belief that every student can and will find their way to their own creative processes.  In June, 2024 she taught “Writing in Place”, at the Flores Retreat Center, on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. Her new novel “Indigo Sky At Noon,” a mystery/love story set in Provence, has just been accepted for publication in 2027 by Regal House Press, NC.

Van Gogh painted Café Terrace at Night in Arles, France, in mid-September 1888.

WHY ARLES?

The magnificent light drew Van Gogh and other pilgrims. In fact, Arles holds a special place in the story of pilgrimage. It’s one of the four traditional starting points in France for the Camino de Santiago, and it’s known as the Via Tolosana. Pilgrims have set out from Arles for centuries, passing through Toulouse and crossing the Pyrenees into Spain to join the Camino Frances.  The city itself was a vital Roman and medieval crossroads, offering hospitality and spiritual grounding for travelers. To gather for a retreat in Arles is to step on to ancient pilgrim ground - a threshold where a sacred journey of return begins.

I would love to see some of you, the patient readers of this newsletter, in person, in Arles next year…

Affectionately, Ros

Full details and pricing coming soon. If you can already feel “Coming To Our Senses” calling to you, please email me directly at rozbrackenbury@icloud.com to be placed at the top of the interest list.

Notes on a Writing Life / A Forgotten Book Returns

A Forgotten Book Returns

Friends, I’m so happy to share this beautiful revival of No Such Thing as a Free Lunch — a long-lost short story collection by Rosalind Brackenbury, originally published in the 1970s with whimsical illustrations by her then-husband, Michael Brackenbury.

Thanks to the small press magic of Michael Walmer and a glowing new introduction by Scottish novelist A.L. Kennedy, this vibrant, fearless little book has come back to life — and even made its way into Waterstones’ summer promotion list!

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In the early 1970’s when my children were young and I was relatively young too and in between publishers, I decided to try and publish a collection of short stories.  My then husband, Michael Brackenbury, drew the pictures.  We did it for fun, and it was fun. A small press in Leicester, England, picked it up. The printer made a fuss about working on it as one of the pictures was what is now called “graphic” – well, of course it was graphic, it was a drawing.  It was not any more shocking than anything Aubrey Beardsley might have drawn at the turn of the century. And hey, this was the 70’s.

So this comes with a warning – explicit content, beware!

The energetic and resourceful publisher of forgotten books, Michael Walmer, has re-published this little book, and the Scottish novelist A.L. Kennedy, whose most recent novel, Alive in the Merciful Country, was published last year, wrote an introduction which makes me grateful to her forever.  The quotes below are from her:

“In a way, a reissue of No Such Thing As A Free Lunch is entirely apposite. The booklet appeared in 1975. In the UK economic disparity between rich and poor was hovering around its lowest point in our history. And here we may pause to consider the 70’s as a culturally vibrant decade for Britain – not just when it came to music, fashion, film and visual art – and reaching out to Europe. This was a decade of easy booklet publications, underground editions and a diverse publishing landscape stretching from indy magazines, to established literary houses making their way, if not making millions.”

“…Brackenbury’s prose and imagination are generous. They constantly beckon – come and see, come and taste, come and say, come and feel, come and be. The sheer livingness of life is everywhere – in plants, objects, landscapes and animals, in the wild futures people run towards, or amputate before they become too overwhelming.”

“Brackenbury understands that light that prose can give in dismal times, she writes of the comfort in having a hand to hold in the dark. This little collection is a light to follow and hand to hold. I’m so glad it’s back in circulation, here for all of us.”   A. L. Kennedy 2024

Now, Waterstones in the UK has included our book in its list of summer “promotions” and the links to buy it are below. The original copies of this rare book have mostly disappeared – I do not even have a copy – so it’s an opportunity to seize. The offer for this promotion begins on July 28 and runs for just a few days.  Of course, you can buy it after that but it will cost you more!

With my heartfelt thanks to Michael Walmer for his beautiful recreation of a lost work, and to A.L. Kennedy for her glowing introduction of it to the world of 2025, that I simply could not have imagined back in the 1970’s. My stories, and Mike’s illustrations are, as she says, from a more innocent and optimistic time. But I don’t have to blow my own trumpet here, as she has done it for me.

Thanks for reading.

Click on coupon below …

Notes on a Writing Life / 75

July 14 2025

Dear All,

July 14 is, of course, the day that the Bastille was stormed in France in 1789. There were not many left to liberate in the Bastille that day, but many of them had grown old in jail and must have emerged perplexed by the new order.  Liberty, equality, fraternity – it was all a far cry from the old regime.  Dare we hope that a similar act of courage and decisiveness could take place in our time, setting prisoners free?

Lately, I have become obsessed with trees.  At a time of stress in the world and unusual heat, they cool us down, offer us a long-term vision.  It takes time, for a tree to grow and become mature; they will not be hurried. As a young person, I climbed them, made tree-houses in them and hid from adults in their leafy branches. Trees were ships at sea, castles, hide-outs, look-outs, refuges from the world.  They had personalities and qualities, and as I spent hours in them, I got to know them well – the sycamore, the copper beech, the vast cedar, the rhododendron, they were my familiar haunts.

My tree-climbing days are long gone, but trees figure in life now in a different way – they are our heritage as surely as books and writing, our connection with the past and our ability to survive in the future.  In the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, I went sit once again with my spine pressed against the vast solidity of the cedar that Jussieu planted in the mid-18th century.  In Oxford, where I am at present, I walk early in the University Parks from tree to tree, grateful to the long-dead people who planted them, enjoying their gift of deep shade in a blazing hot summer.  In Key West, where we need deep shade more than ever, ancient mahoganies are felled because they are ‘unsafe’, I mourn for them and feel the extra heat of the sun generated by their absence.

There is a contest being run here at present in the UK by the Wildlife Society, to find Britain’s most venerable tree.  Judi Dench has pointed out that some trees existed before Shakespeare wrote.  There is the cedar that the Beatles sat in, and the vast oak at Sissinghurst that figures in Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando.  Trees matter – they always have – but now, in these times of climate crisis, they save our day, shelter and protect, make our public places livable.  We need them as never before.

As a child, I loved not only trees, but stationery cupboards.  At our small school in the 1950’s, the stationery cupboard was in a room called the Green Room, which you entered from behind the blackboard.  Here was a treasure trove, a stack of pristine untouched exercise books, and the sight and smell of them gave me untold excitement.  To be allowed to take a new book and open it, to write my name on the page, was a particular, almost erotic pleasure.  I still feel much the same way about clean paper – and knowing that it comes from trees, am grateful in retrospect, for them giving up their material essence, that we may write books that people can hold in their hands.

The connection between trees and writing is of course, our material, paper.  We writers know that we use trees; but we can, happily, recycle paper and re-use it.  I’m glad that my contract with a new editor, Jaynie Royal at Regal House Press, includes a clause on the press’s consciousness about the use of paper, and climate change in general.  And that leads me – I got here by a roundabout route – to announcing that my new novel Indigo Sky At Noon, has just now found a home with this very forward-looking and innovative small publishing house in North Carolina.

Go well, stay cool,

Affectionately, Ros

Notes on a Writing Life / 74

June 14 2025

Dear All,

After various problems at the new Key West airport, a computer insisting that I needed a visa to visit France and England (I don’t – it was wrong), I have just arrived in Paris.  It’s hot, but not as hot as Key West, and I inhabit an ancient stone building with walls thick enough to keep it cool except in a prolongued ‘canicule’ or heatwave.  (Remember when we used to have ‘heatwaves’?  Now it’s just heat.)

On Saturday, when this post will go out, there is to be a demonstration organized by Americans in the Place de la Bastille, where on July 14 in 1789 the infamous prison of the Bastille was stormed and opened up by revolutionaries.  It’s also the day slated for a military parade in Washington DC.  Who needs a military parade right now? Or ever, come to think of it.

By 1783, six years before the original Bastille Day in France, the American revolution was concluded.  The new country was rid of an autocratic and mentally deranged King, George III, known as Mad King George, who attempted to keep his grip on the colony that was then under English control ( in case there is anyone who doesn’t remember this) and it was so successful that it lasted for 250 years. Enough said?

On arriving in Paris, I felt I could take a deep breath of the air of freedom, as so many refugees to Paris from other countries have done in the past.  It seems to be in the stones, in the buildings, in the air here, even though present-day France is far from free from attempts to reduce or stifle it.  I’m not a refugee, but at present I feel like some of that same gratitude: relieved, deeply thankful to be here, relishing all the aspects of French life that certain people in the US most dislike.

In the late 18th century, the newly freed American colonies were an inspiration to the French in their struggles, and the two countries were close in their aspirations.  Imagine it: Jefferson in Paris, Lafayette bringing ships to aid the Americans in their revolution. Heather Cox Richardson has written extensively about this history recently, and I don’t need to tell anyone what they already know; but it seems to matter to re-iterate it, to remember the hopes and the bold decisions of that century, called the Enlightenment, and to hold out hope for their return.

Meanwhile, I’m shopping in local markets before the temperature reaches today’s full heat,  meeting friends, visiting bookshops, saying hello to everything that has become familiar around here, a second home to me for so much of my life, since I first came to stay in this neighborhood of Paris with my old friends, Paul and Elisabeth, both no longer alive.  We used to walk to all the cinemas of the 5th and 6th arrondissements in the evenings, then come back to their apartment to sip whisky and talk about films, and books – both of them writers, he an actor too.  Several of my close Paris friends have now died, and I miss them.  But the ones who are left are who matter now, and it’s wonderful to run into each other on the ancient narrow street of the rue Mouffetard, sit in cafés to chat, and keep that continuity, that flow of talk, that freedom of speech that is so basic to this place and so necessary to being human.

I’m glad to see the current photographic display on the railings around the church: photos of the actual people who work in the shops in this neighborhood – a baker, a butcher, a flower shop owner, a pharmacist.  We know their faces and exchange with them daily, they make this quartier what it is, we may say “bonjour” and “merci” but they are not usually noticed and celebrated, workers who serve both visitors and locals, who follow in many of the traditions of their medieval forbears on this street.  It’s good to see, too, how the new trees grow, and new square stone cobbles are being set beside the old ones.  Continuity, attention to beauty, concern for enough shade – all are essential to make a city livable, in these changing times.

Take care, and thanks for reading,

Affectionately, Ros

Notes on a Writing Life / 73

May 14, 2025

Dear all,

    I wrote the above date, that of my birthday, and thought of writing about birthdays. Some people love to celebrate them; others, for their own reasons, don’t. I worried about my 89-year-old mother when she told me that she wasn’t interested in celebrating her birthday that year – and she died just two months after it. Birthdays have always been big in our family. Two of my brothers and I were all born in the same week (so to speak – actually a couple of years apart) and my mother made three separate birthday cakes during that week and allowed us to have three parties. I think our birthday week was connected to my father’s leaves from the army during World War 2, must have been in August? Anyway, we celebrate all week, and since the weeks of three parties, always call each other, remember each other’s birthdays, meet to celebrate when we can. My youngest brother, born on Boxing Day (postwar) has Christmas to compete with so is rather out of the loop and had his birthday parties organized by already-exhausted adults.

    So, why celebrate? Because we’re here. Because we remember that heady week of presents and parties, every May, during our childhood. Because we miss each other (two in Australia, one in Britain, me in the US). On my brother Robert’s May 8 birthday in 1945, when I was three, I thought all the balloons, parties and fireworks for VE day were really for his birthday. Of course, I was right.

The house near Saint-Remy

    When I turned 80, I threw a party in London and invited my nearest and dearest and they came, my brothers from Australia, four friends from the US, my family and oldest friends in England, my 90-year-old cousin from Italy, several dear friends who have since departed. It was going to be my final birthday party, or so I thought, (not planning on a rapid demise, just cutting back a bit) and it was wonderful, but of course passed too quickly. To continue the festivities, my brothers and I boarded the train to Paris at St. Pancras the following morning and then the TGV south to Avignon, for a week spent together with our families in Saint-Rémy de Provence, walking, talking, eating, enjoying each others’ company. It was a dream come true.

    At my brother Robert’s 80th last year in Brighton, my nephew-in-law Francisco suggested to me that he’d organize my 85th in Italy. I’m going to hold him to it – Francisco, are you reading this? It already doesn’t seem too far away, and God knows, we need treats to look forward to these days. Last year my daughter and I celebrated our birthdays in Paris – she’s another Taurean – and I’m sure we’ll do it again. My friend Margit and I, who share a birthday, have been going out for delicious lunches together for the past 25 years. She was the Food Editor when I was Literary Editor at our local newspaper and now writes the yearly Key West Restaurant Guide, so knows exactly where to go to eat…

    So, why celebrate ourselves in this maybe excessive way, now that we’re not at the sausage-roll eating, jelly-throwing stage of partying? Because we exist, and are happy and grateful to be here, and to be together. Our birthdays are our sun-signs, and if you’re into astrology at all you’ll know that Taureans like us love to eat, drink and be merry. (I started being interested in astrology during the pandemic, listening to online podcasts and going out to stare up at the inscrutable planets from our backyard, when I couldn’t stray from our house. Wanting an explanation, more insight into the processes of the universe? Yes, and needing to situate myself firmly in its structures.)

    So, unapologetically, a few thoughts on birthdays. Happy birthday, May people. And all of you, when the time comes. It matters to celebrate our own existence! Go well, and enjoy yourselves.

Affectionately,

Ros

Notes on a Writing Life / 72

April 14 2025

Dear All,

We’ve now had nearly four months of living with extreme uncertainty – here in the US, and in consequence, in many places across the world.  What is it doing to us?  Living life like a roller-coaster ride (confession: I have always hated roller-coasters and anything that throws me upside down) is not good for the human body in the long term.  You could say, life has always been uncertain; yes, we don’t know the hour or the day of our death, as a bottom line.  To some extent, we acclimatize; to some extent, if someone dumps us, we lose our job, nobody buys our novel or painting, we get ill, someone we loves dies, we cope.  But when life is deliberately designed to throw us for a loop every morning, the human organism rebels. It’s the deliberateness of it, I think.  Natural disaster can be terrible, but you can’t blame wind, water or fire.  Being manipulated into chronic uncertainty is different.  In the last four months, there have been shocks in the news every morning; will this happen, will that happen?  Rumors run like wild-fire: will they do this, will they do that?  Will I lose my Social Security, Medicare, job, retirement funds, right to stay in the country, will I be able to vote, get a vaccination, send my child safely to school?  Of course, if you are an immigrant without the right papers – or even with them – it’s far worse. Chronic uncertainty becomes chronic terror.

In his important book “On Freedom” Timothy Snyder writes that freedom isn’t to be granted, piecemeal; it’s essential as a stable background to our lives. Freedom is a state of being, a knowledge that you can live your life as you see fit.  Living without this throws us into chaos and brings up old fears from the past as well as terror of the future. It’s not a healthy way to live.

What to do?  We protest, write to representatives, go on making art, try for stability in our personal lives.  Patti Smith says she turns to music, and sings Dylan’s “Masters of War” song on her Substack. I turn to poetry, and reread – Rumi, of course, and Mary Oliver, that sanest of poets.  I make soup, my husband fixes leaks in the roof, and in our back yard we watch two pigeons make a nest, the mother bird lay eggs in it and sit on them for a couple of weeks until they hatch, so that now there are two baby birds to be fed, who grow and will soon fly the nest.  The processes of nature still go on.

These small events, these earthly things encourage me.  Spring happens, flowers burst open against blue sky, rain allows everything green to flourish and shine.  It’s all still there.  And I try to shut out the rumors, the fear-mongering, the alarm bells, because they are doing my 83-year-old nervous system harm.  But when a friend wept as he told me that a young Guatemalan man who does his garden was picked up by ICE and disappeared last week, leaving my friend to try to tell his fiancée, I wanted to cry with him.  It is real and it is everywhere, among us, hurting us all.

We live in paradox, and in uncertainty.  Human life has always been this way. I was born in the middle of World War 2, and remember sirens, bomb shelters, being evacuated, anxious adult voices.  When so much is destroyed this suddenly and so many people are made to suffer, it’s like trying to get a foothold in an earthquake.  We have to ground ourselves, we have to find a way.  My parents did it, over six long years, and we can too.

Take care, and as Patti Smith says, drink lots of water while remembering those who can’t.

Affectionately, Ros

Notes on a Writing Life / 71

March 14 2025

Dear all,

It’s a beautiful spring morning in Key West and I’m back in my studio to pay attention to my latest novel, that has been languishing here for at least a month.  It’s a relief, to be back writing fiction – to re-enter that imaginary world that has consoled me for most of my life when the going has been hard.  Talking with other writers, I hear them saying the same thing: it’s hard to focus when the world seems to be falling apart – or being taken apart – around you. But it’s essential. It is who we are. Words matter, truth matters, imagination matters. Language matters. The worlds we imagine have a chance of coming into being, and if we fail them, they will never exist in the imaginations of others, our readers, and in the actual world we inhabit.

I’m reading the words of many others online: historians, philosophers, activists, people with integrity and an eye for truth and falsehood. They often hold me up when I falter, and remind me of what matters.  Beauty matters. The natural world matters. We matter to each other. And human relationships, the stuff of novels, matter a great deal.

A friend sitting next to me last night at a showing of the film “Cinema Paradiso” said, “It matters so much to find things to enjoy at this time” – and we agreed, laughing and even crying during the film.  It’s a time to develop our human capacities even further in this direction, perhaps, and be all the things that Artificial Intelligence cannot.  Compassionate, empathetic, friendly, ironic even, keeping a sense of humor.  Laughing is not something that robots, or tyrants, do.

Home to have lunch, some broccoli soup I made yesterday. Small pleasures count.  The sky is blue, the mango blossom is out, the beaches are full of student spring-breakers and the ocean is at the end of every street.   

I’m sending out messages about the writing retreat I’m leading at the Flores Retreat Centre, in June, as the deadline for application is mid-April.  So if anyone out there is thinking about coming to join me, now is the time to apply.  And perhaps the time for a real regeneration of our spirits?  Join me if you can.

Affectionately, Ros

Notes on a Writing Life / 70

February 14 2025

Dear all – and happy St. Valentine’s Day –

For the last few weeks, I’ve been looking for ways to deal with the extraordinary situation in the United States that we find ourselves in: deliberate chaos, created by a group of people acting like kids in a tantrum, determined to break everything in sight.  As writers, as artists, what do we do that can make a difference?

I’m teaching a class based on “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron, as I have done yearly for a couple of decades now, and never has it seemed more timely.  I meet with five women on Monday nights and we commit ourselves for the duration to pursuing our creative endeavors, while at the same time navigating this new and challenging terrain.  All funding for the arts in Florida has been stopped by the former Governor, Ron de Santis, and yet in the galleries and bookshops on this island, never have the exhibitions and readings seemed more vital.  The exhibition at the Studios of Key West this week by the Cuban artist Mabel  Poblet is breathtaking; I pass it on my way to class and go in to get a dose of her inspiration in glittering blue.  I read my regulars online – Rebecca Solnit, Jessica Craven, Heather Cox Richardson, Timothy Snyder, Dan Rather – and draw both comfort and ideas from them.  It’s like having a bunch of invisible friends.

I bought Pico Iyer’s new book, “Aflame” this week, knowing it would be a keeper.  He is an old friend, from earlier days at the Key West Literary Seminar, and we have corresponded since. He writes of losing everything in his mother’s house in California when it burned to the ground some years ago, of how he first visited the monastery at Big Sur, when he had nowhere to go; of how the nourishment of silence claimed him, one of the chattiest people on the planet, and how it changed his life. Now, he’s changing mine, from the inside, out. We depend on each other, on our words, on our shared experiences, on our togetherness in this world.  In isolation and silence, Pico writes, we learn how to be close to others and be real and useful in society.  And you can find silence anywhere, because it’s inside you – even in a noisy place like Key West where the planes, sirens, traffic and power tools can sometimes seem to be combining to drive us out of our minds.

I am in a silent place in my studio and in my mind as I write this.  I’m following one of the writer Zadie Smith’s ten rules about writing: use your computer where there is no internet access. That way, you can keep the temptation of noise away.  I’ve come in through what I think of as a portal, guarded by two stalwart gumbo limbo trees.  I’ve entered the room that is mine alone, the space that awaited me; it makes a difference. A plane goes over, low – and yet it is outside me, outside this mental space I create once I close the door and sit down at my desk, guarded by the two trees whose branches interlace against the cerulean blue of today’s sky.

And thinking of silence, longing sometimes for peaceful places, ancient places outside of today’s turmoil, I realize how much I want to be in northern Spain again, at the Flores del Camino Retreat Centre, where last year I led a writer’s retreat.  This year, in June, we will assemble there again, tap into the beauty and silence, experience the peace and antiquity of the place, coming together to write from its center and from our centers, connecting ourselves forever with this very special place.  I hope that some of you may join me there, with Basia and Bertrand, our much-appreciated hosts.

Meanwhile – it’s Valentine’s Day, and I’m invited to a dance party on the beach.  So, dance on, and as Emma Goldman is reported to have said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want your revolution.”

Affectionately, Ros

Notes on a Writing Life / 69

January 14 2025

Dear All,

Time flies when you’re having fun!  And the annual Key West Literary Seminar, that took place this last weekend, is always fun.  I’ve dipped in and out of it this year, catching some great readings and discussions and a couple of good parties.  The topic this year was “Family”.  Everyone has a family, one way or another, and almost every memoir or novel has family somewhere in its DNA, often discussed directly.  As Tolstoy wrote at the beginning of ‘Anna Karenina’, “All happy families are alike…” before going on to describe the uniqueness and complexity of Anna’s brother’s family.  We may love or like or dislike or even hate our families, we may not speak to each other at all, or we may miss each other so much it feels like heartbreak when we part.  So ‘Family’ was a rich seam to mine. I  particularly enjoyed Andre Dubus III with Dani Shapiro and Brando Skyhorse in a conversation about memoir - how much we can tell, how not to hurt people with our revelations, how to claim our right to tell our own story.

I’ve also noticed how pleased we all were to see each other in our writing/reading family, this last weekend. There’s something special these days about get-togethers in person – is it post-Covid still, or related to our feelings of dread about US politics and what may happen next? Or in reaction to the distancing effects of Artificial Intelligence, (an oxymoron in my view)? I’ve noticed a certain intensified joie-de-vivre, a deliberateness about communicating, joining in, showing up. A re-commitment to community, a refusal to be separated into factions?  Friends of ours are giving a party on the evening of January 20th (when DT takes office) with ‘comfort food’  requested for a potluck supper. The TV will not be turned on.

Another couple of friends, from Asheville, are putting together a fund-raiser with food and music, to raise money for the people in Asheville whose homes were destroyed.  In California, and across the country, money is pouring in to the Los Angeles districts that went up in flames last week.  I hope that this mood will prevail, that the generosity will continue, the helping of neighbors and friends become a norm. We need each other, not robots, not remote control.  We need, and want, to live in community.

A reminder here, too, that the little community we’re setting up for 10 days in late June at the retreat center, Flores del Camino, is open for registration, and limited to 8-10 people – so if you can make it to northern Spain in June to write new poems or prose in a beautiful quiet place,  before taking an optional 4-day walk on the Camino, do apply.

Go well, and get together!

Affectionately, Ros

Notes on a Writing Life / 68

December 14, 2024

Dear all,

I’ve been thinking about the topic of Place in our lives – the place where we arrived this planet, that we may love forever or escape from as soon as we can; the places we choose, the places that come to mean something deep and abiding for us, even if we are in them for a short time.  Our sense of place may be different from our sense of time; time is a given, short or long - place can be felt either as random or destined, a cross-over with history, an astonished arrival that changes us for good.  Astrologers say that there are places in this world that draw us to them, where we are meant to be.  Sometimes these are places where people have travelled and traded, like Essaouira in Morocco where I was in the 1990’s, or where ships have passed for hundreds of years, as in Key West where I live now; in Spain, the pilgrimage routes are well known, walked by pilgrims for centuries, as people came there to find what they were seeking.

With all this in mind, I’m announcing another Writing Retreat I’m leading, at the Flores Retreat Centre in northern Spain in June 2025 and it’s to be called “Writing In Place.” The Place being the village where Bertrand Gamrowski and Basia Goodwin have their home on a steep cobbled street, with a grassy valley at their back and a view of far hills, and where they have run retreats for over ten years.  We’ll be writing in place, and also on place – what place has meant to us, where we came from, where we have found ourselves, and of course the extraordinarily rich and historic place we’ll be in for that time.  We’ll also be eating great food, grown locally, visiting petroglyphs and ancient churches, learning about the history of this countryside that goes back millennia, and importantly, isolating ourselves for eleven days from the strife and noise of today’s world.  After the retreat, we’ll have the opportunity for a 4-day pilgrimage on the Camino to Santiago de Compostela, towards a place that already sounds enchanting to me, as I’m deafened by today’s sirens, car horns, plane noise and power tools - the Valley of Silence.

I was there last June, with eight writers, some professional, some beginners, all of us learning the countryside, walking the Camino, sharing our writing around a fire in the courtyard at night.  This year, it seems even more necessary to be able to withdraw for a while from the challenging world we live in, to find the subtle truths of an ancient place, and write them into poetry and prose.

Go well, wherever you are in these times of uncertainty,

Affectionately, Ros

Notes on a Writing Life / 67

November 14th 2024

Dear all,

In the wake of the US elections, after so much battering at our psyches from news items, opinion polls, shattering results and post-mortems, I feel that art, music and literature have my hungry attention, during these last few days in Paris before we return to the US.

I’ve listened over and over to Lang Lang playing Chopin. I’ve been with my step-daughter Stephanie to the Orangerie, to sit in front of Monet’s vast paintings of water-lilies, in the space designated for meditation and silence.  It was like a draught of clean water. I thought how Monet gave them to the state after the first World War, in which he refused to fight.  He was right – his art meant more than a sacrifice of his life.  He chose to paint, not fight, when all the pressure was on him to join his generation in that massacre.

It's an individual choice, of course.  Politics or art? Struggle or serenity? Sometimes we have to take on both at once.

The collection put together by the German art-dealer Heinz Berggruen was next, in the same museum.  He had a great range of paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Paul Klee and sculpture by Giacometti, and here are a few of them that I photographed.  Again, I thought of Picasso and the Spanish civil war, his painting of Guernica, his escape from Spain to paint unhindered.  Do we escape or stay put and fight?  Paint, write, make music, keep ourselves alive that way, or do we throw ourselves into whatever fray we confront? Again, it’s an open question.  Do we deconstruct reality or represent it?  What is the artist’s role in our time, when so much has become mere decoration, or entertainment?  Do we need to entertain ourselves more – and entertain others? Do we go silent, or speak out?  These are all open questions, urgent for our time, in which humanity faces so many predicaments.  For myself, I found great solace in the juxtaposition of the pears and apples that Picasso painted, and in the steady serene gaze of Madame Cezanne.

A personal pleasure this week was to hear that a collection of short stories I wrote in the 1970’s, illustrated by my then-husband, Michael Brackenbury, is about to be re-published by Michael Walmer in the UK, with an introduction by A.L.Kennedy. It’s called “No Such Thing As a Free Lunch.”  Prophetic, or merely banal?  Sometimes a piece of the past resurfaces and (I hope) makes sense in the present; sometimes our younger selves remind us, surprisingly, what matters. The drawings seem to me to fizz still with an energy that was entirely 1970’s.

Our world has changed again in the last week, and we are all confronting the implications of that change.  Please take care of yourselves, and look at something that makes you smile!

Affectionately, Ros

Notes on a Writing Life / 66

October 14, 2024

Dear all,

This will be a brief newsletter, after two busy weeks having to pay attention to both hurricanes Helene and Milton as they (mercifully) passed us by and continued up through the Gulf of Mexico, missing us by a hundred and fifty miles.  You all probably know what happened north of us – the devastation caused by high winds, typhoons, hard rain and flooding rivers.  Our friends up in Asheville have borne the brunt of Helene, and those near Sarasota, Florida, of Milton, and many are without water, electricity, food, mail and even roofs over their heads.  It has been a tough season.

Here, we waited for a day while the hurricane lingered near the Yucatan peninsula, gathering strength; the following day, we had wind and hard rain in sudden downpours and some flooding near the beaches from a storm surge - but nothing life-threatening. I managed to keep on working on the last edits of my mystery novel, with Chopin playing loud to drown the sound of the wind, and all the shutters closed tight.

We were lucky – and thankful.  A bonus was that the avocados crashed down from our neighbors’ tree like hand grenades, and we went out afterwards to pick them out of soaked grass.  It’s a memory I have from hurricane Georges, in 1998:  avocados rolling in the gutters, lobsters thrown up on the beach. A feast amid chaos.

Life in Key West is often made up of these strange contrasts, as is our weather.  After 30 years here, I am almost used to it – but can still feel that frisson of foreboding when the wind begins to intensify and rain lashes our old wooden house.  My husband is a dab hand with a generator and a chain-saw and even gets up on the roof to check for where leaks may appear;  when I was younger, I didn’t look for these talents in a mate, but now value them thoroughly – and when the wind roars at night, I’m incredibly glad of a hand to hold in the dark.

Go well, stay dry, be safe!

Affectionately, Ros

Notes on a Writing Life / 65

September 14 2024

Dear All,

I’m writing to you from Key West, where brain fog due to heat and humidity nearly made me forget my date with you and the newsletter…

Apart from the pleasure of watching a smart woman demolish a bullying man in a so-called ‘debate’ on TV this week, not much going on here except hoping that a majority of Americans will come out and vote for her.

Exactly a year ago this week, I was in Paris, having lunch at the Closerie des Lilas with my wonderful agent, Kimberley Cameron, and her husband David.  I was standing by the statue of the Napoleonic general, Marshal Ney, and watching the water gush from the most striking fountain in Paris, when Kimberley walked up to me and led me into the restaurant where Hemingway used to eat his lunch. I’d been there once before, with my husband, 30 years ago, as we embarked on a new life together.  We still remember the ‘canard in its dangerous sauce’ as I wrote in a poem at the time. And the profiteroles.

I’m reminded by this last year’s memory to write something here about the role of an agent in a writer’s life.  Without a literary agent, it’s hard, almost impossible, to get anywhere in publishing.  From my earliest days as a writer, when in the 1960’s I was introduced to my then agent, Richard Simon, I’ve considered agents as my friends and chief allies.  The good ones hold your hand, listen to you when you complain or moan or even weep about publishers’ rejections, encourage you, return your phone calls at once, let you believe once again that you may be a really good writer. (The not-so-good ones scare you, remind you of your least favorite teacher at school, don’t get back to you, don’t stick up for you and leave you in the lurch when they can’t sell your book: they exist too.)

I first met Kimberley at a Writers’ Conference in San Miguel de Allende, in Mexico.  My former agent had retired, and her successor had not been able to sell my current novel, and dropped me – it happens.  So I set in train publishing that book, “The Third Swimmer” with a ‘hybrid’ publisher I knew,  simply because it mattered so much to me, I knew it had to exist.  Then I met Kimberley.  She was on a panel of agents and one thing she said struck me – “We need you more than you need us.”  Really?  I found her after the session and asked her – prompted by my friend Galen - if she’d like to have a drink.  We sat in the lounge of the Hotel de las Minas and sipped white wine and chatted and I gave her a copy of my novel “Becoming George Sand.”  She later told me that she read it on the plane, loved it, and would be delighted to represent me.

That was in 2015.  We met again at her house in San Francisco in 2019, when I was in town for a reading.  Altogether, she has sold four books for me – and what’s more, she has seen me through arguments with editors, difficulties with plots, plans for future work and everything that comes up in a writer’s life.  It’s nearly ten years since we got together and I consider her a close friend.

So, the lunch at La Closerie was a celebration of all that, and in the middle of our three-course lunch behind the screens and bushes that protect the dining room from the street, she even came up with a title for my latest novel. She’s sending it out as I write, after I did a rewrite (her suggestion) during this last year.

A shout-out for agents, then. But, how do you get one? My answer is, go to events, show up for things, maybe ask writers you know who their agent is. Don’t waste time sending out thousands of letters to people you don’t know. Go for the personal connection where possible, trust your gut response, dare to approach them. They are human, too. And as Kimberley said, they need us more than we need them.

Back to election time now – and fingers crossed for the woman with the great laugh and the ready wit and a lot of good ideas. It’s time.

Affectionately, Ros

Notes on a Writing Life / 64

August 14th 2024

Dear All,

I’m writing from sunny Dorset, where early this morning I was the only person on a wide empty beach at low tide.  My family and friends’ departures the other day felt like a tide going out, a low moment, and this is the way of things: togetherness and then aloneness and then togetherness again, time after time. Tides go in and out; life goes in and out, we fill and empty, empty and fill.  We accumulate, and then we let go.

Recently, after a family discussion, my brothers and I decided that sadly, it was time to let go of our shared apartment in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, and sell.  After seventeen years of meeting there, being alone there, sharing and enjoying, it’s time.  I’ve worked on three novels there, soaking up the ambiance of a city I have loved since I went there first at 18.  I’ve spent time with Parisian friends, with my husband, with my daughter and son, with each of my brothers.  It’s been a delight, and has changed our lives.  But now, we know it’s time to let it go – and so I’m writing about it here in case anyone reading is interested in a pied a terre or even a permanent home in a lovely part of Paris, midway between the Jardin de Plantes and the Jardins du Luxembourg, near the rue Mouffetard and two markets, between the metro stations of Gobelins and Censier-Daubenton….  If so, get in touch with me before it officially goes on the market this autumn.

Letting go feels hard – letting go of people, beloved places, houses, even possessions.  But there is a time for it, and I know from experience that once you let go, something else comes into your life. It’s the endless process of living, one time, one place leading into another.  I’ve said goodbye to so many friends lately, and yet they return in my dreams to tell me that this not the end.

I think of Elizabeth Bishop’s famous villanelle:  “The art of losing isn’t hard to master…” But I think it’s hard.  I’m a Taurean, I don’t much like change.  At the end of the poem, she tells herself, “Write it – as disaster.”  The last loss in her poem is that of a beloved person, and this is the hardest of all; and yet we have to do it, over and over, during our lifetimes, and go on.

So – on a lighter note – Paris is still there, and I will certainly go back there, if not as a co-owner, as a visitor with a lighter step, not having to deal with the EDF or the phone company, not going up to Place d’Italie to buy a new fridge or washing machine, not attending endless meetings of the Syndic., not fixing things when they wear out and generally doing the maintenance that ownership involves.  I’ve enjoyed learning how to do all of the above, and next I’m going to enjoy renting or staying in a hotel, looking out of a window that is not mine, and who knows, even writing something new about Paris, about changing times.

Affectionately, Ros

Notes on a Writing Life / 63

July 14th 2024

Dear All,

Well, the date above reminds me that of course the Bastille fell to the Revolution on that day – but events in France this last week were nowhere near as dramatic, or, thank God, as bloodthirsty.  It was a bold last-minute turn-around though, for the parties of the left to band together and prevent the Rassemblement Nationale – the extreme right – from getting a majority. The tactical vote, based in horror at the idea of a basically fascist party ruling France, was brilliantly orchestrated over just a few days.  Now, the big problem is going to be how these disparate parties govern the country after having formed that hasty alliance…

 I left France a couple of days ago to cross by boat from Dieppe in Normandy to Newhaven on the coast of Sussex, a good old-fashioned and very peaceful way to travel.  The sea was flat calm, the rain poured down in torrents all the way.  Then I got on a good old-fashioned train and trundled my way across the rain-soaked south of England.  Does England feel different after its own dramatic election last week?  Maybe it was my imagination, but maybe also people were cheerier, more outgoing, and there were more smiles along the way.  It makes a difference to be not just the sick man of Europe, but a country devoted to a new experiment in democracy.  As Keir Starmer pointed out in the Commons, this is the most diverse parliament ever, with more women too in top posts.  Rachel Reeves, the first woman Chancellor in 800 years.  Diane Abbott, a Black woman and a left-winger,  the ‘mother’ of the House.

To move on from politics – it’s been hard to do, this last week – I visited the church of Saint-Valéry in Varangeville-sur-Mer while staying with a friend.  It used to be more than a kilometer from the sea; now it’s perched on the edge of a high cliff.  It was built in the 11th century and then in the 16th a whole other church was built on to it.  These carvings are I think remarkable, and remind me of the carvings on capitals in the southwest of France, and in Spain, on the pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela.  There is the pilgrims’ shell – the coquille Saint-Jacques – and the crossed staves of a pilgrim; this was a staging post for pilgrims from England, on their way south.  The mermaid and a man sticking out his tongue remind me of medieval humor, and the ‘green man’ often found in English churches and cathedrals.  Our roots in Christianity may be solid, but beneath them there is a sly paganism, as these sculptors often show.

Traveling in Europe, finding our common roots in so many places, witnessing the transformations and manoevrings of politics, I’ve been able to take my mind away from the US election, somewhat.  I’m reminded, by events in France and England, that anything is possible. You just have to decide, not lose your nerve – and vote!

Affectionately, Ros

Notes on a Writing Life / 62

June 14 2024

Dear All,

I’m writing from my friend Kim’s beautiful little guest house ‘The Stone Boat’ in Rabanal, northern Spain, looking out from my window on to ramshackle stone walls, poplar and fruit trees, distant green hills and even more distant mountains, some with snow still on their slopes.

To be offered this space to rest and write is truly wonderful.  The silence is deep, apart from the regular tap-tap-tap of pilgrims’ sticks on the stone road up the village; I’m reminded of the sound of Blind Pew’s stick in ‘Treasure Island’, although there’s nothing menacing here. Tap-tap-tap. ‘Buen Camino’ and on they go up the hill.

We came here yesterday after 12 days of a writing retreat in Castrillo de los Polvazares, at the Flores del Camino Retreat Center.  12 days of writing, walking, eating, talking, bonding.  The theme of my part of the retreat was to connect the idea of pilgrimage with the arc of our own lives and with the narrative movement of memoir and fiction.  Eight women came to join me and it was an extraordinarily rich time, so much so that I decided against my earlier decision to walk the Camino again afterwards, to Santiago de Compostela.  I did it with my brother and sister-in-law 12 years ago, and remember reaching our destination exhilarated and exhausted, with a real sense of achievement.  But I’ve given up on the idea of destination, I realize. I walked some of the Camino towards Foncebadon early this morning, up a wooded track with a couple of white horses dozing nose to tail in the shade, looked out across the valley, and turned back for breakfast and writing.  It still felt special, it was still as beautiful.  I paused, looked around me and pilgrims passed, ‘Hola. Buen Camino,’ and I thought – this is all I need.  I’ll walk some more, while I’m here, on these enchanting paths. The point is no longer to ‘get there’.  The point is to be right here.

Swallows swoop before my window. The light changes, blue deepens, shadows darken. Elder and broom are flowering. It’s morning on this one particular day in June.

To get to know one place on this pilgrimage route is enough.  This ancient building holds me and gives peace.

Affectionately, Ros

Thresholds

 The cold keys heavy in your hand;

one fits the lock in the green door,

you step across the threshold,

light patterns the floor.

Here is the unfolding

inner world of cats and geraniums

Another door, your own,

another key, another opening –

a bed, a desk, a chair;
 

now all you have to do is step inside,

unpack the things you brought,

breathe out,

 
find the next threshold, the one

so far inside you did not know

until you came here, what you waited for.

Rosalind Brackenbury, June 2024 at Flores