women and words and time out of time

I spent the week with a group of women writers

Hello friends,
How has your week been? Life is hectic here at the moment. Summer holidays and earning a living and making memories and picking up and dropping off to summer camps and keeping the garden from becoming a jungle and seeing friends and trying, still, to write. I’m sure lots of you are in the same, or an adjacent boat !

Before we begin, a reminder that myself and

Clare Mulvany

will be hosting a Vigil for these Times next Tuesday July 22 from 7-8:30 IST. Our intention for this evening together is that it will be a quiet, contemplative space for us to come together and sit with the heartbreak of this fractured time on the planet. We will also explore, through a series of creative prompts, how each of us individually might use our voices and what actions feel aligned and positive for each of us in this moment.

We will be joined by musician Brian Crosby (who also happens to be my other half :-) ), whose music will guide us as we contemplate and create and by writer

Kerri ní Dochartaigh

who will share some readings with us.

The event is ticketed and a donation is requested, all the proceeds of which will go to MSF / Doctors without Borders Gaza Fund. Please note the event will not be recorded.

You can book your ticket here.

In the midst of all of the summer busyness I did manage by some small miracle to disappear on a writing residency for a whole week.

It was a private group, in a private house, so I’m not going to share any details about who I was with, or where I was. But I will say the week was transformative. Women and words and time out of time.

Here are a few short impressions of the week, a week I will hold dear for so much time to come.

We swam in the lake on the last day in the rain. The teal green and the coral red of my new writer friends swim suits so beautiful against the saturated grey of the water, onto which fat raindrops fell.

House martins swooped always around the house, like birds around a head of a person who has just knocked their head in a Disney cartoon.

I lay on the grass, which was actually made of moss and clover and other wild things, and felt myself sink into my body and into the earth, with the warm sun on my face.

In that same moss-grass carpet I stood on a bee, which in defence pierced the arch of my foot with a sting. The bee left its sting in my foot, so I’m unsure if it lived.

Some evenings we sat in a book lined room late into the night listening to each other reading our work. Eight women. Eight stories making their way out into the world.

Walking down a corridor filled with books, I pulled my fingers over their alphabetical spines. Each one of you is a miracle, I thought. Because writing books is h.a.r.d. But also I think: I believe in miracles. And also : why not?

A whole week of writing, swimming, eating, talking, reading. What I have learnt about my work is that I need to do less. Do less, but don’t give up. Go slow, but don’t stop.

Whilst swimming in the rain, walking country lanes, sitting on deep green sofas that swallow us whole I work out the shape of my book with my new writer friends. I feel into this books soul. I come to understand that the shape of my book is a tadpole, swimming backwards, but propelled by the flow of the stream (which I know is an image that makes sense only to me). I see also that my book begins and ends in the dark.

As I began working on this draft this morning (I’ve stopped numbering them because there are too many to count …) I keep the image of fresh washing on a line in my minds eye.

Into this draft I am shaking sunlight and warmth and s p a c e. It’s easy ! I write on a post it on my desk. It is time for space and ease.