Essays and Other Things

Including Failure

This week, among things, I’ve seem to have been led in the direction of essays and essay writing, which is what I haven’t been doing here in recent weeks! I’m still holding back on using the keyboard, (dictating some of this) so once again, less of an essay and more a series of thoughts

If you’re interested in developing your essay writing skills you really should sign up for Summer Brennan’s, A Writer’s Notebook. She has just completed her week of Essay Camp where she takes you from beginnings - the five things in your notebook, which I’ve written about here, through to finding and structuring an essay - allowing it to find its content and form, perhaps surprising even you the writer, as fiction often does, and most important completing the work. If you subscribe (free) now, you can still access the posts.

This week I re-read Rebecca Solnit’s best known essay - Men Explain Things to Me. One of the things I like about Solnit is that she is radical but never rabid, and she is utterly uncompromising on gender violence. What drew me to it was listening to Civil Servant, Helen McNamara’s, evidence to the Covid inquiry, particularly where she described the macho, misogynist culture inside number 10. In the postscript to the essay Solnit, says she surprised herself when she wrote the essay, which ‘began with an amusing incident and ended in rape and murder.’

I love it when I discover a book about writing that I didn’t know. It happened this week when I came across The Soul of Place - Creative Writing Workbook -ideas and exercises for conjuring the genius loci - Linda Lappin - (I can only find an Amazon link) I’ve only just begun it, so I’ll report back later but the book begins with a beautiful essay about the love place, about its power, about how it can shape our personality and history and much more…just my kind of thing!

The Linen Press crew in Ask, before the event, celebrating the launch of Lynn Michell’s, The Water All Around Us...

Finally, and nothing to do with Essay Writing. Thank you so much to all who came to our Linen Press event at Collected Books in Durham. It was quite a night for me as I was in the chair but the welcome and the buzz in the room helped overcome any nerves.

It had been an anxious day, and five minutes before leaving the house I discovered, after weeks of waiting, that The Silent Women hadn’t made it to the final shortlist of a prize we thought it had a good chance in, as we knew it had made it through to the later stages. C’est la vie. But possibly, I thought, the worst time to find out. As it happened, it was the best time. I had such a great night, both with the other Linen Press writers and also with my friends, and what I kind of think of as my people at Collected Books, that the failure paled into insignificance. Just to underline - the next day in an email, Emma from Collected told me that The Silent Women was their second best seller behind Emma Donoghue, Learned by Heart. Hooray! I have so much to thank Collected Books for, and all my friends in Durham - and my readers here too

so thanks again for reading - love Avril x