So far this summer, it’s rained a lot, we’ve celebrated three birthdays, we’ve travelled up to Scotland, and I’ve been quite a lot iller than usual. Throughout it all (the children's party planning, the long days in bed, the week with a view of the loch) there have been words. Words I’ve written, and words I’ve read. I’m 50,000 words into my current draft and have read 23 books since the start of July: both these things have been keeping me going.
Because, isn't fiction a kind of travel? It lets us be someone else, somewhere else, doing something different. Even when I’m too unwell to sit at my desk or make it to the sofa or — goodness me, what a superpower! — to actually leave the house, if I’m well enough to write I can disappear into another world entirely and make my characters do all the things I can’t.
Historical fiction has an obvious appeal in terms of travel (not just space, but time!), but when you’re restricted to a handful of rooms in real life, any kind of fiction can feel like an incredible sort of magic. I can open my current work in progress, turn over a few words in my head, and then, within seconds, find myself walking the corridors of a country house, dancing at a post-war cocktail party, climbing aboard a cross country sleeper train.
In other words, even as my disease has made my world smaller and smaller, my writing has opened it up again. It's given me new ways to travel, new ways to explore. It's been a lifeline and a release and an escape, even when there's not been very much hope.
And, of course, it's not just my own writing that does this. Reading other people's stories is transformative, too. Books offer all sorts of other worlds for me to step between, even on days when the literal steps between my bed and the sofa are too laborious to handle. Maybe I can visit another country, or another continent, or another career, or another time. I can tag along on adventures and love affairs and investigations and journeys of enlightenment. I can learn new things and laugh and see all kinds of new sights in my mind. I can feel like I've gone somewhere and done something and been a part of a community, all without moving a muscle.
All this is to say, I'm thankful that I can write and I'm thankful that I can read. (It's important to note that many people with ME are too unwell to do either). I’m grateful to the many talented authors who help me fill my days, as well as to booksellers, and my local library, who keep me very well stocked with borrowed ebooks.
And it’s also to say that I hope, I very much hope, that some day in the not too distant future, some of you will be able to open a book with my name on the cover and travel alongside me.
I took the above photo from the door of the holiday cabin in Scotland we stayed in earlier this month. We were at Lochend Chalets on the Lake of Menteith, and it was an absolutely beautiful spot. (And a lovely, peaceful place to travel to in real life, not just in fiction).
Since my last newsletter, I’ve particularly enjoyed:
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (Little known book, maybe you’ve heard of it?!)
The Walled Garden by Sarah Hardy (I really enjoyed this historical debut, not least because it touches on many of the post-war themes I’m also drawn to)
Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout (I think this is the first ‘lockdown’ novel I’ve read, and I found it so absorbing I read it in one sitting)
Ed Yong’s brilliant piece on Long Covid and ME/CFS ‘Fatigue Can Shatter a Person’. (Originally published in The Atlantic behind a paywall, but the full article is available to read for free here)
Joanna Wolfarth’s notes on drafting and getting the words on the page