I thought I might not bother with a Christmas tree this year, but my grown-up son David soon put me right on that one. It wouldn’t be Christmas without a tree! Was I turning into Scrooge? What would Katie say when she got home? etc etc.
So! we have just returned from our annual trip to Raby Castle where we’ve purchased the best tree ever (every year’s is always the best.) We drove there and back through the winter showers and looking out of the window at the snow driving in on the east wind and covering the road outside the house I am glad we are back. I am also glad that we bought a Christmas tree and that I didn’t give in to a weariness of spirit that sometimes overcomes me at this time of year (all that food, those presents, cards etc to manage).
I should in fact be celebrating, as early in the week I wrote the last page of my Danny Beck novel!!! There will be more editing of the last few chapters to do and no doubt more work once my agent reads it but coming to a conclusion is always a special moment.
Last Sunday (knowing how close I was to completion)I decided to brave it and share my opening pages with the RoomToWrite workshop group (we were, after all, talking about beginnings) at Wendy’s house. I was very nervous as it’s the first time I’ve read anything from this novel but I’m so glad I did. It can be very difficult to read one’s work out in a group. It can be very emotional and very exposing but in the right place it can be truly supportive and it can help sustain one’s belief in the writing – that perhaps it does work after all! I certainly felt sustained by Sunday and I hope the other writers, also reading from a fascinating variety of work which has grown from their interest in family histories, felt likewise. It was a great way to spend Sunday
– thank you to Linda, Penny, Norma, Lise, Judith, Eileen and of course Wendy. As Wendy and I always say – if we run a workshop we frequently find inspiration for our own work, Sunday was no exception.
To celebrate the snow here in a Robert Frost poem which I love – I think going out to buy the tree today was like my ‘dust of snow’
DUST OF SNOW
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
