Fire in the head

I used to improvise and wing things a lot, in rituals, and musically. There was a time when I’d happily go out with a violin and play music I didn’t know, with strangers, and mostly get away with it. It takes a certain amount of nerve. I think you could do that from a place of arrogance or self confidence, but for me what mostly enable the winging of things, was a deep belief in the awen. I’d open my heart, and the words would come, or the notes, or whatever I needed creatively in the moment. It never failed me. Mostly I just experienced the inspiration as happening to me, a force rushing through me, and I never felt much ownership of the things I did.

Life changes and a loss of nerve have meant I’ve not been out winging it as much in the last few years. Hardly at all, in fact. I draw on inspiration to write, but that’s usually a slow and private process. If it doesn’t work, no one else will ever know. Winging it in public is totally exposed and vulnerable, any shortcomings made visible. It’s one thing to go out and feel that you’re balancing on a tightrope the awen holds steady, and quite another to feel like you can’t. Depression and anxiety are not aids to the flow of inspiration. They are serious blocks, and anxiety makes it hard to just go out there and do it and trust that you can.

I had some unexpected jamming in a pub with some guys about a month ago. That helped me feel like I could just leap in and do those improvised things again. Yesterday I really took the plunge. If you read the blog – here – about Intelligent Designing, I proposed to write limericks for anyone who shared either the blog or the link. I had quite a few link shares on facebook yesterday (thank you everyone who joined in) and was rapidly churning out silly limericks that included people’s names. Exposed enough to feel a bit edgy, hidden behind the computer enough to feel a bit safe.

So much of creativity is actually about trust. Trusting yourself that the skills are there and you can do it. Trusting the inspiration to flow. Trusting people not to bring over ripe fruit and throw it at you… It’s always a bit of a leap into the dark. It always feels a bit risky, and I realise that I’d become risk averse in a way that was restricting what I could do. I need to learn how to trust myself again, and how to trust the inspiration. Yesterday went well.

If you fancy having a play, pop the book link http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Designing-Amateurs-Nimue-Brown/dp/1780999526/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_pap?ie=UTF8&qid=1368694639&sr=8-1&keywords=intelligent+designing+for+amateurs on the site of your choice, and let me know – I’m on facebook, @brynneth_nimue, I’m on Google+ and linkedin and if you reblog to another wordpress one I can spot that. If in doubt poke me here or some other place…

Sacred Body part 3 : Offering

by Theo Wildcroft

As pagans and druids, we worry and debate about the authenticity of our practices, our stories and songs, and our gods. We define ourselves by drawing boundaries around Northern Europe, or Celtic versus Saxon influence, or marker points in time. Forgive my bluntness, but I think we’re missing the point. We become overly influenced by concepts such as intellectual purity and social corruption, trying to fix our uniqueness, our difference, and our place in a world of indigenous faiths whilst another part of us reaches out instinctively to reclaim what we really need.

I think this pattern repeats itself all over, as physical practices bubble up out of the ground, taking on the names of other traditions as a way back into our lives. Mark Graham (http://www.druidcamp.org.uk/a-potted-history-of-druid-camp/) talks convincingly of how sweat lodges are just not the same in Britain as they are in the US – and I know he believes that this is a reclaiming, a bubbling up of an older British tradition.

When the much mourned Gabrielle Roth (http://www.gabrielleroth.com/) wrote passionately about her practice of ecstatic dance, she urged all of us to ‘sweat your prayers’. All across the world, the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic diaspora is expressing its love of life through theoretically foreign or brand new physical practices – practices of the body. I know that some of you use dances, songs and drum chants from other cultures; whilst others practice Nordic or East Asian martial arts. And I know why, because I’ve tried most of them too.

Some things that the body has to show and teach us may be universal, but I think that others are more specific to our environment or ancestry. In our own lifetimes, we are endlessly evolving and adapting. Due to the evolutionary accident that combines a narrow female pelvis and an oversized brain, we are each born months, if not years, immature. The human frame, brain and body is formed in response to experience. From the ages of both 0-3 and 10-13, your central nervous system blossoms, creating millions more synapses than you need, and then ruthlessly culling the ones you don’t use. But this process doesn’t end in mid adolescence. Instead, it continues at a slower rate throughout your life. What you repeatedly do, think and feel – what you practice – is who you become. You remake yourself every day.

And after all what we have inherited most clearly from our ancestors is our hearts, our hands and our voices. The legs we stand on were shaped by generation after generation walking this land. My hands just had to remember how to spin and knit and sew; how to wield a hammer or a saw; or how to pick up a child, because they were shaped by these acts a thousand times over, and that shape was written in my genetic code.
For many pagans, thousands of years of a natural, temperate, northern environment has done the most to shape your body – your nervous system, your digestion, your skin, and every other aspect of your physical existence, is still responding as if it lived in a shelter in the woods, feeling safe among the fires of your tribe. All this has changed in a historical heartbeat – in just a few generations. Are you aware that even the presence of artificial light in your evening environment can disrupt your sleep patterns so badly, it correlates to a statistically significant increase in rates of cancer?

Look at your hands right now, really look. Go ahead. Can you see just the tiniest fraction of all that they are asking to do; all that they are capable of – and all that has been handed down to you?

“Three drops of inspiration touch the tongue…
if the soul does not sing its song, the third is slow poison…” Emma Restall Orr

I want you to do something more for me. I want you to take off your shoes, if you’re wearing them. And your socks too, and place your feet in contact with the floor.

Some of you will be resisting the invitation. Just try, and stay with why it’s uncomfortable for you. Some of us will be worrying about whether the floor is safe, or warm enough, and whether the world is going to hurt us. Some of us will be worrying about whether our feet are ugly or smelly, or in other ways shameful and beastly; and unfit to be shared with others.

I spend a lot of time in alternative communities. Last summer I helped build the most beautiful hexagonal compost loo out of green larch wood at Monkton Wyld near Bridport (http://www.monktonwyldcourt.co.uk/). I’m finding that a good indicator of a person’s character is their attitude to waste – especially human waste.

And isn’t that interesting? How often do we cling on to a barrier between our physical self and the world; with all the other human and other than human people in it? There is a shame there that I share:
in my head, I criticise myself endlessly for my few extra pounds, my grey hairs and wrinkles, my scars and marks: for all the times my mind feels that my body has not been the perfect machine I somehow expect it to be. Part of me can’t stop doing it, even as I feel guilty about being so ungrateful. And yet…

I was taught, and I believe that the best offerings I can make to my gods, and to my world, are of my physical self. That this is a true sacrifice – not a grand offering crafted by another and bought with my money; no matter how finely wrought. This is an offering made out of my own hair and sweat and spit in the wind. First, foremost, this is who I am; this is Awen in its rawest form, incomplete, flawed, and therefore perfectly real.

In so many traditions, including our own is a linguistic link between breath and spirit. Each breath, tirelessly received and offered back is a tangible experience of exchange with the world. In each breath, we exchange gases, and warmth, and scent and moisture, and a thousand other subconscious intimacies. Your life depends upon each inhalation. Many other lives depend in return on the gift that you exhale.

How were we ever seduced as a culture into believing that humanity stands apart from a world Created for our dominion? In each breath we whisper the truth: that in this jewel of a world, there may be pain and violence and cruelty, but nothing is lost or wasted or irredeemably corrupted unless our thinking makes it so. And because this intimate relationship with the world our mother can never be truly broken, renewed as it is with each breath, and meal, and piss, with each life and death, this bond calls to us still to be healed.

Find Theo here… http://www.wildyoga.co.uk

All the creatures

It’s been a creature-laden weekend. A long train ride to do a book signing in Northampton (Waterstones!) led to several deer sightings and some wonderful fox moments. The fox on the way out was curled at the foot of a tree, catching the sun. The second, on the way back, was stood in a field staring at the train.

Then on Sunday, we went up to the Birmingham Sa Life centre. Lots of interesting creatures there, including rays. I’m very fond of them, I love the way they move, the grace and how curious they are. The centre also has a giant sea turtle, a beautiful, slow moving creature, totally inspiring to be near too. The sense of peace in watching such a being, is inspiring. The creatures at this centre are either bred in captivity, or, like the sea turtle had to be rescued after injury or similar problem, and then could not be returned to the wild again.

Today there were tame deer, peacocks and other birds. Including some comedy chickens with feathers in improbable places. Last week I was feeding rooks. We had moored under a rookery, and they were coming down for bread, and getting right outside the windows.

It’s not the exotica particularly that inspires me, but the closeness, and the sense of connection – however fleeting. Really fires my imagination. The point where a creature makes eye contact, or accepts your presence, or just stays for a few seconds. Those are amazing, even when the creature is semi-tame, and predisposed to put up with you. I had a moment at the Wild Fowl Trust where a robin came down and took grain from my hand. It was a wild bird, in a bird friendly place, but even so…

The people comparisons are interesting. I’ve seen a lot of people this weekend. Most of them did not make eye contact with me. Most were so focused on whatever they were doing, that they weren’t going to notice anyone else. Didn’t want to. There were a handful of really good human interactions with people we didn’t know. But overall, meaningful moments with creatures this weekend were more numerous than meaningful interactions with people we didn’t know. It seems to me that the creatures are less wary or me, less fearful than the majority of humans, and that’s pretty scary.

The Unreal Estate

I’ve been talking on and off lately about changes in how we work and what we do and why. During my meltdown at the beginning of the year I admitted to myself that a number of things were really bugging me. First is the nature of the publishing industry, which is very slow. By the time a book comes out I no longer feel involved in it, I have usually moved on to something else and I struggle with this. Putting content into the world more often is a sanity saver – this blog being a significant part of that. There are also issues around the fact that I can write enough words in a day to keep Tom busy for months, and that makes for a disconnection. I have to wait a long time for things to make progress, and the frustration I feel around that is really unhelpful. It was getting to me.

A lot of this cannot be changed, but we sat down and talked about what we both want and need out of our creative work, and we hatched an idea. We want to work together, really together, so we’ll start of a morning with the same piece of paper, get the words and images planned, and then over the day Tom can make a page. The rest of our work commitments mean that we might have one or two days in a month when we can work this way. It is enough.

A week or so ago we took a day, and made a comics page from scratch, for a new title – The Unreal Estate. We’re both very fond of Under Milk Wood, this is nothing like that, except that there is a debt owed… it’s modern, urban, and very strange. It allows both of us to push the edges of our ideas and creativity, which is great, and whether it turns into anything doesn’t matter, because the method of working is nourishing and gives us something we need. I realise that just a small amount of the really soulful work is enough, I can spend most of my time on dull necessities if needs be, so long as I have a little bit of time to follow my heart. It’s liberating.

I’m still exploring how I want to work and what I need to do, working out what is both desirable to others and meaningful to me. I think there are balances that can be struck. I think there are things I am driven to create that other people enjoy. Hopeless Maine has been a success on that score. It was made with love and a lot of people are responding to it. Tea Dragons (see some of them at http://www.copperage.deviantart.com) seem to be getting people excited too, so, more things like that (you’d like some insane Steampunk cats, wouldn’t you?). I’m hopeful that I can find ways to follow my own awen and make things other people benefit from. I don’t see much use in creating just for my own indulgence, nor do I see any point in making things that are saleable but soulless. Whatever I do has to tick both boxes, or I’d rather not do it at all. Having that clarity has been a great help to me.

So, here’s the thing we’re playing with, just one page so far, floating it out across the interweb to see if anyone enjoys it…

http://www.hopelessmaine.com/?p=994

(Do leave a comment on the comic if you stop by)

Learning how to work

At school I was taught to work hard, and our wider society also tells us that if we work hard enough, we can be successful and wealthy and have the good stuff. It took me a long time to realise this is bullshit. The biggest indicator of your likely financial success is still the wealth of your parents. This ‘work hard’ thing is mostly a myth that keeps a lot of poorer people running on the treadmills to the benefit of others, and provides a justification for denigrating the poor. If it’s your fault for not working hard enough, no one else has to step up to the issue of what you don’t have.

This year I’ve made a huge decision to change how I work. I’m spending more time not working, in the sense that I no longer aim to churn out a certain amount each day, I shun deadlines, I read a lot, I look at the sky more. My productivity has actually improved for doing this, and the quality has too. I’m also a happier, more balanced, healthier person because I’m resting more.

I’ve also found myself shifting in terms of what I want to create. I have tended towards the dark and serious. Life is too important to take seriously all the time. I’ve been learning to hold things lightly, to laugh at the absurdities, and I think the most serious topics are easier to handle when there’s some light relief. Last year I wrote a novel with a lot of silly elements in it (due out this spring) and I’ve been working to bring more light touches to my work generally. So I’m going to hit you with some verses today. The first one is a consequence of time off and being able to see and respond…

The view from here

Today the crows are fruiting
In naked branches, black on black
Upon an inconsiderate sky.
Some other today, twig bearing
The make new nests, repair old.
Some other today they die and are eggs.
There are always crows.
Indistinguishable to me, as days
Each the feathered centre of a universe.
To me they look like fruit
To them I do not look like a crow.
More, I cannot say.

And this trio, which are total play. This is fan fiction, for Jonathan Green’s Clemency Slaughter project, so I’m just jamming with ideas, because there’s no taking it anywhere, and that’s a good thing. Writing for the sake of it, playing, relearning how to enjoy the words, and the process of writing and having ideas. If writing is a grind and a torment to me, it’s not going to be a whole heap of fun to read, so, I’m not doing that thing, I’m doing this…

Good children are seen and not heard
Thinking naughtiness excessive noise
But the wickedest children are not seen at all
And make sinister use of their toys.

There was a young maid in the past
Who was meant to inherit at last
Wanting the goods quicker
She made plots ever thicker
With relatives dropping down fast.

It isn’t her fault, you must see
That black suits her down to a tee
While good manners make plain
You can’t mourn without pain
So she’ll kill off a granny or three.

(Clemency is here, http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1412864360/clemency-slaughter-and-the-legacy-of-death if you would like to become more fully acquainted with her)

Everyone has a book in them

There’s an idea that drives me a bit nuts. It has too much to do with the fact that most of us can read and write, and books are just a big pile of words, so of course anyone can do it. We don’t have a collective belief that we all have a fresco, symphony, ballet or opera in us. Or a really impressive bit of brain surgery just needing the right context to bring it out. This is in many ways a shame, who knows how many amazing things haven’t happened because the person who should have done it was bogged down in the idea of a book.

I cherish creativity, in all forms. I love the gorgeous photographs on facebook of things people have knitted and sewn, the craft items and artwork. Having dabbled enough in song writing to know I’m not terribly good at it, I am deeply impressed by people who can reliably get an idea down succinctly to a good tune. There are so many ways of being creative, but for some mysterious reason we’ve elevated the book as some kind of creative ideal. At the same time, from the business side, it’s one of the least lucrative things you can do. Write a song and busk with it and at the end of the day there will be some money in the hat. Not so with a book. If you have dreams of wealth and fame for writing, a novel is almost certainly not the answer. The money these days is in film, TV, and writing content for computer games. If you think that’s going to be too hard to get into, it’s not any worse than writing novels. Sure, the illusion of self publishing is that you will get a readership, but putting a book out there and getting people to read it is a whole other thing.

If you’re drawn at all to more bardic ways of working, then creating just for yourself isn’t going to be enough. The sharing of inspiration, and output is so much of what it’s all about. Making things that have nowhere to go is not a happy or rewarding process. It feels like something has aborted, and it feels wrong, and demoralising. Finding spaces to share creativity is actually a key part of the creative process. Short stories and storytelling often results in being able to get a thing into the world, where novels do not.

I’ve seen this from the outside too many times. People who wanted to write a book, and who didn’t know all the technical and business things that go with it, assuming it would be easier than the symphony or the ballet. It isn’t. Not being able to take the work forward cripples confidence and undermines inspiration, and a person who was full of creative energy can end up with very little. Frustration will do that to you.

Everyone has the capacity to create, and there are many different ways of doing it, all of them equally valid. Having been through this process with novels, I’ve ended up moving away to spend most of my time working on other things. The graphic novel are out there and doing well – there is more of a market for them, for a start. I’ve found a deep love of writing non-fiction work, which came as a total surprise to me. Far more of my creative energy goes into non-fiction work these days, and I’m determined to get back into dancing and singing. Novels are nice, and when I find a good one, I enjoy it, but they aren’t the pinnacle of creative achievement, and it’s not worth getting too focused on them. What you might have in you is the next cult TV hit, the next Ben Ten, the next pant wittingly funny piece of stand-up comedy.

If, after all of that you’re thinking, no, I really must write a novel, it is the only thing that makes sense then, yes. You may well have a novel in there trying to get out, and I wish you much joy of it.

Dear everybody (part 2)

I hear little voices. These are not ones I made up, once upon a time they came out of the mouths of people. Or were typed. Words of dismissal and incredulity, words of damningly faint praise and scathing criticism. When I can’t sleep at night, they haunt me, like hungry ghosts. Now, if I could hold the belief that every last one of the nay-sayers was jealous/mean/foolish then I could shake it off, but that’s never worked. Sure, they had their reasons, some better than others. Not giving up has depended to being able to subdue those voices, forget them, ignore them. But of course they feed into every doubt and uncertainty I ever had.

A degree of doubt and dissatisfactions seems to be key in creativity.
Get too comfortable and you’re going to stop. It’s that sneaking belief that it could have been better that makes you try again, and again, and again, because resting on laurels, real or imagined, is never enough. It doesn’t make for an easy life, but I’ve yet to meet a creative person who feels totally satisfied by the last thing they did, and who doesn’t wince a bit over the early stuff. There’s a difference between having a desire to do better, and never being able to trust your own judgement and creativity.

The little voices say you are rubbish and bound to fail. You can’t even sing in tune you sound like a cat. You’re not pretty enough. You didn’t go to the right university, and you didn’t study the right subject. You don’t have the right friends, and you aren’t smart enough to handle the industry. Basically you’re going to make a total fool of yourself if you try, and we’re telling you this for your own good, to spare you the inevitable humiliation that will come if you keep down this stupid route.

The little voices say this is not a proper job, you’re lazy and sponging, no one will ever pay you for the worthless stuff you do/create. People like you are ten a penny, get over it. You’re not special, you’re not even good, you will fail. And we will be there, when you’re flat on your face, to say ‘I told you so’ and have a good laugh. Looser.

These are not imaginary voices. These are people, and I have a nasty suspicion that anyone who tries to be creative, picks up some of these along the way.

Last week I fell apart, for lots of reasons. I let the little voices in. I let them shout all their usual rubbish in my head just the way they announced it whenever it was first aired. Smug and self important voices. Disappointed voices. I rolled up in a little ball, ready to admit that they were all right about me and that I should never have tried.

Then that other thing happened, that stunning rush of other voices, here on the blog, on facebook, google+ twitter, by email and text, people got in touch with me. A veritable tidal wave of other voices, saying you have, and you can and you will, and some offering help, and direction.
It felt a bit like that moment in Peter Pan, where Tinkerbell is dying, and Peter asks all the children to clap their hands if they believe in fairies, and they do, and she lives. Looking around I realise there are a lot of Tinkerbells out there, spirits of hope and creativity, or inspiration and magic, that are all too easily poisoned, and very much in need of the clapping. I am humbled by what happened last week. I’ve had to sit with it quietly for some days, making sense, getting to a place of being coherent enough to talk about it.

I shall try to carry that with me. Next time the little voices in my head are offering the poison cups, I will remember, and maybe I will do a better job of holding out. I think the odds are good. The other thing I’m going to do I watch out more intently for where else that is needed, those acts of belief and trust and confidence in other human beings, because it’s not just me.
Thank you all.

Escapist Druid

In the last week, I’ve spent time in Middle Earth, visited Japan with Arriety, wandered Wonderland and seen something of the surreal world of Professor Elemental. In the physical world, I’ve not been more than ten miles from my usual haunts. This combination is not unusual for me. I travel more in thought than in body. The mind can go anywhere, unhampered by cost, timetables or physical health. I always was a daydreamer.

In my imagination and meditations, I can go to Stonehenge or Avebury. I can go back to scenes and places of abject wounding to try and reclaim parts of my soul. There are otherworlds to explore, imaginatively, even if I’m not confident of my ability to make real journeying. (How do you tell?) As an author I’ve always lived a lot in my own imagination.

It’s grey, wet and cold here. Yet another rainy day, but at least the wind has dropped. It’s so wet underfoot that walking and cycling are miserable, and I don’t have a car. I have nowhere to go, and am still ill. The imagination calls. I’m surrounded by books, each one of them a doorway into another world, or time, or location. My childhood was full of books, and this sort of escape. Life always seemed too narrow, dreams could take me anywhere, and usually those dreams were shaped by books. Aged 11, I wrote quite a long story for a school project that was supposed to be “how I became famous”. I pictured myself as a successful author, so involved with the fictional world I’d created that I became unable to function in the real world, and was only able to re-engage after a train crash allowed me to fake my own death and start over. That was the future I saw for myself, aged eleven. Lost in my own imagination, isolated, a bit mad, but writing books. However rich the dreamworlds might be, there was always that skein of darkness in the mix.

I didn’t get that life, for which I am grateful. I’ve learned a thing or two about the escapism and the lands of dream and fiction, too. They only work when they hold real life resonance and relevance. Go too far into fantasy and you get nonsense. Alice in Wonderland may be surface nonsense, but it’s the existential crisis of Alice that makes it compelling. How do any of us know who we are, after all? Or what the rules really are? Wonderland is also the insanity of this world.
I escape into books and films looking for inspiration, wonder and enchantment. When life seems grey, or I’m ill, those escapes give me back a sense of possibility and magic. The trick is to bring that with me, back to here and now, and do something about the greyness, or my perception of it, or share a flicker of possibility with someone else.

Two years ago to the day, I married a fellow dreamer. Someone with whom I can make the journeys to those other places, and come back again. It’s the dreams we make for our own shared life that are the most powerful, though. Daring to imagine better ways of living and more potent things to be doing. Refusing to become banal, resisting mediocrity and the insipid norms of the consensus reality. If fantasy tells you that you can’t have those dreams as real things in this life, then the fantasy itself is doing it wrong, and exists to trap you, not to set you free.

If, as my younger self imagined, the journey into creativity is a one way ticket to madness and isolation, you’ve missed the point. It’s not the going there, it’s the coming back, and what you bring with you from the journey. Because if you bring it back and make it shareable, it becomes real. At eleven I didn’t understand the power of a story told, the magic of sharing a daydream. It’s not the lonely place I thought it would be, and out of those dreams, all kind of real things are born.

The next big thing

Graeme Talboys drew me into this one, so you might want to take the time to backtrack and have a look at what he’s done with these questions too. http://grumsworld.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/the-next-big-thing.html I shall also be tagging a bunch of people to spread the love, so do have a look at what they’ve done. This is basically a cheery promotional thing for authors that I have done in a slightly convoluted way.

What is the working title of your next book?
In terms of things not yet published, Letters Between Gentlemen (Fic) and Druidry and Prayer (not fic) I’ve also got an audio project in the works called The Unquiet Land, and there’s going to be Hopeless Maine Book 2 at some point – Inheritance.

Where did the idea come from for the book?
Most of my ideas come from inside my head in a response to things that happen outside my head, and it’s the interface between the two that gets the writing done. Actually there’s a whole rant in Druidry and the Ancestors about the frequency at which this very question comes up in interviews, because it assumes that ideas and inspiration come from ‘away’ and not from ‘within’.
I pay attention to everything around me – I’m a compulsive observer, I read widely, listen to the radio. I think about everything, and I imagine what things would be like and how they look from other perspectives, and I ask, what if? Then some alchemy occurs, and books happen.

What genre does your book fall under?
Druidry and Prayer will, unshockingly be a non-fic Druid book. Letters Between Gentlemen is shaping up to be an illustrated sort-of novel in the Steampunk genre. Unquiet Land is gothic alternative history type of thing. Not entirely sure how to pigeonhole that yet, it’s early days. Hopeless of course is a gothic, graphic novel Steampunky sort of thing.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Well now, For the Letters, the main character would, quite simply, have to play himself. Those of you who have been paying very close attention to my creative entanglements may be able to figure that one out! I’d also like the fabulous Chantelle Smith to play the female lead. Which may come as a surprise to her because she’s better known as a singer… Unquiet Land, well, that’s audio and written for a specific voice, hopefully he’ll like it, so that doesn’t need casting. As for Hopeless, my dream is not of a live action movie, but of a Studio Ghibli production and anything Hayao Miyazaki wanted to do would be fine with me!

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
Ah, if only I’d started this thing with one book I’d have a fighting chance. But I never seem to be working on just one thing. Too many irons in the fire, too many ideas, too much the grasshopper mind. How about: Nimue writes a book which is distinctly different from the books she has written so far in which things happen that may or may not, depending on genre, be wholly fictional?

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
Druidry and Prayer I shall wave at Moon Books, I feel able to say this because Trevor expressed interest in public on facebook the other day! Hopeless Maine book 2 will be published by Archaia. The Letters, we’re contemplating and at a guess the audio work will be a self pubbing business.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
I very seldom know. Partly because of the having multiple projects on the go at any one time thing. Letters Between Gentlemen, I’ve been working on for nearly a year, sporadically. I expect Duridry and Prayer will have its first draft down in a month a two. The Audio, not a clue, depends on how the inspiration flows.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I try very hard, in all areas of work, to find space that don’t have much other content in and shoot for there. On the downside this does not make the marketing easy and I know being able to say ‘it’s a lot like X’ is helpful, except that if X has already done it, I want to do something else. I’m not even that reliably like me, I suspect, because I get bored far too easily. There are days when I want to be Neil Gaiman, and Terry Pratchett an Douglas Adams. There are days when I want to be Dunsany and Lovecraft and Clive Barker all at the same time. There are dark days, and gothic days, and angry political days, and all kinds of other things going on.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Most of it lately has been inspired by a heady combo of Tom Brown and Paul Alborough. However, Druidry and Prayer was mostly inspired by the fact that there wasn’t much about prayer in Alain Du Botain’s Religion for Atheists book so, even though I’m not an atheist, this made sense to me as a gap I needed to take on. Hopefully it’ll still make sense when I’ve finished tackling it.

What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?
As I get bored easily and I hate things I can predict, I try very hard to come up with things that will surprise and entertain and take you somewhere you haven’t been before. Regardless of genre.

I shall be tagging…

Tom Brown http://www.mothfestival.wordpress.com

And

Jonathan Green jonathangreenauthor.blogspot.com/

And

Rachel Tansy Patterson tansyfiredragon.blogspot.com

(And if you want to be tagged, yell)

Performance Druidry

I’m not sure what I make of this line of thought, but, here goes. I’ve been reflecting on how I do my Druidry and have come to the conclusion that I’m more overtly Druidic if I’ve got an audience. If it’s just me and nature, then I’ll say ‘hello sky, hello trees’ and whatnot, and then mostly listen. I was down at the river last night. “Hello river, hello hills, hello sunset, hello gulls.” And then rather a lot of just being there, looking, listening, feeling, breathing. I didn’t have any urge to do anything much. Then on the walk home I started talking about the autumn equinox, and I heard myself slip into Druid ritual mode. It was an odd moment.

I’ve done time on stage – mostly with the music, but a bit of amateur theatricals, some storytelling and some public speaking. I know all about the high that is a round of applause, the joys of public appreciation… I never got to public adulation territory, but I’ve been part of adoring crowds and have some sense of how that works. I’m reasonably confident that the performance Druid thing is not merely a desire to get a hearty clap at the end.

I think what happens has everything to do with my desire to inspire and engage other people. I reach for the best words I can find, the most potent language that captures the essence of the moment. I’m open to the spirits of place, taking inspiration from them to help others be more aware of their presence. I try harder.

When it’s just me and the sky, the pace is different, and the intention. I feel the inspiration, but am not motivated to express it right then. It moves into me, through me. I am changed, I grow, but this is all pretty subtle and from the outside won’t look like much at all.

I look most like a Druid when there’s an audience to work with.

Looking back, those times of performance Druidry tended to leave me shattered, physically. Sometimes mentally and emotionally as well. I’d give my all, and it would leave me exhausted and empty. What I got out of that was a sense of being helpful to others, which is important to me. And sometimes fragments of inspiration from what I’d done and said, would stay, but more often, not. When I’m open, it rushes through me. Does the flute remember the tune after the flautist has stopped playing? I felt I was neither tune nor player at those times, just a carrier, a medium.

If I’m out there on my own, or with people who do not need performance Druidry, I can quietly say hello rain, hello geese, and feel the experience nourishing me.

If I go back to doing performance Druidry, I shall make sure there’s a lot more time when I’m doing the less visible work, for my own benefit. Because I need to, and I no longer think my only function is to be a flute on which other things play tunes. There is a difference between looking like a Druid, and being a Druid, sometimes. I think I’m more confident about recognising the importance of the less obvious stuff now.