Writing what I know

Or, what to do when I've no bloody clue what to write.

Hello there,

I had always heard the concept of writing what you know. It nearly always applied to writing fiction, which slightly threw me off because I was writing fantasy.

These days, I feel I understand it much, much better.

I’ve been stuck the last few weeks. We went to Iceland in early April, and since then, I haven’t been writing like I had before, for a multitude of reasons. I’ve been writing, absolutely; in my journals, phone notes, scrap pieces of paper. The odd snippet, a haiku, a little vignette. But nothing substantial enough to share with you.

Until yesterday afternoon when, sitting by the patio doors in weak evening light, I poured my soul onto paper. And I decided - write what I know. Write what is true now. Write what I can see, what I can feel. What I remember.

So here is a piece crafted of the ‘what I know’ snippets, and some journal extracts from the last few weeks when a few words have been all I can muster. And maybe a bit of Iceland.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, which I can truly say is a ramble - a wander of words. Can I coin that term please?

I hope you enjoy it.

P.S. This post might be too long for email (told you it was a wander!) - just click the link to read in your browser.

9th April

So much in my head. Taking some time to slow down, to breath. Maybe a haiku is the thing to do. To help me show up. In a small way.

Molten silver rain
Piercing sun orb breaks the sky
An unseen rainbow. 

Oh. That really does feel better.

13th April - Iceland Day 2

This is a truly magical place. It’s the tiny details I want to try and remember.

• how small I felt next to the ocean crashing against the shoreline of black sand on Reynisfjara beach. The sea white and steely, churning and beating at the land with purpose. With vigour Like the heartbeat of the world, it is relentless. Every now and again, to keep us tiny living creatures on our toes, a wave will appear that looks like every other, but it won’t wash milky waters only far; it will gallop forwards, without being seen, to snatch at unwary photographers’ feet high up the sand. Occasionally, the sea catches one unfortunate soul in her ice fingers, dragging them down. I always think the sea must be lonely, maybe needy, to want a human soul to come and play, not realising we die in her heart.

• the Icelandic moss, grey in the weak morning sun, which disappears over the horizon far as my eyes could see. Nature’s carpet, growing directly from old, solidified lava, the spread and fingers of which, looking like veins, I saw in the satellite photos. I am amazed anything grows on old lava, until I recall that lava brings minerals and life from the furnace of the earth, spreading it around. Life comes, defying imagination.

• the mountain I first thought was a cloud, so smooth and large and white it was, lying like a giant pillow behind the rocky peaks. I’ve never seen anything like that. I was captivated.

• waterfalls wreathed in rainbows, tumbling over green, mossy cliffs, seabirds soaring between. The wind shifts and we’re sprayed with cold, glittering diamonds, a mist.

16th April

I desperately need to write. To create space that isn’t crammed between one thing and the next.

I’m at the kitchen table, watching the lava colours of the sky as the sun goes down. I love the green that sits between the blue and the orange. The faintest colour, a tinge, a blush. Barely any pigment. Then clouds, dark grey underneath, but the barest trace of orange on an edge. Caught frozen in the sunset.

I must write down some more images from Iceland.

But first, dessert.

A haiku interlude

Dewy pearls glimmer 
Shining silver sunlight gleams 
Spring morning moisture

18th April

Strength, resilience. Things we talk about in vague awe. But they can sometimes be our downfall. Trying to be too strong.

I thought about how sometimes strength is knowing when to sit down. When to rest. Pushing through sometimes isn’t wise.

I am better than I used to be. I can rest, I can say no, I can prioritise myself and know it doesn’t make me lazy or selfish. I give a lot of myself, and sometimes I have to remind myself to give to myself.

I also know that I need security and safety to stop being strong. Translation - to be vulnerable. When I do not feel safe, like at work sometimes, then I find it hard to stop being strong.

Nobody can lift all of the time.

“I appreciate your thoughts and that you shared them, and I appreciate how they helped me to think differently.”

My heart warmed, and my eyes even filled a little, when I was told this, at the end of a 7-minute breakout session in an online training class I was hosting. From my laptop screen, my partner in the breakout spoke these words with complete sincerity. On a day when I barely remembered my name, where I was almost in tears with fatigue and stress, someone told me they appreciated me and what I did, and I was nearly undone.

A haiku interlude

Honey bee trembles
Wings outstretched, legs curled up
Dying in the web. 

There’s a red door, paint flaking, slightly ajar. There’s a doorframe, but no wall, just shadows. There are cracks in the wood of the doors, and the almost horizontal beam of bright fire coming through tells me sunset awaits.

My heart is desperate to open. I can hear birds and a great rushing sound, and silence laying over it all, a great warm blanket.

I am brave enough to open. To push the wall-less door aside and step through. The sun, a great orange globe hanging from the ceiling sky blinds me with warmth and welcome. My skin tingles. My body aches. Too long was I in the shadows. I want to join the evening revelry of my wingéd friends, to dance over the flowers carpeting the land before me like the pollen-drunk bees. There, a waterfall, the mist of it rising into the sunset to turn into diamonds of pure light.

I am safe here. Safe to sit in silence amongst the noise, to breathe deep the life, the mist, the light. Safe to be me, as much in rest as in energy. I wish simply to be here on the edge of wonder, light and water. Perhaps I could step into the mist, drifting through it, letting it cool my face, cling to my eyelashes, bathe me in rainbows. To float and breathe and not think.

I am safe here.

21st April. My response to a prompt from The Way of the Fearless Writer, by

Beth Kempton

A haiku interlude

Tiny forget-me-nots
White wild strawberry blossoms
Mingle and jostle

“If we share what is inside our own heart, it resonates in the hearts of others.”

The Way of the Fearless Writer,

Beth Kempton

The details of a thing in front of me: The pink rose, half dead, browned at the edges of the petals. I’ve never liked deep pink roses. Petals splayed out in death.

The details of an abstract thing: Burned out. The end of a day you wish had never happened. A space between too much and too little. A cry, a plea into openness and emptiness.

25th April. My response to a prompt from Spring Light, by

Beth Kempton

.

Write what you know.

That’s what they say.

But what if that’s anger and unmet needs? What if it’s silent arguments in my head that no one else hears? Or the tang of whiskey in my ginger and lemon tea, smoothed out by honey, in my favourite winter mug? What if it’s the feeling of being stuck? Of feeling so tired, the idea of looking at my laptop screen kills a piece of me?

It could be days when I expect to be warm and joyful and instead, I have to zip my collar up to my nose.

It’s feeling left behind while I run the gauntlet of job applications, again and again. And again. But it’s also cheering on my colleagues, my friends, who are running the gauntlet too, as we sympathise at each rejection.

It’s sitting in meetings where I want to say something, to give value, but hold back because I fear yet another rejection. My ideas aren’t me, I hear in my head, but still.

It’s the comfort and sense of coming home that settles into my bones as I get past that particular bend in the road, past that turning, to where the road weaves and the hills appear. Whether soaked in sunlight or wreathed in rain, I am coming home. I glance up at the right moment to see the hill where we first met, where I started to fall in love.

It’s the frustration, caught between the need to slow down, to enjoy life thoroughly, and the constant fight against the want to speed up, to succeed, to compete. How do I keep the balance, the check? How to do I tune in to my own soul, to listen deeply?

It’s feeling so far away from that water, that ocean into which I sink down to the peace. Forgetting how I might do that. Then I put pen to paper, and I breathe, and I sink. It’s been there, all this time. I need only write, and breathe, and flow.

A final poem

Sinking through the layers of soul
to the depths of me
Sitting tall
Breathing and feeling it
Down my spine, through every fibre
then breathing deep
Ocean breath
consumes me and I sink
back into waters of soul. 
Each breath sinking lower
Away from sunlight
on my eyelids and birdsong
and into darkness 
void that is 
entirely
absolutely
me.
There I find it. The words to use
the stories to tell
the courage to tell them. There I am healed. 
In the sunlight I write and flow
the words to paper and
I am awake. 

So here I am. Awake again. After my wander of words. Thank you, if you wandered with me. I hope that, in some small way, it inspired you to wander and write.

Thank you to some very special people who unknowingly kept me awake while I strayed into the thicket and got a little lost. Some are here on Substack, others in my real life. Here, I want to say a special thank you to

Beth Kempton

for her books, her courses and her presence. To

Tiffany Chu

for our conversations, for her grace and her light. To

Mika

, also for her light, and how she gives so generously to her community. To

Claire Venus

for the way she supports always but also how she does it, with so much joy. Offline, I am so so thankful to my family and to my dearest, without whom I couldn’t make it through much of life. I also want to say thank you to Harriette who shared what she appreciated about me and made my day miles better, probably without realising it.

Finally (yes I am coming to the end!), I want to thank each and every one of my readers. I started writing on Substack in January 2024 simply because I wanted to share what was pouring out of my heart in a writing class, and it has ended up being something I didn’t expect, in such an amazing way. So thank you for taking the time to read and to share some love. You have made this writer a very happy little writer indeed.

Now I really am done. Take care folks, and have a beautiful week.

K x

Fancy reading some more of my wanderings? Try these.

Are you glad you exist?

Capturing the Brontide

Writing: My Unexpected Medicine

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I’m taking part in the Essay Club run by Claire Venus. This is essay 2/24 to be published by 31st Jan 2025.