Things I am working on at the moment
nurturing creative ideas | navigating a depression | the guilty pleasure of mineral specimens
This time next week it will be exactly one month until Weathering publishes in hardback. This means that any day now a box of books should land on my doorstep and I, glassy-eyed and strange-hearted, will rip back the cardboard and sniff the pages within like I might the back of a newborn’s head. Knowing me, I will also say I don’t like a fuss and will get on with my other work.
This is a funny interim time. The uncorrected book proofs are moving about the country in the hands of book reviewers and such, my diary is filling with book signings and festival talks, and I am in a state of waiting for something I can’t quite explain. Just for landing perhaps?
From next week, I will probably spend the month writing to you about book-related things. I plan to share a reading, do an author interview with myself to answer the questions interviewers never ask, reflect on my learnings between book 1 and 2, and share some of my other favourite rock-related books.
In the meantime though, I thought I would share a little bit about the things I am working on at the moment, so that you have a flavour of what’s happening beyond the book.
1. Drafting ideas for book three
Having a new idea is one of the best feelings in the world, right? I don’t like to be without. So, while Weathering makes its arrival, it’s time for me to let go of all that it is or isn’t, and let it makes its own journey into the world and become everyone else’s. My job is not to cling on in fear of what I could have done differently, but to move on with making new work, picking up where I left off in some sense, charting a new course in another. I have two book projects in mind at the moment, and as is my process I tend to just let them circle freely around my head, gathering thoughts and information for both until one or other gains a critical mass and becomes the focus. It is a time of intense reading and note-taking and fever-dreams. I am also hoping to have a few conversations in the coming weeks that will help me work out whether either are worth pursuing, and if so in which order. It would be nice to imagine both could live – that I might have book 4 in mind also – but we’ll see how things move and shape with the arrival of Weathering.
2. Creating a zine – continuing self-initiated work
I wrote at the beginning of the year about the necessity (and my desire) to nurture the counterpoints this year. By that I meant more art for arts sake. Creating work for traditional publishing is wonderful, but/and so too is being lead by your own initiative and passion in your own way. One thing high on my list is to create and self-publish a zine for a project that has been on my mind for a while. I have started it, but I would like to find some time to progress it, and maybe even finish it! Heck, dream big. People who have followed my work for a long time will know I go through phases of making and selling work – be it prints of my illustrations, poetry pamphlets or movement cards. I love putting creations into envelopes that way. Tangible things that can be held. Feeling a direct connection with people who support my work. It’s very satisfying to be in that sort of exchange, and I would like to try it again with some new creative writing before any further book-length project. If nothing else though just the idea of a self-initiated piece of work that doesn’t have a proposal or plan attached to it feels precious. May we always make time for our esoteric loves, with no thought to the bottom-line.
3. Working on a couple of short writing courses
This season’s Embodied Writing Mentoring Group will very sadly come to an end in mid-March. It’s been another intense and deeply inspiring run of the programme (for me at least!) and has reaffirmed the great joy I get helping people become the writers they want to be. It won’t run again now until the autumn, but for the interim I am planning one or two (very) short courses that I think offer a good blend of considered, embodied self-enquiry and practical guidance for the projects we might have in mind. The first is likely to be around mapping and shaping the narrative journey for non-fiction writers. The second is to be decided. So many possibilities. But please do keep an eye out for those if you are interested.
4. Navigating around a depression.
It is probably a little bit unexpected (or might even seem a bit facetious) to drop this here, but it is, nevertheless, something I am working on at the moment. I have always lived on the floodplain that depression washes for as long as I can remember, but rarely talk about it ‘publicly’ except in snippets because a) no one wants to hear about therapists working through stuff, b) the term ‘depression’ tends to shut down any nuanced conversation about the vastly different experiences of it, c) my life is far larger and more interesting than the low periods. But there is also a dishonesty in not naming what is normative for me.
I am lucky these days to remain functional and creative through all but the deepest lows (I scrap hard to remain so not because I feel I should, but because it helps) and I live and work with it pretty effectively, as all of us who live with any number of things too vast to list, do. This is possible because I am now so familiar with these episodes that for the main part I have learnt to be patient with myself. I know the early warning signs, even if it does still take me by surprise. I know the course it will take. I know I will come out the other side. I know there is no cure because life has no cure. I suppose you could say I am weathering it.
For me at least, it’s all about tending and management until the waters recede and I’m released. Mainly, what it needs is for me to tread carefully with myself in order to stay grounded. To recognise there is some work I simply can’t do at the moment, some sane perspectives I can’t easily access. Broadly speaking, the less I clench the faster I move out of it. The more I enquire, the better I understand. There is a fine line with depression in my experience, where you need to yield open-heartedly to its wisdom, but not so far that you collapse under its pessimistic weight. It is the work of a lifetime to measure how best to do that (and how best to understand the meaning of its arrival) and we all have our ways.
This week I walked to my local rock shop over the moorland that sits between it and my house, to buy myself a mineral specimen. I am deeply conflicted about buying minerals as it is such an extractive process, and yet at the same time, selfishly, they bring me a lot of joy, awe and sustenance. They connect me to a much deeper and wider cosmology of existence and formation, which I need at the moment. They are a bit of magic that connects me back to the world. This is a beautiful specimen of columnar and needle quartz with a citrine nestled within. It tells me something helpful about how to navigate this latest rough patch. It feels good to gaze upon and hold. It is one of my ways. There is something almost too tender in this to share, but there you go. I am less afraid than I used to be.
Too many things to say - "They are a bit of magic that connects me back to the world" - this is how I feel about the space you provide. Sending love x
I am sorry to hear about the depression, but happy to hear that you can stay active and creative at this point. Depression is such an energy thief, and as such, please do be gentle with yourself - it is so important to rest. I wish you, in this way, ease - ease to let your energy flow as best it can through difficult moments.
There is so much with the book release - so many emotions, ups and downs. Excitement followed by uncertainty followed by presenting in public, followed by a certain waiting.
If it helps, I am reading your first book here in Italy and feeling very connected to you and to nature. I love it. It's beautiful, and I know Weathering will be as well.
A tongue in cheek about buying crystals: I'll have you know that in the next village over from mine in the Black Forest, there is a place called Welt der Kristalle (the Crystal World). It's a BIG deal in our area. I have not yet stepped into it once in the 10 years I've lived there. It just feels so OFF to me! But none of the Germans I know share my thoughts. In fact, an organic farmer up the road had invited me for coffee one time and I noticed crystals at the bottom of her water jug - yes, you can buy water purifying crystals at Welt der Kristalle! So it is not all bad, right? I just might go visit Crystal World when I get back to Germany and buy myself a crystal to shine my spring days.