the stones are getting higher and higher, heaped up into a wall by the force of the waves. I know it hardly needs saying, but living on the beach water becomes a reality -a nd I appreciate more and more its immense strength. I clambered up some rocks yesterday, a la child in me wanting to be a wee adventurer - and then came face to face with the power. a tower of rolling rearing wave coming towards me. Thrilling but should it have freaked and rolled over me I would have been powerless in its dashing force. Seals I conclude are really strong. They ride the waves and stay their ground or water rather, as strong as the sea. We have had rearing great waves for days now. It happens for a few days in a year and then the sea rids herself of our garbage or at least some of it. so does the river bank - limbs of trees are torn off and flung into the gushing river which then throws the great trunks and branches into the sea, which could do great damage to a fishing boat. There is a minor forest out there on the beach just now.
It is the view from my window.
and my novel is published which is wonderful and I've the sea to thank for that.

oh dear - quel very long time since I wrote something here. Ah well - the sun doth shine and the September day is warm. This sea of my inspiration, a stone's throw from where I sit now, helped me create a story - Magnus Fin and the ocean quest -and Magnus Fin and I won the Kelpies prize and will soon be in print.
And the joy to have an editor who is wonderful. Many long moons ago, when I was a journalist in London, I had an editor. Since then I had forgotten what that means - that there is someone there in conversation with your writing and those final touches do not have to be done completely alone. So much of the writer's life is being alone. It is a state I am getting used to and cherish. But all this writing or the best of it - I hope, is ultimately for other people - so it's interesting to now enter this communal aspect of writing. How about this? she says - and you said that in chapter two so don't want to confuse readers by saying this in chapter five etc.
Thank God. at the polishing stage it's fine and right to let others in.
Then there's the next book already to think about. I need to learn to trust the pregnancy of that and stay - like Mary - silent with the knowledge of it growing under her breast. I've blabbed too early and that's asking for a miscarriage. It's not for nothing foetuses are hidden and protected.
Anyway, nuff of that mystery. I met Joan Lingard and was presented with £2000 - which was utterly wonderful considering my card that very morning had been declined!
Ah but these short listed ceremony affairs are difficult. I had a deep feeling I would win but of course prepared myself not to - which meant numbing down on the whole feeling realm so as to, if it came to it, be a good runner up.
The book launch will be in Edinburgh on October 22nd.
much love xx

Seal with baby

Seal with baby
Originally uploaded by moymackay

north ronaldsay

just back from far flung North Ronaldsay - if this Caithness land is far north then - whah! it ain't nothin' one and half hour boat trip to Stromness then eighteen minutes in an eight seater plane toOrkney's northernmost island. The wind does blow. The folks there are wind blown. At one place the island is just quarter of a mile wide and one of side the north sea, calling to its sister on the other, the Atlantic. I asked some of the older islander what where they called - as in North Ronaldsians or such? Selchies, one elderly man said, smiling with the sea eye and wind face. Aha! So that's where they hide out, the selchies? These few folks who live alongside wild seaweed eating shaggy sheep and basking brother and sister seals, on land there are the ones who, for some time at least, have removed their seal skins. They are getting out the accordion, playing the fiddle with a pixie eye, drumming for all she's worth not with a drum kit but a square of formica and very good it does too. And there was a sexophone put in an appearance too. And the wine did flow and the songs were sung and in the eternal light the seals at midnight joined in and sung in their deep haunting soulful way.

like peeping my head round the quiet door to see if the cat has come home. hello. she said, her voice a dry brush into to wind. have been busy. Writing but mostly getting through each day's to-do list and until the book brings me a great sum and such the list means cleaning the house, doing the recycling, walking the dog, preparing classes, reading up on rhymes for next week's creative writing class and then getting in my head to thrash out a thousand words and try for a few short story competitions. Underneath the pile sits the book I want to write based on the life of my grandmother. I have the title already - the woman with the letter in her hand - and I have the front cover. I even have ten thousand words but for whatever reason she's having a little rest right now. Then there's emails to write, answer, sun to sit in.
but not only women with a room of their own and a thousand a year or whatever the equivalent would be now (thirty thousand probably) manage to write novels. part of me yearns to Fen Shui so much and part of me just lives with it - this chaos which occasionally aids cretivity but mostly dampens it.
but the sea at my window is calm, the birds wheeeling and screaming and doing what they do - intent on the few things they must focus on - survive.
I have been watching the wild. It's dangerous. So many die. So manyc arcases washed up on the beach, so many oyster catchers with broken wings. It's a wonder so many live at all. Coping with danger makes us strong I suppose and so this hankering after tea and eternally hoovered carpets and radio three and arranged bookshelves and ample toilet paper and gleaming windows and in short ORDER is perhaps not embracing the danger that will make me strong.
I on the other hand am bloody sick of moaning about the eleastic band between my imagined perfect creative state and what is. A bit of tension - good, too much, breaks. The carpets are fine. The sea is full of seaweed and whales and bits of stuff and angel fish. Girl - get on with it.

after three prose years I am teetering back into poetry. Instead of being a waitress, the in-between books seems like a chance to see if I can still do it (a bit). Teaching poetry at evening class I feel a bit of a fraud not writing any so yesterday tried to do the homework I set the students - metaphor that's what. That tones and addles the brain. Too much of it and you tip into madness, seeing always something as something else. Nothing is as it seems! Aristotle, apparently, said the ability to make metaphors led to intuitive perception. He didn't mention the madness - it's not the clouds what are you on about, it's my grandmother's washing line on a Monday. Or Kate Atkinson's 'the car hire lady's suit was so red if she fell into a vat of Heinz tomato suit you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.'

here is one verse of it;

Imagine cliffs that don't give you time to question

e

n

d

i

n

g

s

cliffs that don't doubt, don't regret

how one thing changes into another,

cliffs that like brides take the plunge

and go on plunging

while cackling newly-weds build love nests in the air

and chat manically while the wide sea sings lullabies

imagine Caithness

it has been a while. but the writer needs to write. Two books more or less done. the last full stop. how often have I siad that - more then more editing, re-writing, tweaking, polishing, dusting, then more final full-stops, until perhaps any more changing would make it a different book. A time maybe to say for now that's you. Is this computers? I remember writing a book at the bright age of 22 and any changes had to be carefully aligned - once typix had dried into a thick white blob, then hopefully the new word or even letter would more or less line up with the rest. Laziness I note creeps in. Back then I rarely made any spelling mistakes, now the words correct themselves and I have given up even trying to spell conciousness but actually think I just got it.
I note my last post was on Valentine's day. Since then the snow has melted, the daffodils are past their peak, the hens venture further each brave new day and the breeding sea-birds are chattering loudly on the craggy ledges. The hen with the broken leg is hobbling along with the others now and managing fine - so close she came to soup now look at her.
I thought - why bother blogging, no-one except my darling supportive signs reads it then I think - suddenly here - needing this now books have had their final stop till next one - I need it. It rights my world and tunes me the way I want to be tuned. Without it - the writing - I slump into a poorer vision, duller hearing, slower brain fog. Am trying to waken my word sound life. Just been to the beach with dog and stood on sand with cliffs at my back and nestled in them several pairs of fulmars. Trying for a sound poem

ka kakakaka
ke eheheheh
ke ke ke ke
wishhhh shushhhh washhhh
ho wah shaoshhh shhhhh shhhh woshhhhh
kak kak kak
akakakak eh eh eh eh eh eh eh

it's hard and staccatto over soft and flowing then my feet pressing and releasing the sand and my voice calling the dog, my voice like a bark. April and there's too many holes in the ground full of new life. The too many is because of the dog and her sniffing and eagerness to get to them - like those tiny naked rabbits she unearthed - little pink vulnerable freshnesses. April's full of it - full of hopeful holes in the ground.