Write, Rewrite, Repeat

How do people manage to write books?

I don’t know how people manage to write books. How do they fit in the time between work, and everything else they do?

The stories I am writing are tricky. They like to shape-shift, changing depending on how you look at them, and where you are looking at them from.

They don’t have specific beginnings, or endings. They’re evolving stories and will continue to morph, change and grow for as long as I’m alive and engaging with them.

It’s time to stop editing. Time to stop adding in the new layers as that turns into an endless cycle of editing.

I’m making the brave decision that the first chapter is heading out to readers this week.

These stories are more than just stories, they are relationships. they are of figures I’ve met on the land , figures I call my ancestral mothers. Some are well known like the Cailleach and the Goddess Brighid, while others were no longer told after perhaps beliefs shifted, or the one person to ever tell the story died. I’m sure there are other stories out there in the hills, that no one else will ever find, and will remain hidden.

Out foraging for stories

They are not some forgotten ancient linage that only I hold the secret insight too, I am wary of people who claim that kind of authority.

If you were to join me on the hills around here, I’m sure you’d come back with your own stories, for if you were to encounter an old presence, we would all have a slightly different relationship, just as we do with friends.

My story has been unfolding for 40 years or so, ever since my dad first took us hillwalking as kids. I still remember the first time I climbed what’s now my favourite hill. I can recall the first feeling of being there and feeling something tangible that I couldn’t describe.

Cailleach doll carrying rocks

That feeling eventually shapeshifted until it had a voice, and it was decades before I realised she was the old crone of the land, and had a name An Cailleach, and that lots of other people had relationships with the Cailleach of their land in their corner of Scotland.

I can only hope that if my readers commit to reading, their encouragement to show up and be truthful will inspire me to finish writing these stories in their current form, before they begin to shapeshift again and I find myself seeing them from a whole new angle.

What’s your way of getting writing done, asking for a friend.