Letting go

"If I'm being honest."

I went for a walk in the rain. I put on hiking boots and a raincoat and took a backpack with a water bottle in it, fully prepared to enjoy a rainy walk - in fact, excited about it. I’d romanticised it so much that I was keen to stand in the downpour. No headphones to distract me, no one else around. Instead, as I left the house and entered the woods, the rain stopped and the sun came out. I was almost peeved by her arrival, fully ready for a moody, rainy walk. Ready to shelter beneath the canopy of trees, to observe the drops of rain rolling off of the leaves and onto the mossy ground below, to get my hair wet and feel it stick to my cheeks. How could I be mad at the sun though? She’s welcome. Her visits are ever fleeting this year.

My brain has been so full that I’ve been quietening it with the sounds of endless TV shows and endless playlists. I’ve been brushing my teeth while watching YouTube video essays, eating dinner in front of another Netflix series, scrolling on my phone while the onions soften in the pan.

The theme for this newsletter has been shaped over the last few months. I got the difficult news earlier this year that my book wasn’t to be. Publisher issues; funding gone out the window. Indie publisher goes under. A tale as old as time, I’m told.

When I found out the No Book News, I pretended it wasn’t real. I didn’t tell anyone for the first few days. I didn’t really tell myself. I still haven’t told many people, it’s felt too uncomfortable to say, hey, my dream was taken from me, but, anywho - how’re you?

For a year, I built my whole life around this book deal. This dream opportunity. It’s an enormous part of the reason I moved back to Scotland. A validation, a qualitative measure for all of the non-traditional routes I’ve taken over the years, something that said I wasn’t crazy for all the things I’d done. I felt sick when I got the news. A pit in my stomach. Dread. Then relief, too. I wish that wasn’t true because really that relief came from a place of fear. Now I wouldn’t have to share my work with the world, my stories. I wouldn’t watch the words I’d so carefully crafted for hours and hours alone be picked apart by strangers; by friends.

The book sits in my laptop drafts and for now, there it will stay.

This is hard to talk about. I don’t like to be the person that anyone pities. I didn’t want sympathy, I didn’t want to tell people, I didn’t want to have to meet their eyes, to see their faces. I lied about it a lot in the first couple of months. “Hows the book going?” A knife to the chest. “Great!” I skirted around it easily enough, some bullshit about editors, some crap about “just wanting to get it right, to not rush it”. A summer of rain has been an easy way to hide away. It’s equally meant lesser distractions, less days of fun in the sun, less swimming and lazing on the beach. It’s easier to be sad when it’s pissing it down, when the temperature is 12 degrees, when the sky is grey, when the wind makes boat days impossible, when the rain makes walks miserable.

It’s a funny type of grief losing something like this, something you created.

I know. The book exists. It’s still in raw form. But, for now, it exists just for me, and in a way, it doesn’t even exist there. I’ve not really wanted to revisit it since I got the news. I’ve read a few pages here and there. It needs work. It needs love. I’m not ready to give it that.

The log dislodges and makes a loud thud as I write this, falls sideways in the fire as it burns down. The fire is so hot it makes a ticking sound against the glass. I didn’t grow up with a fireplace, I don’t think I know many people who did either, but having one now, even if just briefly, is wonderful. It makes dark evenings better, not just warmer, but heartier, rich like a hot soup. I remember fires as a child, but not in cosy living rooms - on the beach. Summer bonfires, toasting marshmallows that left gooey centres on driftwood sticks, sticky fingers and sandy arms. I have a vivid memory of a caravan park holiday on the West Coast as a child - ironic, since I spent this time last year in a caravan on the West Coast, but not for holiday purposes. Organised fun equaled children selecting long sticks to wrap bread dough around that we toasted in the fire and then, once cooked, pulled the bread from the stick and filled the hole with nutella or chocolate spread. I’ve since wanted to recreate this childhood treat but I’ve yet to do so.

Maybe it’s best living in my memory just as it was.

My writing has been and always will be honest. Or, at least, any writing of mine that is ‘good’ will be honest. I can’t write falsehoods. It’s why I haven’t written this newsletter much this year, I haven’t wanted to mince words, to keep secrets. Even my fiction sits in amongst truths, amongst the rawness of human emotion, amidst the chaos of life; a ghost who haunts regrets, a woman seeking a way to remove her grief, a girl watching her period start like the beginning of a horror film.

I was reading over some of my old newsletters when I was in a more positive headspace, when I wrote, ‘I’m learning to love every moment of the year, from the endless days of summer to the brief, cold hours that a winter day holds.’ For full transparency, in the first draft of this newsletter, I wrote, ‘The weather has been reflecting my mood of late. Or perhaps my mood is driven by the weather. Sunny days are warm distractions, I can be outside so much more easily - in fact, the rarity of a warm sunny day has left me in that desperate place of ‘making the most of it’ while grey skies are permission to worry and wallow. It’s not so worrisome to be bitter and jaded when the rain pounds down.’

As the season changes and autumn knocks upon my door, I feel that autumn mirrors my internal state well. A season of change. Shedding. Reflection. Cocooning. Letting go of the need to have it all figured out. Letting go of my own expectations. Letting go like trees let go of their leaves every year, like birds leave their nests, like bees leave each flower’s nectar for another.

I’d like to say that I’m better for this book-thing having happened. I’d like to say that I’m stronger, that I’m coming out of it with big lessons and big learnings. But, if I’m to be honest - which you know I have to be - I’m tired. I’m disappointed. I’m sad. I wish things had gone the way I’d hoped. I wish this year had looked different. I’m not regretful, but, I’m grieving the loss. I’ve not ‘given up’ or anything that dramatic. I’m not a heroine in a 2002 romcom. But, I’ve been licking my wounds a little.

I’m glad I wrote a book. I know I’ll revisit it someday. I’ve always been a writer and always will be. I’ve collected stories. I observe the world through wallflower glasses at times, find myself constantly discovering things, watching the way a person winces or cringes or grins. Scribbling musings, gathering emotions, noting experiences. When bad things used to happen, I used to tell myself they were ‘fodder for my fiction’ as a way to find silver linings in the mud.

We walk down to the water. Truly, I think, the nicest day of the year. 23 degrees and sunny. And still. Barely a breeze. The water like a mirror, the sun like holiday-in-Spain heat. After months of seemingly endless rain, today is a miracle that neither of us will take for granted. We finish work. My friend gets the drinks and the snacks; I change from my sweaty work clothes into my swimming costume in the car park and we begin the walk to the ‘Third Bay’. For a while, on the beach, it’s just the two of us, laying in the sun, laughing incredulously at the heat, at the way our skin feels in the late afternoon rays, at the joy of a cold beer and a high tide.

A solo runner appears and perches on some rocks at the far end of the beach. Eventually, they wade into the water and swim gently, their splashes echoing across the otherwise empty bay. A small head appears to enquire upon the splashes and the runner-now-swimmer is face to face with a seal. The two observe one another for a long time, and we watch their moment, knowing full well this is a memorable one.

The runner leaves the sea, the beach, eventually, and the seal slips back into the endless open loch. We work up the courage to peel our bodies from the picnic mat and wade into the cold water, temperatures that have barely climbed above 12˚C all year.

“I’m going to miss this,” I say, once I’ve adjusted to the temperature of the water, swimming to keep my body from shivering, spaghetti seaweed reaching out occasionally to wrap around a leg or arm.

This year has not looked the way either of us imagined. He smiles.

“You’ll visit,” he says, and looks with me towards the hills turning golden in the sunlight, browning under autumn’s grasp. “This will always be here.”

Plum by Charles Atkinson, July 1984 - read the full poem here

TO READ: Pam’s book!! Pam, who runs Inver with her partner Rob, where Ed and I work, shared her beautiful book this week with the world - and I have demolished more than half of it in less than 24hrs. I’ve already laughed and cried reading it, her writing is rich and generous and beautiful. I emplore you to read her part-memior, part-manifesto book, Between Two Waters: Heritage, landscape and the modern cook,

“From the soil to the kitchen, Between Two Waters interrogates the influences on what we eat: capitalism, colonialism and gender, as well as our own personal and cultural histories. Yet it also captures with real heart all that the dinner table has to offer us: sustenance, both physical and imaginative, challenges and adventure and, most importantly, communion with others.”

TO WATCH: CODA. I loved this film when I first saw it. I loved it again when I rewatched it. A beautiful story. Incredibly told.

A playlist for the changing season.

Thanks for hanging in there with me. Thank you for being patient while I work through my feelings and thoughts.

Thank you, as always.