Never mind the bullocks - Part II

The table set for dinner

So, there I was, stuck in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of complete strangers, supping wine and wishing I’d practiced a neat one or two sentence answer to the frequent question ‘what are you writing?’, then I could have avoided cringing my way through my feeble, wishy-washy replies. 

After dinner we made ourselves comfortable on the squashy sofas, the sun still streaming through the windows. Fourteen people – twelve participants and two tutors – Kevin MacNeil and Suchen Christine Lim – did introductions. I was almost the last to go. During that agony of waiting, while my fellow writers told of exciting lives and equally exciting writing projects, I still failed hopelessly to think of anything interesting to say about myself or my writing. ‘It’s a crime thing. New direction. Mumble, mumble.’ There followed general writing chat and a balmy night with little sleep – the heat-wave really had made it to Scotland. A strange bed in a strange house.

One of the sheds

Day one was the busiest retreat day you could imagine: A workshop in the morning and my one-to-one meetings in the afternoon with each of the tutors who were going to comment on the work I’d sent in advance. Stepping into the writing shed with Kevin was a bit like boarding the plane again. I felt I had to do it in order to get to where I wanted to go, but I was afraid he was going to say the engines have failed, you’ve run out of fuel, there’s no-one in the cockpit and you’re free-falling into a sea of pointless prose and clichés. I’m not going to try and quote him, just in case he reads this and I get it wrong, but the gist was that the first three chapters I had shown him were good - although there were a couple of incidents of flying ‘perilously close to a cliché’ (and I am quoting him here). I was flying very high when I came out.

I had a breather, thinking about what Kevin had said as I looked out into the beautiful landscape around me, and then stepped into Suchen’s shed. Wow.  She gave me and my writing quite a welcome. While Kevin had given me an overall opinion and then focussed on choices of verbs, commas and dialogue - and emphasised the need to make a plan for the rest of the story, Suchen reached inside my protagonist’s heart and drew out her pain and conflicts. I was almost in tears. She said to let the story come to me and develop over a few years. It went from micro to macro, from Yin to Yang. I came out glowing inside and thought for the first time, this is something I can really do. This was quickly tempered by the fact that if I was going to get anywhere with it, I needed to follow through and deliver on the promises I had made in the early chapters; all those questions raised, all those mysteries to be solved.

I was on the cooking roster for that day and reported for duty shortly afterwards. Kevin and Suchen’s comments swirled around in my head as I chopped and grated and layered, and then had to de-layer and layer again in the correct order, while also chatting to Ivor and Christian, my cooking buddies.  That’s the other great thing about a writing retreat – all the lovely writers you meet. Fourteen people, all very different and from all over the globe and all walks of life - and amazingly, all writing about very different things.  

So, day one was action packed. That left four more days of the retreat and the only structured activities I thought I had left to worry about were eating and drinking. Plenty of time to do what I came there to do...

Never mind the bullocks - Part I

This week, in order to avoid the hideous roundabout of death, I am negotiating a small corner of the countryside on my cycle to work, but this means coming face to face with another, far worse, fear. At the roundabout of death too many drivers fail to see me. Cycling across the fen, it’s this invisibility I suddenly crave as the frisky gang of bullocks up ahead snigger and snort to each other the minute they see me coming. They time their moment perfectly to rampage gleefully across my path. I like to think my pathetic scream was just inside my head. Friends and family laugh at me when we’re out walking and I race ahead, refusing to dawdle and chat when crossing fields of cattle, but these fears are very rational. Every time someone is trampled horribly to death, I send a link of the story to those who scorn me.

Other fears I have are less rational, but equally beast-sized in my imagination. Fear of flying. Fear of talking about myself. Fear of being alone in the countryside. Fear of being told my writing is rubbish. Fear of talking out loud in a group or of being trampled by indifferent silence after doing a reading. I faced all of these in one intense week when I travelled to the other end of the UK to the middle of absolutely nowhere, 12 miles outside Inverness for a tutored writing retreat and some quality time with my newish story.  After leaving my house at 8.30 in the morning, I made it to Moniack Mhor on a hot and sultry evening, just in time for some very welcome pre-dinner drinks.   I had survived the flight – my first time flying without a companion – and had launched myself well and truly out of my comfort zone. I smiled at the people around me, sipped my wine and tried to ignore the creeping terror that there was no escape now from my remaining fears. I had arrived and was stuck in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of complete strangers. I'll let you know what happened in Part II.

A room with a view

Feeling the need to return for another autumnal retreat at the fabulous Lumb Bank, far removed from the usual distractions.

In a room with a view to make your heart leap.

And well deserved dinners after a good day's work, with a lovely mishmash of writers.

Maybe next year? I live in hope.