IN SIGHT OF THE TIDE: Writing in Community

I read this quote recently:

‘Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called “mad” and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called “writers” and they do pretty much the same thing.’*

It plays to that image of writing as a solitary activity. Roald Dahl had his shed in the garden. My friend, Ruth Leigh, has her Palace of Creativity. I dream of having my own light-filled studio where time slows down for my imagination to work undisturbed.

The reality is very different. Admittedly, I do write at my desk (or on the bed) in the spare bedroom. But, like today, I also write in an armchair in our lounge while my husband plays guitar. I write my morning journal among other commuters on the train into university and rough out ideas for submissions on the train back. If I’m visiting the family home, I curl up to write in my corner of the sofa while my son plays video games or the others watch Spurs on the TV. On holiday, I’ve written on crowded beaches and at busy water parks.

But it’s not just a case of writing surrounded by other people. One thing my MA is teaching me is the value of writing with other people. Writing in community.

Each week, we bring our pieces for workshopping. We discuss what works and what doesn’t. What to do more of and what needs work. We suggest alternatives. We bring our difficulties and lacks for, as one tutor puts it, the hive mind to help with.

Let me give you an example.

This week, I submitted a poem I’ve written about my dad’s dementia, which is full of imagery. But the metaphors I’d used seemed so visual I couldn’t work out if my usual multimedia was needed or would just be overegging it. The group not only encouraged me with specific phrases and layout that did what I’d hoped they did but also pointed out that the poem either needed one unifying theme or to be more than one poem.  And that insight gave me clarity.

Now I’m working on three separate poems and that led to my seeing how I can use different multimedia with each to deepen its meaning.  Separating the poem out into distinct parts – they all have the same them and message so they still go together as a triptych – has freed and focussed my imagination to see what’s needed. I couldn’t have done that working on my own.

Writing isn’t a solitary occupation. We need others. The formal: beta-readers, editors, agents, publishers. The informal: tea makers, bill payers, reminderers when we need a break. And the inspirational: ideas sharers, resource pointers, cheerers on. We need the people who reassure us and the people who shake us up.

We live and write in society. We are influenced by the world in which we live. And we hope to influence or make a mark on that world and society by what we write. So we also need to let it make its mark on us too.

It may feel like we’re an island sometimes. Really, we’re an archipelago.

(*Attributed to either Ray Bradbury or Margaret Chittenden, both authors)

IN SIGHT OF THE TIDE: It’s oh so Quiet

It’s quiet.

On the route back from the station, after my first university seminar of the new semester, only two cars overtake me. A woman in woollen gloves and hat passes me on the bridge, holding her coat collar close to her neck against the sea-wind that blasts up river. No one else is about. I have the black town splodged with white-gold lights to myself as I follow the harbour home.

The tide is almost out. One half of the riverbed is silt and sludge, lonely boats sitting high and cold in their wooden cradles or tilted, tired and slightly drunk, against the bottom of the harbour wall. In the other half, the black river ripples away to the sea.

There’s a light on in the fire station where I turn inland. But it’s just a security one. No wonder, it’s a volunteer service so only manned in an emergency or for fundraising events. In the autumn it masqueraded as a fictional fire station for the Death in Paradise sequel.

I edge past the blind corners and empty cars in the tiny square, tightly parked as the sardines in barrels that this town used to be known for. There’s a murmur of music from the pub – it’s the weekly shanty night. I’d expected a louder crowd and sound as I peep through its windows as I pass.

In an upstairs window of the tiny house opposite (which still bears its old pub name above the door), I can see a wide screen TV, brightly green. Someone is watching the snooker, the quiet sport silenced by the barrier of the window. I pass the local deli closed for the evening. Just the final trudge up our steep hill and I’m home.

The house is quiet too. My husband is away for a few days: a meeting back at his office. It’s not that he’s loud. But I miss his chat, his puns, knowing he’s here. I like my own company and I’m used to him travelling for work. But I understand why my mum used to put the TV on ‘for company’. There’s not even the sound of my neighbour’s programmes through our communal wall. She must have gone to bed early.

When I have trouble sleeping that night, I open the curtains and watch the sky fade from black to navy to air force blue. And I listen as I doze. The Guildhall across the river and then St Nicholas’s bells on this side gently chime the hours. Tawny owls call to each other from the Downs opposite. Later a cockerel crows, over and over. He finishes trumpeting his voluntary and then an hour or so on he starts again. As the sky lightens, an occasional vehicle rumbles past the harbour.

I don’t miss the traffic hum and roar of where I used to live. Or the disturbance of revellers returning from the pubs. Or the vixen in our garden attracting a mate by yowling like a cat being run over. I don’t miss the summer hubbub of tourists here. I liked the songs and cheers floating up from the music festival in September but I welcome the change. 

Winter, deep out of season winter, pares this town back to its bare bones, like winter trees.

I love the beauty of the quiet.

IN SIGHT OF THE TIDE: Looe in Winter

 

Saturday evening, early January. Dusk has fallen, the river high with the incoming tide. It’s the first night after the official Christmas decorations have been taken down so back to the strings of just white lights reflecting along the harbourside.

Most shops and restaurants are closed – not for the day but the month at least. Owners gone on holiday or a calculated decision based on costs outweighing returns. The staples remain open: the two Co-ops, Boots, the Sally and the Jolly.[1] Sarah’s Pasty Shop has downed tools but Martin’s Bakery remains serving. Fleur’s, despite the regular can-can of For Sale signs going up and down, is still half full of coffee drinkers and scone scoffers.

Plenty of spaces in the car parks. Plenty of space on the roads. No tide of tourists heading for the beach or returning to their accommodation. The last of these, the New Year revellers in fancy dress, are all gone. Half the houses, the holiday lets, are empty now.

Looe lies quiet and storm blown.

Uninterrupted breakers free to roll and ride far up the beach banked with seaweed (no need to clear it in winter). The teenage skateboarders have retreated from the prom. The New Year fireworks seem to have cleared Banjo Pier of people too.

Tiny narrow backstreets reveal the skeleton of the place: the Old Vicarage, the 18^th century chapel tower, the higgledy-piggledy-squashed-together cottages of a once thriving fishing industry.

Wandering closer, we see the lights are on in Chennai, an elderly couple having dinner behind the frosted condensationed windows. How about a takeaway? But why wait? Let’s eat in, we decide.

It’s an old fashioned Indian where you don’t need to dress up with a faded 1990s air about it. Ed Sheeran and Brun Mars on the soundtrack. BYO but we’re not bothered about alcohol so diet Coke and J2O will do us fine. There’s a reduced menu but choice enough for us. The waiter warns us some of the dips for our poppadoms may be spicy. When I break open the mound of biryani with my spoon, the fragrance of cardamom rises like incense. The waiting staff repeat their gratitude for our compliments and promise to pass them on to the chef as if that’s a novelty.

This is Looe returned to its residents. There’s an unspoken understanding in conversations, a silent recognition in expressions that says “yes, it’s just us now.” It feels like the town can relax now the tourists are gone for a while, a collective letting go of a held breath.

Cornwall for the Cornish again. Whatever that means. Over half of Looe is made up of incomers like us. How long do you have to live here to become Cornish? The saying, the joke says ‘long enough to have buried your grandma’. All I’ve got is a tiny segment of Cornish DNA, a drop of Cornish blood passed down 4 generations.

But it’s enough to share the gratitude for a respite from the (albeit essential to the economy) crowds and to welcome a sense of the ‘real’ Cornwall re-emerging and which is starting to feel like home.

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[1] The Olde Salutation Inn and the Jolly Sailor pub