After writing the previous post on this blog, I could no longer ignore
what has been gnawing away at me for the last two months, ever since I started
work on the new Finistère guidebook. Raising the perennial problem of
guidebooks (where the good stuff that digs beneath the surface gets cut and
only the basic facts remain) made me finally face up to the most important
basic fact of all. I do not want to do this any more.
My last book, Brittany – a cultural history (Signal Books,
Landscapes of the Imagination) at least allowed me the luxury of arguments and
issues to the extent that overall word and page count would permit, and now
there is no way back to the more constricting, prescriptive format of
conventional guidebooks, the need to conform to expectation in terms of sites and coverage, to reader profiling and in-house styles.
I need a more creative process, a focus on my landscape writing, whether
or no a book in publishable form emerges. I need to work from the inside out
and not vice versa. I need to give more time to other things and other people.
What I no longer need is to sit at my computer for ten hours a day or travel under
frustrating pressure of collecting and regurgitating information in a limited
timescale. So I have reneged on an agreement for the first time, something
quite against my normal instincts, and in doing so have made a major change in
my life.
Walking in the early evening today, the debris of frozen hailstorms
still lingering on the rocks in the forest, I felt a sudden sting not of panic
but hesitation and uncertainty. What on earth will I be doing at 9 o’clock or 10 or 11 tomorrow morning? I have worked so hard
for so many years on a clear progression of full-time, demanding writing
projects (usually fired by economic imperative) that I’ve forgotten the sense
of freedom that accompanies true creativity.
A minute later, the last ray
of a previously veiled sinking sun flashed through the skeletal trees right into my face,
lighting a golden path ahead. It was a simple reminder of alignment, of the
beauty of doing the right thing at the right time. Whatever I do tomorrow
morning will be new and exciting and worthwhile, even if it’s only sleeping in
for a change…
2 comments:
Hi Wendy,
your writing is beautiful. I think you are a brave person to realise that you want to make a change in life. I admire you for that. I live in the Alps, and the landscape here, although very different from yours is just as inspiring, and makes me want to write ;-) all you need to do is walk, just walk walk walk and before you know it, something creative will be in your head and you will know it is the right direction to take ;-)
Louisa
Louisa: thank you for your encouragement!
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