Notes on a Writing Life / 52
August 14 2023
Dear All,
Time off is such a valuable thing, and this summer I have been privileged to spend such time in cool green places where it’s quiet and the hubbub of the world largely passes me by. Time off from what, though? Too much involvement; the old habit of having to ‘work’; the urgency that tends to fill our days. Noise, pollution, extremes of climate – yes, I feel privileged to be away from them and for a first time really appreciate the changeable English weather – sheets of rain, mist over the hills, then sun breaking through. Clean air, cold sea. Solitude, an underrated thing.
There’s also, for a writer, the gift of emptied days, days of watching birds and squirrels - and two young stags there on the green today as I walked to the village shop. I walk around with no particular goal, then return to this cottage to add to an existing story, or prune a paragraph from a work in progress. What used to be, when I was younger, ‘boring’ or ‘bad weather’ has been transformed, partly by age, partly by events in the rest of the world. Now, it’s all a treat.
Time to read, too. I’ve been immersed in fine novels by Alison Macleod (‘Tenderness’, ‘Unexploded’) and by Andrew Greig (‘Rose Nicolson’). The latter is a rare historical novel that lets you feel just what it was really like to live in a particular past time: here, to live through the 16th century Scottish Reformation in Edinburgh, St. Andrews and Paris – and realize how terrifyingly short and violent life could be, how religion and politics divided people, how, as one character puts it, ‘everyone thinks they are right.’ The language of this poetic but fast-moving novel is so exact and lovely.
Meanwhile I am putting together a collection of my short stories set in Key West, “Light Over Islands.” It’s to be a companion volume to the reprint of “Seas Outside The Reef.” Both books will be available this fall from Open Boat Editions.
Affectionately, Ros
