Author Archives: Andrew

Books of the Year 2022

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I can’t pick a single book of the year, so I’m choosing five that really left a impression on me in 2022:

* Annie Ernaux, The Years (translated by Alison L. Strayer)
* Julia May Jonas, Vladimir
* Annie Ernaux, Getting Lost (translated by Alison L. Strayer)
* Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard
* Joshua Cohen, The Netanyahus

A few patterns emerge: campus novels; middle-aged women having affairs with younger Russian studs; natural history and geology; the house of Fitzcarraldo; the truth of closely observed details – of crazy obsessions, of everyday life in the suburbs, of wild birds in remote valleys I’ll never visit.

If I were to round out to ten books of the year, I’d also include:

* Lauren Groff, Matrix
* Ocean Vuong, Time Is A Mother
* Robert Macfarlane, Underland (narrated by Roy McMillan)
* Katia Oskamp, Marzahn, Mon Amour (translated by Jo Heinrich)* Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead

Other notable reads in nonfiction: Laura Cumming’s On Chapel Sands, Tim Flannery’s Europe, Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads, Helen Gordon’s Notes From Deep Time, Cat Jarman’s River Kings, Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks and The Old Ways (both narrated by Roy McMillan), Francis Rose’s Wild Flower Key, Henry Shukman’s One Blade of Grass, Stanley Tucci’s Taste, Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror, and Boel Westin’s Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words (translated by Silvester Mazzarella).

And among works of fiction: Junior Burke’s Buddha Was A Cowboy, Katie Kitamura’s Intimacies, Sang Young Park’s Love in the Big City (translated by Anton Hur), Torrey Peters’s Detransition, Baby, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Elder Race, Sarah Tolmie’s All The Horses of Iceland, and Camila Sosa Villada’s The Queens of Sarmiento Park (translated by Kit Maude).

Special mention goes to short stories by Mavis Gallant – this is an ongoing project in reading, not rushed as I’m taking her advice: ‘Stories are not chapters of novels. They should not be read one after another, as if they were meant to follow along. Read one. Shut the book. Read something else. Come back later. Stories can wait.’ I imagine a volume or two of hers might appear among books completed next year, or the year after that. Another excellent story collection I’m working through is Florida by Lauren Groff.

Maybe I’ll keep another list for specific short stories and poems next year – alongside nonfiction, short fiction and poetry certainly outclassed novels for me this year. So much product from the spoon-feeding cookie-cutter hard-sell school of creative writing is either not to my taste or just plain boring. Don’t waste my time with high-concept formulas and cheap reveals: gimme voice, gimme character, gimme setting, gimme mood.

Telly is a bit of a blur, and a lot of tv reviewers need to find new jobs. Off the top of my head, a highlight was the Star Wars prequel Andor. What a wonderful slow burn that series achieved. Again, gimme character and setting and mood – gimme depth – and while we’re at it gimme wardrobe too: so much of that mood in Andor was achieved through the costumes. And after so frequently looking up details for its UK broadcast, I’m very much looking forward to the second season of Reservation Dogs. Oh – and incoming, incoming: last night we very much enjoyed the movie of White Noise – what a good adaptation.

I also enjoyed the Masterclasses of Amy Tan and Joy Harjo. I guess learning can be a form of entertainment too. Another profoundly good book-adjacent experience was the Introduction to UK Natural History that I took with the Natural History Museum. How exciting that natural history is going to become a GCSE subject on the national curriculum – let’s hope it will be available in all schools.

Another fascinating foray: the Druidcraft Tarot. I’m not sure I’d have chosen this deck myself, as these are not cultural associations I was particularly drawn to, but it was given as a gift, and it’s turned out to be a remarkably powerful and rich resource – and now I am making sense of those cultural associations too. There is perhaps something in that idea that special tarot decks are given to us, rather than purchased. I also discovered Jessica Dore’s Tarot for Change this year – highly recommended.

I’ve enjoyed a lot of Substacks this year too – though the cheerleading in some of the writing ones gets a bit wordy and cheerless for me (are they paid by the word?!). But ones worth following include: Austin Kleon, Chuck Palahniuk’s Plot Spoiler, Lincoln Michel’s Counter Craft, and Anne Trubek’s Notes from a Small Press. In podcasts I enjoyed various interviews with Tim Ferriss, as well as anything with Kara Swisher, the sort of feisty, well-informed advocate anyone wants on their side in a culture war.

Digital subscriptions to the New York Times and the New Yorker are perhaps my greatest indulgences, but they feel well worth it – in particular the NYT’s coverage of the war in Ukraine shows the value of real reportage. I’m tired of British newspapers and the space they devote to property and panic-mongering, though maybe they are just reflecting their readers. The Cooking newsletter from the New York Times is perhaps the greatest joy in my inbox: great recipes, but also a lot of first-rate cultural writing.

Also, as a final note: praise be for libraries! They saved me a lot of money this year, and saved my bookshelves (and floors) a lot of space, and I also listened to numerous audiobooks on library apps. And in visiting the library in person I made a few discoveries too. I end the year giving thanks for libraries and librarians.

Winter Solstice 2022

by Andrew | 2 Comments

The Winter Solstice: tomorrow the days start getting longer! Which just goes to show the ever presence of paradox in the cycles of our lives. But for now it’s 4.30pm and dark outside. A robin is singing: one of my favourite sounds.

Rather than post a writing experiment this quarter, I’ve added a page to the resources on my site for Field Work, which is a practice I frequently suggest in tailored forms for writers that I’m mentoring.

Do take a look, especially if you’re wanting to freshen up a draft or are getting stuck – it’s a great way of deepening your understanding of the world of your writing and how you might serve it. Suspend any grasping towards word counts or other outcomes; simply give yourself the gift of time hanging out with your characters in writing, and after a few weeks see what the practice brings.

Best of all it’s straightforward. Too much in writing is overcomplicated. ‘Just sitting – what a relief in this busy world’: a helpful description of meditation from Natalie Goldberg. So: just write – bring some of that ease of letting things be to your writing too. See what comes up.

I’m just over a pretty exhausting cold. It was worse than covid! Guess these things test our immune systems. Stay warm, wear a mask, eat fruit cake – this year’s have been particularly fine.

Reawakenings: A Four Elements workshop, 26 November 2022

by Andrew | 3 Comments

I’m very pleased to be planning a new real-time, in-person workshop for 26 November: Reawakenings.

It’s been nearly three years since we last met at a Words Away workshop! And a lot has happened since then, so for this first workshop I thought we could explore some of these changes in our writing. There’s some darker stuff there, of course, but it also gives us plenty to think about in terms of transformation and creativity and coming out the other side. Plague and war and sourdough starter: meet notebook and pen.

We’ll draw upon the ideas of sleeping and waking for our focus: slumber, hibernation, dreams, nightmares, rebirth, recreation, the interactions of the conscious and the subconscious minds. I’m currently gathering some short readings – probably some Natalie Goldberg and Robin Wall Kimmerer, perhaps some Tove Jansson, almost certainly a reference or two to Brokeback Mountain. I might bring in some Buddhist psychology I’ve been studying over the last couple of years, and we’ll also use the Four Elements as a holistic creative framework.

Kellie and I are particularly excited about a super new venue in the heart of the West End: the Phoenix Garden. A couple of months ago, as I was taking a short cut behind Shaftesbury Avenue to the bookshops of Charing Cross Road, my eyes were drawn to Tibetan prayer flags behind the railings of a little pocket park. I realised in fact it’s where I once ate fish and chips – or was it a cream cake (or maybe both?!) – when I met up with an old friend. Since then it’s had a bit of a makeover: it has its own meeting space, and the garden has been carefully tended into a little oasis. I’ve always wanted to teach a workshop in a garden: now my dream comes true. Perhaps, if it’s not raining on the 26th, we can even do some writing outdoors?

And of course the idea of a Phoenix fits perfectly with the theme of reawakening.

The formal description for the workshop is copied below, and here’s a booking link at Words Away.

Rise again! I hope to see some of you there.

REAWAKENINGS
A Four Elements workshop
1.15-4.45pm, 26 November 2022
Phoenix Garden, 21 Stacey Street, London WC2H 8DG

What’s been sleeping, and what’s now stirring? And what can we spring into action in our writing?

The past few years have been marked by great changes for all of us: fears of plague and war and climate disaster, moral panics about woke culture, political upheaval, social isolation, personal loss. But there’s also the possibility for seeing and doing things anew.

Drawing on the powers of the four elements, in this workshop we’ll look for fresh inspirations for our writing in the ideas of sleeping and waking. As we come together again to write, let’s sharpen our awareness as we reawaken our imaginative purpose.

This workshop will include:
* preparatory readings and writing exercises (optional, and to be circulated a couple of weeks before the class)
* in-class discussion, meditations, and writing
* teatime with the book doctor: opportunities to raise questions about writing and publishing over tea and cake
* follow-up notes, including writing experiments, reading suggestions, and resources on writing and creativity

Rites and Writes for the Autumn Equinox

by Andrew | 4 Comments

It’s that time of year again – autumn always seems to be the favourite season of writers. Our inner nerd must associate the cooler air and autumn leaves with the wide-open prairies of unused exercise books. And we’re off!

Not that there are as many leaves left to turn orange and fall round here after the summer that we’ve had. Summer: increasingly my least fave season, though this year I did enjoy an excellent Zen meditation course as well as a wonderful introduction to natural history with the Natural History Museum. It’s been a weird year – heat and drought and war and politics and divisions, plus loss and grief that never really seems to budge. Perhaps the cycle of the year puts us in a space to start again.

Autumn, though. It’s something about the light, I think – the slant of the light in September, a thinner yellow that catches something: what? It was there in Orleans House Gardens in Twickenham this morning (see above). It was there on the English Channel last week when I taught a Four Elements workshop at the Hastings Book Festival (thanks for having me!). Something that changes in the light makes me see or maybe just feel things differently: a certain lift happens.

Thinking about that: as a writing experiment, take an old piece of writing and rewrite all or some of it by telling it slant.

A different perspective, a new setting in time or place, a fresh register: bring the subject matter in another direction.

Perhaps think about the quality of light this work might sit within, and let that feel its way into the writing. And maybe you could prepare by doing a meditation or visualisation that draws on a particular quality of the light.

To illuminate (ha!) this writing experiment, try this ritual for the Equinox from Bhanu Kapil, first published in the Ignota Diary 2019:

23 September
Ritual for Autumn Equinox
Invert yourself at the edge of the water, so that the top of your skull or your hair makes contact with the current or wave. And if this is not possible, if your capacity to take this posture is restricted in any way, then feel it in your body first. And if that is not possible, or if feeling is not possible in this moment, then take a glass of water and add some pink Himalayan salt, fresh lemon juice and pepper. Drink this. And if this is not possible, then lift your face to the rain. And if it never rains, then wait until the water finds you. Wait for the unexpected emotion that changes or charges your very real heart. And then: step through the indigo door, as Rachel Pollack said, into another world.

All of that! Some Bhanu (and Rachel) magic to send you on your writing way. Let the light lead you into another world of your own creation.

And spookily (or maybe not), as I type this post Bhanu also informs me about this. If you’ve ever enjoyed the great wisdom of Rachel Pollack’s writings, you might want to show your assistance. (And if you are interested in tarot but have never read her Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: you must seek it out! It is widely regarded as the best book on the subject.)

***

While I’m here, coming soon:

* Reawakenings, a Four Elements workshop run with Words Away, at a central London location tbc, 26 November 2022. Thinking about the changes we’ve experienced in the last few years since we last came together in person, let’s explore together ways to reawaken our writing: reset or reboot it, rebirth it even!

* Masterclasses on craft and practice, structured around an updated syllabus for my DIY MA in Creative Writing, on Zoom, January 2023 onwards.

Happy Autumn!

Worlds Of Work

by Andrew | 2 Comments

Copy of Marzahn, Mon Amour

It’s the summer solstice, and it’s warm outside, and there’s a train strike, and even though I don’t commute it makes me feel very lazy. Which is ironic, as this post is all about the world of work.

I am inspired by one of the books I’ve enjoyed most so far this year: Marzahn, Mon Amour, by Katja Oskamp, expertly translated by Jo Heinrich and published by Peirene. It’s a memoir by a writer who during an ‘iffy’ patch in her career retrains as a chiropodist and finds a job in a salon in Marzahn, a neighbourhood of communist-era high-rises in East Berlin.

Her clients are older, and – among the ingrowing toenails and painful corns – have tales to tell: illness, bereavement, surviving the Nazis and the communists. Katja also makes new friends with her colleagues; one charming chapter describes an outing to a local spa. There are many quiet joys, and I relished the book’s celebration of working people. Its stories are poignant and often enjoy a certain deadpan humour.

The book was chosen for the Berlin Reads One Book citywide reading campaign. I think much of its success arises as the writing is unfussy – effortless, simply observed. It wasn’t trying too hard, as too much writing is. What could be more intimate than working on someone’s feet, I guess?!

And Katja became a writer again. Sometimes, the fix to an iffy patch is a change of scenery and some fresh company.

As a writing experiment: in ten-minute writes, describe some of the people you have worked with – colleagues, associates, clients, regulars. An unforgettable encounter at a sales conference, or that moment when someone cracked in the office, or that person whose presence in your life from 9 to 5 across a span of several years still haunts you to this day.

Give us a few details of appearance, describe tics and habits, and perhaps relate something of their histories and their lives outside work. Perhaps allow us a sense of what you gave to them, and they gave to you.

Enjoy the solstice!