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