Sophie Nicholls

‘The artist must summon all his energy, his sincerity, and the greatest modesty in order to shatter the old cliches that come too easily to hand while working, which can suffocate the little flower that does not come, ever, the way one expects.’ – Henri Matisse

Dear Third Novel,

I don’t know why I suddenly had this crazy idea that I should write you. I don’t know why I didn’t just write the third book in the Everyday Magic Trilogy, which was the original plan. But you seemed to want to show yourself. You kept nagging and nagging. You were most insistent. You had many good reasons and justifications. And so finally I gave in and started to write you down.

Since then, you’ve made the bits of precious writing time that I’ve managed to scavenge both beautiful and terrible.  You’ve been confusing and silly and slippery. I’ve thought of you sometimes as Impossible and at other times as Much Too Easy.  I can’t say that I won’t be glad to see the back of you. But I’m also grateful for this dance around the table, for what I’ve learned about how I write and what I write best.

Thank you. (I think.)

Sophie

When the sun comes out, our world slows. It becomes this garden. Just you and me, together. Hanging washing. Planting chives and mint in new pots.

You show me the stones you’ve gathered and dropped into your watering can. You show  me our two garden gnomes, kissing.

We blow bubbles and you marvel at how they’re caught in the grass, round and perfect – until you crouch and pop them with the tip of a tiny finger.

There are so many things calling me right now. Pages to be written. Things to be ordered and sorted. Questions to be answered beyond the house and our small square of grass. I feel pulled in so many directions. My mind flits from this to that.

‘Door,’ you say. ‘Door. Out. More. Please.’

Every day, you teach me something new. It’s a difficult lesson for me, a study in surrender. It’s joyful and simple and complicated at the same time.

There’s a very noisy family of starlings busying themselves somewhere in our neighbour’s eaves at the moment.

So even though Violetta seems to be sleeping slightly later in the mornings at the moment (although I almost daren’t tempt fate by writing that ‘out loud’), I’m still being woken up at 5am.

There’s also a crow scarer that starts in the field across the road at first light. The countryside can be an incredibly noisy place.

I love seeing the starlings scavenging in our garden, pecking for worms and titbits. They have the most beautiful metallic plumage.

“If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Last weekend, we went to visit some very dear friends and this is what they were in the middle of making on their dining room table.

I asked Edie, who’s seven, if I could share her entry into her school’s egg decorating competition with you. It’s called ‘The Wizard of Egg’ and I love it. Especially the ruby slippers.

I went to school with Edie’s mum from the age of five. Last weekend, we were both remembering how we’d spend hours dreaming up ideas and decorating our eggs for competitions like this one. It made me think about how much we lose when we enter adulthood, how we learn to be ‘sensible,’ how there’s never any time for projects like these.

Thank you, Edie, for reminding me about what it’s like to be seven.

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a daïs of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.

- Christina Rossetti

Happy first birthday, Violetta…

I’ve been thinking in these past days about why the house where I live is so important to me. By that, I mean the way that a house feels to me, how I like to arrange and rearrange little corners, assemble still-lifes of flowers and precious objects.

For some people, this is all clutter, surplus to requirements. For me, it feels essential. I’ve  spent hours over the years pondering paint colours and wallpaper and floor coverings, taking pleasure from the way that the light moves across a particular wall or the patterns in the surface of a door jamb.

This, I hasten to add, was all in my Life Before I Had A Baby.

Our new house is pretty chaotic. More or less everything is still in the wrong place. I can’t find any of my books when I need them. But that’s probably a good thing, since I haven’t really got time to read. (Ten minutes before I face-plant the pillow doesn’t really count.)

I keep telling myself that it takes some time living in a house – or rather, it takes me some time – in order to decide where the sofas need to go and how best to place a cupboard or a shelf. The TV needs rewiring so that it can sit in a less obtrusive place. Picture hooks left by the last inhabitants need taking out and the holes filling. It feels as if everything needs to be smoothed and polished and loved.

Our new house is a practical and warm 1960′s build. Our old house was a draughty, hundred-year-old cottage. Where once we had hardwood windows, we now have ugly UPVC that needs to be concealed with beautiful window coverings. When we have time. And more money.

Why is this all so important to me, I wonder?

My parents are gifted ‘homemakers’ and made a succession of beautiful homes for my sister and I. They always knew how to make something out of nothing – often with little money but always with a lot of care. And yet, I think it’s about more than this. I think it goes even deeper.

My first poetry collection, Refugee, is all about making a home in the world. My novels are about people finding their way, savouring the ordinary and everyday, making things, mending things, telling their stories.

It seems to be my theme. All my life so far, I’ve felt drawn to people whose own lives are fragile or disrupted in some way – because isn’t there a sense in which we’re all teetering on that edge, trying to hold on to what is most precious, carving out our little corners whilst everything around us shifts inexorably under our feet? I’m always amazed at how strong we are and the way that the human spirit is unbroken in the face of so much tragedy, so much suffering; how we build and rebuild and remain, if we choose, open to joy. Perhaps this is why I feel so unsettled until I’ve begun to to make – one more time – my nest around me in this new place in which I find myself.

And, this time, I feel something changing. Rather than the old desire for order – for everything in its place – I feel myself surrendering to a new rhythm. A spirited little girl lives with us now and her toys and books are scattered all over the floors and surfaces. I find miniature cars in my slipper. The floor under the dining room table is sometimes covered in crumbs and squelched fruit.

But when I come downstairs and see all this mess, I often find myself smiling.

I’ve been dipping into – for perhaps the hundredth time – one of my favourite books, Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space. (It’s good because you really can read it in two-minute chunks.) This morning, these lines by Noel Arnaud, which Bachelard quotes, resonate with me:

‘I am the space where I am.’

Happy New Year.

It’s been a while.

I took some (sort-of) maternity leave after the birth of my beautiful daughter (well, actually I finished my second novel and moved house, but that’s another story) and I’m now easing my way back in to this online space, reconnecting and generally shaping my year as we move forward into 2013.

You might notice that I’ve made a few little tweaks to the site. I’m generally doing some January ‘spring-cleaning’ and gradually redesigning my online home here, which feels symbolic  somehow.

I’ve also been thinking about how best to offer my Word Sauce e-courses and writing workshops in the future.

I want to make some changes. It feels like the right time to do it. It’s not just that my own life has undergone such huge shifts – and is still settling into a new pattern as my daughter and I grow together. It’s also that I’ve been listening to what you’ve been telling me about what works best for you.

I know that there are a lot of people out there (new mamas included) who are longing to carve out some writing time, to reconnect with a deep desire to make something on the page or simply to slow down and breathe, to process the stuff that can so often seem like a big, jumbled mess by getting it out there in words on the page.

So after some careful thought and much soul-searching, I’ve decided to make the Word Sauce e-courses available one-on-one so that you can start whenever you want to start throughout the year. You no longer need to wait until the next course start date to sign-up. This does mean that there is no longer a course group forum as such – but what people were telling me last year is that they often felt a little shy about sharing their fledgeling words or simply didn’t have time to check-in to the forums as well as responding to the writing prompts and working through the exercises.

So this way, you can get the course delivered directly to you by email each week for eight weeks. You’ll still be able to ask me questions and get my feedback on your writing. But there’ll hopefully be a little less pressure and more chance to cultivate your own private creative space.

And then, should you wish, you can join one of the online writing retreats that I have planned for this year or an actual, real live in-person writing circle over a day or a weekend. More details about these coming soon… I may also create a secret group on Facebook or flickr so that people can interact with previous and current Word Saucerers. Still thinking about that one. Do you like that idea?

I hope that helps more of you to be able to get what you need from the Word Sauce e-courses. If it doesn’t, please do let me know. More details about them here.

I don’t do resolutions. To be honest, for people like me (and by that I mean pain-in-the-ass, ever-so-slightly-hyper people with a tendency towards perfectionism) I think they can create many more problems than they resolve.

What I do rather like and find useful are journal lists. There’s something liberating for me about using lists in this way – to brainstorm, clarify, focus, uncover themes, gather images and ideas. Lists are one of my favourite journaling tools and I can highly recommend Chapter 12 of this book for inspiration about using lists as journaling prompts.

I also like the idea of the life list, like this and this and this. Far more fun and a little bit less pressure than resolutions, don’t you think?

For me, a life list isn’t about goal-setting – or living for some vague future when you’ll finally have achieved everything on your list and will, of course, therefore feel so much happier (ha!) – but about recognising what brings you joy, acknowledging your deepest desires, pausing for a moment in the midst of all the rushing about to notice what’s really important to you.

I’ve been adding to my own life list in the back of one of my notebooks for a while now. And one of the items on the list has been to create a page on my web site for my life list. And share it. So, erm, here it is.

OK. I can cross that one off now. (Always wanted to do that crossed-out typing thing.)

My life list began as a bit of frippery one evening when I was having trouble winding down. I just started scribbling. But as I invariably find,  there’s something surprisingly powerful about actually writing things down. It’s both oddly calming and also like an invocation of sorts, as if you’re calling the possibility of these things into being, inviting them into your life simply by forming the wishes into words.

Here’s the rest of my life list. Well, so far. It’s bound to keep changing…

Write a bestselling novel.

Share my life list on my web site.

Learn how to use a proper DSLR camera and take at least one photo every day for a year.

Make a beautiful room for Violetta.

Learn how to crochet.

Brush-up my Italian/ get really good at Italian.

Buy a house in Italy and live there for part of every year.

Make fresh panettone from scratch.

Become a mother.

Learn to play the guitar.

Travel to India.

Turn my grandfather’s war diary into a novel/memoir/book of some description.

Run Word Sauce writing-and-mindfulness retreats in other countries.

Turn my PhD into an accessible book that people actually want to read.

Swim naked under a full moon at least once.

Make a quilt for Violetta using pieces cut from her outgrown clothing from her first years.

Watch the sun rise from the top of a mountain.

Create mindfulness groups for school children. (Start a movement?)

Travel to Africa.

Own a pair of perfect everyday boots.

Publish a Collected Poems.

Take my sister somewhere special for her 40th birthday.

Send my mum and dad on holiday on the Orient Express.

Live in an Art Deco house (with a room dedicated to a library).

Own an amazing collection of vintage clothing.

Host a cocktail party.

Make a beautiful garden.

Celebrate Violetta’s first birthday in style.

Go on a spa/retreat holiday with my mum and sister.

Plant a tree for Violetta.

Every day, remember to stop and look up at the sky.

Keep a regular journal of Violetta’s first five years to give to her when she’s a grown-up.
Do you have a life list? If so, please do feel free to share!
If not, what would you put on yours?

This year was the year in which I celebrated the birth of my beautiful daughter and began my journey into motherhood – hugely challenging, overwhelming at times and the biggest, most joyous adventure I’ve ever known.

My daughter (it still feels strange to be writing those two words) is a constant reminder to me of the need to slow down and really notice. Her little hand reaches insistently for mine, she squeals with delight or cries out in protest.

‘Mummy, look!’ ‘Mummy, come here!’ ‘Mummy, stop! Look at me! Now!’

This was the year in which I finished and sent out into the world my second novel – and then waited nervously for responses from the wonderful readers who had waited so patiently for the next instalment in the Ella and Fabbia Moreno story.

This was also the year in which I was often absent from this blog.  I struggled this year to overcome a difficult and traumatic birth experience that left me with some health challenges. (I may share that story some time soon. I’m not yet quite finished telling and retelling it to myself in a way that makes sense in my own mind.) I also helped my partner to overcome some health challenges of his own. (He is amazing.) And then five weeks ago, we all moved house from the city to the countryside.

It’s been quite a year.

Dear 2012, I’m grateful to you for all the learning that you’ve sent my way, the parts of me that you’ve broken open, not always gently, and the ribbon of radiant light that you’ve woven through it all, which is the presence in my life of my soon-to-be ten-month-old daughter. You’ve made me stronger. You’ve made me braver. You’ve taught me how to be more vulnerable than ever before. Thank you.

Dear 2013, I’m excited at everything that lies ahead: the first teetering steps to be taken (for all of us, in so many ways), the words to be reached for and written and the ‘everyday magic’ to be gleaned. I’m terrified at the challenges that lie ahead and I’m filled with humility and happiness that I get this chance to love in this way, so fiercely and without limits.

As we come to the end of the longest, darkest weeks of the year and the earth turns back towards the light, what are you looking back and reflecting upon in 2012? What fills you with a sense of possibility about the year opening up ahead of us? I’ve never particularly liked New Year’s Eve. I have so often found it too much of a reminder, if I allow it to be so, of everything I haven’t yet done, or what I wish could be different. Something about the evening tends to turn me inward and a little gloomy. I’ve sometimes forgotten to celebrate what is here and now and I’ve often found myself thinking too wistfully of what could have been or comparing myself harshly to my own expectations or to the shiny achievements of others.

In more recent years, I’ve been determined not to do that. I like to list all the things that I’m grateful for in my life and to remind myself of all of the life that I’ve lived – the lows and the highs. Because that’s what life is, don’t you think? The light and the dark, the tangled and the smooth…

One of the things that I’m very grateful for this year is you. For being here, for visiting this blog and the Facebook page, for reading my words and my books, for cheering me on. Thank you.

Wherever you find yourself right now, I wish you a very peaceful and happy evening. (I’ll probably be in bed with a cup of chamomile tea by 10pm.) I wish for you a brave and open heart as you step into the year ahead. And may you find magic everywhere.

PS – If you’d like to begin 2013 with a personal writing journey of your own, the Word Sauce e-courses relaunch from Saturday 5 January and you can now sign-up and begin them any time that suits you. More info here.