Category: Writing

The View from Here: walking in the writer’s footsteps (part 2)

Continuing from Part one

Photographs with a different colour palette this time (bar one).  Taken within half a mile of home.

Time passed.  April stepped aside gracefully; May burst onto the scene.  And I have adapted.  Same walks, different perceptions.  I lose my fear of emptiness.  I see the flowers erupting along the lanes.  Bluebells and stitchwort, dandelions and celandines.  Dainty violets and bold purple orchids.  Tardy primroses, still tucked shyly in nooks and crannies and the delicate white spheres of wild garlic which proliferate along stretches of shady pathways. Continue reading “The View from Here: walking in the writer’s footsteps (part 2)”

The View from Here: thoughts in the June rain

And perhaps today – when it is indeed much improved outside, though maybe not quite scintillating – perhaps all of that was still in my head …

With June has come summer.  With June has come rain.  It rained relentlessly yesterday.  Thus, I was surprised to experience a delightful happiness and contentment driving along the drizzly road in the morning, gazing at the subdued greenery and grey skies.  I thought of the beauty of the countryside even on this dark, damp and drab day.  I thought of cosiness and warmth and how fortunate I am to have a dry home to return to.  And how fortunate I am to be traveling through this verdant and ever-changing landscape.  Today hushed and muted; tomorrow perhaps, scintillating and radiant. Continue reading “The View from Here: thoughts in the June rain”

The View from Here: Imagine ….

There is a narrative in the landscape which is universal.  It is a narrative which transcends fact and fiction, past and present, lives real and lives imagined. A narrative which speaks to the soul.

Imagine a small coastal town perched on the edge of an estuary, houses peppering the hills, streets steep and narrow.

polruan 1

This is Polruan … Continue reading “The View from Here: Imagine ….”

The View from Here: when the words don’t come

I had accepted that for the moment I can’t write – nothing publishable at least.  It will pass.  But snippets, fragments, jottings coalesced without my noticing… into what I would be writing about if I could.

Earlier today I accepted that, for whatever reason, at the moment I can’t write.  I have the ideas but not the capacity to create anything from them.  I was explaining this in a reply to Margaret at From Pyrenees to Pennines.

Margaret, thankfully, is much more prolific and consistent than I am.  Among other posts on her blog, she provides a one-word stimulus every Tuesday here at Ragtag Daily Prompts.  She has provided three so far, each one chiming absolutely with things I want to capture.  Every week I want to respond – it just doesn’t happen.  And I was explaining this to Margaret in a comment on her latest post.  Until I realised that without thinking about it, I was writing what’s been eluding me these past weeks. Continue reading “The View from Here: when the words don’t come”

Sound, Silence and Safety

Under the trees, in the bedrock of the valley, I feel surrounded by an entity primeval and powerful. And the wind roars. 

I have discovered that it is possible for a February night to be both warm and cold.  There was a duality to this night.  This was my thought as I stepped through the door and stood outside in the dark.  Was it the night that was warm and the wind that blew cold?  No, it was the other way around.  The wind was whispering warm: later in the year it might be described as sultry.  It had a siren’s song, a susurration that spoke of secret things and of temptation.  The sound was so soft it fell around me as silence. Continue reading “Sound, Silence and Safety”

The View from Here: Clinging to the carousel

the view from here is uncertain but worth fighting for

So here I sit, on a golden afternoon on this final day of September.  A month gift-wrapped in anticipation which sadly couldn’t deliver on its promises: thwarted by circumstance and the curve balls life throws us sometimes. Continue reading “The View from Here: Clinging to the carousel”

The View from Here: contrasts

I have the golden energy of those fleeting summer hours bottled in my heart but it will not burn for long. Memory is fickle

We have had four full days of summer sunshine.  Blistering, brilliant sunshine that fizzes, and fills the air with crackling energy and luminous promise.  When the day is brimming with such self-belief it is impossible to imagine that it will ever go away.  Logically, I know that it will, but in my heart it has been here – and will remain here – forever.  Continue reading “The View from Here: contrasts”

The View from Here: scratching the itch

finding my way back into a writing rhythm

I should be drafting a post about a memorable walk with a very good friend which took place on an overcast day last month.  I will write that post very soon, and it will be dated 21st June – around about the day of the walk – because part of the purpose of this blog is to record my life here in Cornwall, which requires a degree of chronology and a matching of posts to when their subject matter actually occurred.  But as the weeks have passed, other reasons for blogging are coming to the fore.

Continue reading “The View from Here: scratching the itch”

Ideas from the Heart

… when my heart is awake and I write from that aliveness

Either side of the inspiring talk, A Space to Write, I found myself wandering alone in Fowey through narrow streets and tentative showers.  The town was quiet, and as soon as I moved from the quayside and the tangle of small shops and cafes, it grew quieter still.  What cars there were moved slowly and softly; forced to creep along because the streets ARE very narrow.  Almost every person had a dog.  Such a lot of dogs in Fowey.  Continue reading “Ideas from the Heart”

Final Festival Talk: A Space to Write

“I am creative. I am a writer: this is what I do and this is who I am”

I went to one festival talk on my own entitled: A Space to Write.  There is a book of the same name which inspired the talk and was already known to me.  It had caught my eye in the Sunday supplements a while back and made my way onto the “books to read one day” list, but it’s too costly to buy new and doesn’t seem available as used.  Perhaps I could ask for it as a birthday or Christmas present.  Anyway: a book in which writers talk about their respective writing spaces and discuss their approach to their craft – wonderful!  And the talk was wonderful.  I loved it! Continue reading “Final Festival Talk: A Space to Write”