Grasmere, Writing, RIDE

Approximately-weekly news, #81

This week’s permission:

You have permission to try something new.

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Hello! I have been to Windermere, where I wrote for a week, amongst supportive and intelligent company, at Glenthorne Guest House.

I drove there over the moors, which is more fun than the M6 (though the M6 is my favourite motorway*).

When I wasn’t writing, I spent time looking at the sky.

And at walls.

And at Wordsworths.

I had myself a little road trip to Windermere and ate something called Tiramisu French Toast. Which was possibly more delicious than it looked.**

Also, I had the world’s shiniest red apple. This was maybe not quite as delicious as it looked, but on the plus side I did not die and have to be brought back to life by some patriarchal non-consensual kissing business.*** (It is sitting on my knitting, of which more next time.)

I bought myself a hat and I have to say, I think it was a good call.

When I got home, the daffodils were out.

And Harris basically did this for 48 hours.****

Aside from all of the above-documented fun, it was a productive week. I was pleased with what I wrote, and maybe more importantly I had the chance to think the rest of the book-in-progress through, and work out what it is missing and what it doesn’t need. Next week it will be time to strip the current post-it wall and put up the updated one; the one that maps my route to the end of the novel. And then I will exhale, and I will write, and be glad to be out of this weird bit of swampy ground which I have come to accept is just part of the way I write a novel.

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It was also strange/sad to go back to the same place I went to, at the same time as l did last year, two months after Lou died. Then I was still in that part of grief where you are functioning at the same time as you are watching yourself functioning and wondering how on earth you can/want to function when this inexplicable, incomprehensible loss has taken place in your life.

Now I am, of course, in a different place, learning to walk with grief, having had my life grow around the space in it that I did not choose or want. I felt a great desire to reach back to the me of last year, with her brave face and her gritted teeth and her feverish writing, as though writing would save her*****. I wanted to say to last year’s Stephanie, you don’t think you can do this, and you don’t want to, but you can, and it will somehow be okay. Grief must be your experience, but it can’t be your identity. And maybe I did do that, as I had a quiet weep outside under the sky, on the morning that I left. Maybe that explains the peace that I found there last year.

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Update for writers: I would like to take on new mentees - I have mentoring slots beginning in May and July. The next manuscript assessment and developmental edit slots are in July and September: if these might be for you, please get in touch, as I’m limiting the number of manuscripts I can work on in the autumn.

There’s more about what I do here, and we can have a no-obligation chat about your writing, where you’re at, and how I might be able to help.

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For the last eight weeks I’ve taken part in a Zoom course called RIDE, with a bunch of amazing women, and I can honestly say it’s been one of the most genuinely transformative and powerful experiences of my life. I’ve finally been able to shift old messages and stuck behaviours. The things that have made much of my adult years feel like battling and striving and all the time feeling various versions of not-quite, not-enough and not-for-you have gone. Just…dropped away. It’s extraordinary.

I’d like to pay for someone who couldn’t otherwise afford it to do this course, which runs again from mid April to mid June. Please, take a look at the details here, and if you think it’s for you, let me know. If it’s a not-sure or not-yet, then you can follow Seda on Instagram here.

If need be, I’ll pull a name from a hat.****** I definitely won’t be judging who gets a place or choosing who is most deserving. (And you don’t need to tell me anything about your financial situation, just that this isn’t affordable for you right now; I believe you. Bursaries to reduce the costs of manuscript assessments and mentoring work the same way.)

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And that’s it for this week, friends. Next time: a reading update, a paperweight, knitting, and a Lost For Words Merch Update. (Eeep!)

Until then, stay well. Take a moment to close your eyes and turn your face to the sun.

Love,

Stephanie x

*Really. If you’d told me when I started driving I would have a favourite motorway I would not have believed you. But I have and it’s the M6. Partly the scenery, partly Tebay services.

**Unlikely, but true.

***Honestly, it’s a miracle any of us are normal.

****He took some breaks for a bit of digging, obviously. He is nothing if not committed.

*****which, to be fair, it did.

******My new hat, obvs.