Writing Workshop: Paying Attention
A guest post by Linda Cracknell.
I’ve found that immersion in a landscape will reliably spark up ideas and words.
If we lie with our backs flat on the earth and look up through a deciduous tree canopy that will cast shadows there for far longer than the length of our own lives, or watch the collective sky-dance of starlings, we might adjust our acquired belief that humans are exceptional in the living world. The act of writing calls us to refresh our tired ways of noticing, and a writer perhaps has to look as patiently as a scientist, visual artist or naturalist does. Unsurprisingly, many writers, both contemporary and past, identify walking as one of their necessary practices. I know that my own ‘walking mind’ slips into an associative drift, thereby unlocking problems or plot points.
Despite the value of this mobile state of mind, to be properly attentive to what’s around me I find I must pause, take out my notebook and engage with words. Sometimes I write ‘HERE I AM’ at the top of the page and note down all the senses, thoughts, feelings and things around me which define that state. After doing this I often feel lighter and freer in spirit.
Sometimes I’ve felt as if the script is already there waiting to be found; that simply paying attention can tease words from the cracks in rock or allow me to hear them in a crow’s cackle. How else can writers communicate how it feels to be alive?
Linda Cracknell lives in Highland Perthshire and is a writer for whom place, memory and motion are important. Her non-fiction was most recently published in book form in Doubling Back: Ten paths trodden in memory (Freight, 2014), a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week in which she retraces memories underfoot. She has also published four works of fiction and had a number of radio plays produced. Her piece, ‘Crossing the Bar’ appeared in Hinterland Issue 11. This is an edited extract from Writing Landscapes.