It’s a Thursday, and on Saturday I will be attending a book launch. Our book launch. Apart from preposterous over-thinking about what to wear – I’ve never launched a book before; I have no idea – I’m feeling ok about the event. It is in a space I know well enough, the space that in every sense is the birthplace of the words that go to make the book, and of the enthusiasm that brought it into being. My enthusiasm waned mightily during the birthing process, but I’m told the child looks beautiful. I have yet to see it. I am merely relieved that it has been delivered healthy.
I will read on Saturday evening. Most of the included authors in our anthology will do so. Those unable to be present will have their work read for them. This is a tradition amongst us: that all our voices be heard.
Am I looking forward to it? Looking forward to having done it would be closer to the mark, but I am not fazed by it. We have all read in this space many times before. I am nowhere near as tremblingly nervous as I was when I first stood up in that room to shake my way through my first piece of Cley writing. It will be a two-minute read, only one short piece, and I haven’t yet decided which one.
Do I read the one dedicated to my Dad, that got a “magical” response when I sent it in as a ‘piece of the week’ from a workshop? Or the one that got a collective ‘wow’ when I read it raw, out in the woods where it was written? They’re both pieces that I treasure, because of the connections involved in the writing of them and because of the responses to them. They are pieces I remember writing. One of them is also quoted in a forthcoming review of the book. A quote in a review of an anthology with so many authors involved is another kind validation. Does this make them the strongest of my included work? Perhaps, but they are also pieces that people have heard me read often before. I feel that we can lose our connection to our own words if we read them too often.
Shocking confession: I do not really remember the other two pieces I have in the book. I could not remember what I had submitted and had to trawl the proof copy to remind myself. Reading them again, I do not remember writing them. I remember one moment from one of them, the water droplet caught on gossamer. I know that was down below the East Bank, but do not know when. I cannot place it in the wider context of that day. The other one is clearly an Autumn piece, but I cannot tell you which Autumn. It does not matter, it’s a simple piece and its resonance for me comes at the end: somehow, I forgot to leave.
I think, probably, I will read that one.
That last line speaks to my involvement with this group of writers over the last five or six years (depending on how we count, given the missing year of 2020). Signing up for a six-week workshop course, mainly because I needed something to get me out of the house, I had no idea that I would keep returning, season after season. I had no idea that the idea of missing a season would become unthinkable, that even missing a week would be felt, deeply. I am still trying to figure out, precisely, why.
To place it in context, this week I had an invitation to attend another anthology launch in the very near future to read my included piece from that one, a prize-winning piece in fact. Without too much checking of time-zones and calendars, I declined. Unfortunately, I will not be able to make it. The unvarnished truth unsoftened by polite excuses. There may be diary conflicts or time-zone inconveniences, but the reason I will be ‘unable’ to make it, is because of personal conflicts, or do I mean emotional ones?
While I love reading at Cley, and in the related groups that have grown out of that series, my experience of reading publicly elsewhere has been that I do not enjoy it and, contrary to popular belief, it does not get easier.
I figure I am just not ‘at home’ in that world of accomplished poets and other writers. Perhaps most writers aren’t and force themselves into it for the business of selling their books. I remember attending an event with Stephen Fry talking about his Greek myths books. He was witty and wry and erudite and interesting. He also looked verging on terrified. I admire him for pushing past his stage fright, if that’s what it is for him. For me it is more (or maybe less) than stage fright. It is more a feeling of unbelonging. It is not imposter syndrome, which where I feel I have no right to be there, that I am not good enough. Unbelonging is the feeling that you don’t want me there, for reasons of your own. A different thing entirely.
This is purely personal, I must emphasise that I am not for one minute suggesting that my feeling of unbelonging is justified, merely describing how it is from this side of the fence. It is about my feelings, not the actions of others.
In trying to understand myself, I figure the key factor is the difference between reading to those who have shared the experiences that led to the work, or who know the places in which it was conceived, and reading to strangers who have no pre-connection.
Among strangers, I feel that my work can fight its own battles, it does not need me to help it. When I release something into the wild by submitting it or posting it, then I am giving it to the readers for them to interpret it any way they wish. In some ways to come back insisting on my own performance of it feels like I am re-interposing myself between the work and the world.
Or perhaps I just don’t enjoy being in the spotlight. Years ago, when I first started to take my writing seriously, I told my coach that I don’t want to be centre-stage, but I do want my name on the credits.
That is still true. I am still ridiculously excited when someone I do not know thinks the words are good enough to be given space and paper. I still, generally, do not want to stand up in front of an audience of strangers and read them.
It is part of the job of writer to do this. To put themselves on stage, in bookshops, on the radio. To promote the work. There’s the rub. “The job of a writer.” I am a writer. It is not a job. I don’t want to make it one.
Again, no disrespect to those for whom it is: whether by choice or need or accident. It’s simply not where I am.
By contrast, reading among people who share the connection to place, either directly or indirectly, feels like more of a conversation, like coming out of a theatre maybe and talking about what we made of the play…or a sharing of memories do you remember when…or have you ever…. It is somehow as though, directly or indirectly, they are already part of the piece, somewhere in the shadows of the background.
Saturday night: The event went well. A few of us gathered beforehand to bundle up author copies, share food, toast the (hoped for) success of the book, and express our gratitude for each other, our colleagues and fellow-writers, and for the generosity of the endorsements.
On-site there was a buzz in the air. People who normally come together to work, to be creative, to be brave and vulnerable and silly and playful and angry at the way of the world and sad for whatever reasons of their own and joyful at the resilience and beauty of the planet, had come together with the sole aim of celebrating all of that. Many years of all of that.
Author copies were successfully distributed.
Norfolk Wildlife Trust hosted and lubricated throats and voices. They have all the remaining copies to sell, all proceeds to be retained by them. What remains of author contributions, after necessary outgoings, will also be passed over.
I hope the authors are genuinely pleased with the product – they were all kind enough to say the right things on the night - although I have already spotted two oversights, despite our many pairs of eyes proofing it many times. Annoying. But there is a saying that only the gods are perfect (and we're not entirely sure about them). I can only apologise - and then, for my own sake, let it go.
In the room, we read, in the way we usually do, but somehow there was an edge to it tonight. Somehow it felt more…important? Significant? Normally confident voices were quieter. Perhaps we had only just realised that what we do here is important, significant, resonant.
Despite the glass of champagne at my elbow, I do still feel more relieved than proud. More gratitude than sense of achievement.
A couple of people asked me what I am going to do with my life now, possibly only half-joking. Catch up on the backlog, was the light-hearted response, which I won’t. There isn’t actually a backlog, there are only all the things I did not do. Their moment has passed. I move forward. What I will actually do now is decompress, allow myself to breathe a little and then return to my own work.
And this is why I don’t want to be a professional writer. If I were one of those, the next round of work on the book, the promotion and sales, would only just be beginning.
There are still things to be done, and though I said all along that I would step back from the marketing, there is still admin and support required. I am still in the mix to do that. The Trust have generously taken on the bulk of the work of promotion and sales.
The main thing is: for good or ill, the book is what it is and I hope people like it. I hope it sells. I hope that the money raised does a little practical good for the wildlife and wild(ish) landscapes of Norfolk.
More so, I hope that the book inspires others who feel deeply about this place, and similar places, and very different places, especially people who do not think of themselves as creative, to go out in all weathers, with a pen and notebook, and scribble down idle thoughts and fanciful images, or with a camera and take wide shots and close-ups and think of them as notes rather than art, or to take a phone and record the sounds they hear just as reminders, and to come back home, sit down quietly and write about it. Write poems. Write prose. Write stories. Write letters. Write songs. Write postcards. Write memories.
Even more so, I hope that it inspires such people to gather together and go out together and write together and to share what they have written. Because it matters that we do so. It matters that we speak up for the land. It matters that we care for our own souls by staying in touch with it. It matters that we honour our care of each other by listening deeply to our very different responses.
We have much to learn, and much to share. It matters that we do both.
