Weathering // An interview with myself to answer some of the questions I'm unlikely to be asked elsewhere
For this interview, I decided to ask myself a handful of questions that others might not. Or perhaps to answer in a way that I might not with people looking at me. I hope you enjoy them.
But first…a request…
Weathering is published in gorgeous hardback a week today from all retailers, and if I can make this ask of you my readers then please, please consider making a pre-order.
I’m well aware that pre-ordering holds little value for the reader beyond immediate access to something they might equally read next month or next year, but for the author it offers a chance (albeit slim for the likes of me) of getting into a best-seller category. Here’s why: in the first days of publication, the numbers are totted up from launch sales ‘at the till’ as well as every pre-order made through e.g. Waterstones, Amazon, bookshop.org etc regardless of when it was placed – be it the day before, or six months ahead. This means you get a ‘thunderclap’ affect that can send the book up the charts! This is every author’s dream of course.
I actually only found this out myself three days ago. It seems I understand everything quite late. If I had known, I might have drilled home the request harder – because while I have no expectation for the Sunday Times Best Seller list, I would love to knock a book about materials and mining off the top of the Geology category. Please help me do that if that isn’t too desperate!
OK, here we go. Let’s get started with an clickbaity one.
What’s the worst bit about publishing?
I’d say that the worst bits are also, frustratingly, what makes it so great. This is, for me, the story of traditional publishing through and through. For example, you are given a platform which is so incredibly amazing, but being given a platform can be exposing. You are being paid to write to order, which is fantastic, but it can also create pressure and constraint. Publishing requires you to promote your work - I reckon this is the worst bit for most people - and yet there is also something shadowy in there related to the parts that are asking to be seen and visible. We all have an ego with demands, and there is a healthy level of ego of course. I think if most aspiring authors are truly honest then there is a part of them that wants the recognition publishing offers. Why else would you pursue it? So it can both satiate that need, but also become frightening. You see what I mean? So everything that it’s desirable for, is also what makes it hard.
Is Weathering the book you imagined?
Mmmm good one, thank you. I think there is some inevitability in never quite being able to write the book you imagined. In the same way as it’s really hard to paint the image in your minds eye. What you get instead is something close but not quite. And you can choose to be stressed about that, or recognise the necessary and absolute enoughness in this. Perhaps it’s supposed to be this way, you know? Making any sort of work is a maddening process of trying to bring the same vitality of a dream into a living thing, and any creative will know that it’s the not quite getting there that keeps you trying again and again. This is what builds a practice, and a body of work. It is easy to dream perfection, but this shouldn’t be the enemy of a tangible good. A great many ideas glitter in that ethereal space of imagination and it is only through trying to make them material that we realise the limits of our ability, the constraints we face, the limitations of form that make rendering a dream to its exact likeness, impossible. That’s OK. We all find our edges in this way. I often say that Weathering was never better than when it was in bullet points in proposal form. This is the closest I think it ever was to the idea. But, what I have in my hands now is something real. Something material. It isn’t perfect, but what is? In fact, it is a very human book in this way. And now it’s here I love it for what it is. One lesson I am learning – and I touch on this very briefly in the book in relation to ‘place’ – is that unfair expectation is so often stifling of love. If I want Weathering to be the stuff of my purest, most excellent and overblown dreams, then I will never love it. If I approach it as a book written lovingly with the best that I had available in me at the time, then I can love it whole-heartedly. Which I almost do now ;) It’s baked through with me and my heart, and to not love that would be the deepest of self-betrayals.
You say ‘almost’. Why are you holding back? Are there weak parts you don’t like?
You’re right to pull me up on that. Ha! The thing is, a book can’t do everything, right? You have to make structural choices, editorial choices. For the book to be as rooted in place and to tell a story of place-making as it does, then it has to stay in place. I can’t wander off and be pulling in this, that, and the other from other terrains. Each book offers its own sort of constraint that you do your best to work within. Likewise, do you go deep on one topic or do you offer a spread of ideas? I am a writer that works well with a spread - at least this is how both of my books have shaped up. I love to lay out a feast, as my friend Lyndsay says, and to let people decide what they want to take. But not everyone will appreciate that choice. Some want more depth. For some it will feel rushed. So, if you hear a wobble in me it is only that residue of people-pleasing that is hard to ever eradicate. I mean, we write books to be read, right? We want them to be enjoyed. We need to not only please ourselves. That’s what a journal is for. So, I know some people will not like the choices we made, but I hope this is balanced by those that do.
It comes to all writers in the end - all creatives really - that we have to make peace with the writer/maker that we are, and to give ourselves fully to that. To do that without shame. This doesn’t mean you don’t improve, because I think you do, but something of who you are stays put and can’t be ‘written out’. I think I know what I want to write next and how, I just have to work out where my limitations have been extended to this time around. What new space do I have to write into this time. Also recognising, I will have the same constraints and decisions to make third time around. But this is the puzzle aspect of book logic that I love. How to make the ideas fit. How to story the facts. I love the riddle as much as the solution.
Do you ever get bored of rocks? I mean other people are not that into them, right? You are servicing a niche, no?
Thank you to my tired, frustrated and trickster Parts for asking that question. I see you and know you want to do something new. I am in my second marriage with geology now, and I think this is because I am reclaiming a voice that I feel was taken from me back in 2008 which I left the discipline. There was a lot happening back then that made staying in my research field impossible, but it is also true that I was bored and frustrated, and I didn’t see the point of what I was doing anymore. I put all of my geology life away. In fact, it was only a year or two before I signed the contract for Weathering that I binned all of my undergrad notes, PhD files, and donated a bunch of texts. I regret that now! Ooof, I think about that and want to cry. I was certain that was a good idea. But writing this book has allowed me back in, in a new way. I am in a second throe of love for it all because I get to do it my way this time. I get to be completely who I am this second time around and that’s an unbelievable privilege. In truth, I feel like I’m only just beginning again and who gets to say that at 42. I am rolling it, braiding it, dancing with it. It’s exciting!
Besides rocks are ace, and we should think more about them. That’s the one should I am prepared to own, despite saying we would all be well-advised (which is another way of saying ‘should’) never to listen to people and their shoulds. Look how many books there are on trees, walking and wild-swimming! The canon has capacity. We live in times that require substance and not only fluidity. We need both. Also, have you not seen the rise of New Neolithica? Rocks - monoliths - are having a huge moment. I am adjacent to that because I come at this from a different place, but I think rocks are no longer niche. And anyway, the whole idea of rock being niche is actually ridiculous. The vast mass of the planet is rock. You’ve got me feeling all defensive now.
From the way you talk about it, I feel like Weathering is more geology than therapy for you?
Great catch, as I always say to my clients. Yes and no, it’s funny. This book is a redemptive thing for me and I see myself talking much more about the geological underpinning of this book. But in fact, the therapeutic angle is as important and prominent on the page, I think. Perhaps more so. I am clearly working through something at the moment in regards to both of my fields of expertise (if I can call it that) and perhaps there is a sense that I am working hard to bring geology back because therapy is already here. Therapy and I, are welcoming in an old friend. But I am conscious that this is also a book that makes my case for a certain way of working in therapy. I have a lot more to say in this regard too and I am getting really ready to return to my 1-1 outdoor practice (I have been taking a break to replenish my reserves after this long winter). Therapy has dominated my life for the last 7 years so perhaps I was ready to take stock, but I have a feeling I am on the verge of renewal. I am still supervising, mentoring and delivering training so it’s always there. But nothing beats being back with another person doing that work. Your question is a timely reminder not to let one side of this story be pushed out, thank you.
You used to be a geologist, now you’re a psychotherapist. You’re bringing them together. But it’s got me curious about definitions. When do you stop and start becoming a ‘thing’; a profession?
I think this is a fascinating line of enquiry. It’s something I think of fairly often, actually. When I facilitate writing groups participants are often loathe to claim the idea of being ‘a writer’ even though they have been writing since they picked up the crayon. We are often waiting for special permissions to say what we already are by birth right. The notion that anyone owns the label ‘writer’ is ludicrous. But we wait for validation in the eyes of the other, and it’s charming I suppose. We want to fit, and forget we already do. But in the case of some professions there is also a practice element and a regulation question. You become a psychotherapist on qualification and sign-off on a certain number of flight hours, as it were. But when do you stop? I am part of an outdoor practitioner group and recently had a chat about whether you leave the profession or not you are always a psychotherapist. I think this mainly refers to it engendering a way of thinking and being in relationship that is hard to escape. Once you have learnt to think like a professional listener, then it never really leaves you perhaps? I am thinking in both directions here, sorry.
With geology, I don’t know. I am not a practicing geologist. Which is to say, I am not doing the work that geologist’s do in a classical sense. But I do have a doctorate, I do think in the language of rock, and I am now communicating something of my former discipline/science. I don’t call myself a geologist though. I say ‘former’ because I am very cautious about claims to more than I can live up to. But I suppose I do feel like a geologist again. Just a different sort. Geology has never been a single science – it has always been multidisciplinary – and those that want to be seen as hard scientists seem to hate that, but I think it’s the field’s greatest strength. Geology is going to travel to somewhere new, but it might need to die first. We see it falling away in schools and universities. I graduated highest in my year back in 2004, and even then, I was only 1 of 1000 or so people nationally to graduate with a geology degree that year. To live, it has to find new life blood. I am already having conversations about this. Anyway, that was a digression. Perhaps we are what we feel in the end? Who is anyone else to take that away from us? That said, it would be good to move on from the ‘thingness’ of ourselves wouldn’t it? Towards being the qualities we admire instead? I am a psychotherapist and I might be a geologist of sorts. I am also a writer. But mostly I hope I am kind. You know what I never want to be? That person that looks over your shoulder for someone better when you’re talking to them. I went to a therapy conference where this happened to me as I started talking to the speaker. It stayed with me. I’ve never got over the shame I felt. Pay attention. Be a person that pays attention. Be a writer that pays attention and so on.
Has writing this book changed you in any way?
Oh, I think so. If you had asked me a few months ago then perhaps I wouldn’t have said so. But it’s been a rough winter of discontent and anxiety that has thrown me way beyond the page. I’m still trying to understand that, but also not to dwell on it for so long that I get stuck. I am just going with it and seem to be emerging now, which is a relief. Writing the book hasn’t changed me I don’t think; it has made me more me. That’s very tender. It is validating to be given a platform in this way. But the price exacted for that is vulnerability, exposure, scrutiny. And if not these actual occurrences, then the fear of them. I have some attachment-related stuff coming to life at the moment. This time and space before publication has been hard, but it wasn’t only because of the book. I think the book just got rolled into something else latent that was being released. Grief. Anger. Yeah, a lot of anger actually. Stuff just starting to link up in an unexpected chain reaction. I am working through that though, not letting it transmute into a more palatable sadness, but instead to say ‘this is how I am angry’. I am angry for me in 2001, 2004 and 2008. I am angry for many things. But I am also grateful, joyful, so very happy with the shape of my life these days. I have never felt more me, save for the pallor of winter and the bloat I feel coming out of it. I have skins to shed and I am trying to get on with that at the same time as birthing this book in a gentle way that doesn’t go against my natural inclination for peace and quiet. Mostly, I just want to get back to my newly emerging work. This is where my change is happening – at the advancing edge of myself. I want to be in that.
If you don’t mind me saying there is some sort of contradiction in you. You talk about being more rock; something we associate with slow. And yet, you’re always pushing on that ‘advancing edge’ as you say. Perhaps ‘being more rock’ is an aspiration rather than an actuality for you?
I think that’s really fair. I don’t have a great answer for that. I suppose what I suggest in this book is that we live within this core incongruity though. We are finite beings in limited bodies, but with unlimited imagination. That puts us straight into a lived paradox. And I am right in the heart of that myself. I am more interested too in the dynamic time of geology. The forward thrusts and the backslides. The fast and slow. I suppose I am somewhat pyroclastic in my manner and I’m OK with that. Unrelenting, yes. But I do stop and settle. I have a theory that I have been pedalling for years now, that the things we most energetically and vociferously tell others they should be doing, we are really still seeking for ourselves. When I say let’s do this, let’s do that, what I am really saying is I need this. We are great at projecting. I try to own those, to at least recognise them, but also to chart some sort of direction for myself even though I know we never arrive anywhere for more than a moment.
Great, well thank you for all of that. Usually as this point in the interview I like to ask some quick-fire questions. Would that be OK?
No. I hate the pressure of that. But here: Halloumi, Till We Have Faces, Never for a second are the answers to the questions you’re probably looking for.
If you have any questions about Weathering, about the writing process, about trad publication or about being a writer of narrative non-fiction just drop me a message in comments. I reply to everything and love to chat shop!
COMING NEXT: Vernal Thoughts (Sunday, 23rd March for Paid Subscribers only)
Let’s bonk that mining book right off the top geology spot! 💪 I just got a shipment notification from Waterstones — I suppose they are shipping early to overseas customers? Can’t wait to receive it. 💚
Pre-ordered, and looking forward to receiving it ... also looking forward to Luisa Skinner’s book club!