12 Months of Paperthin: September

My research is taking me to a lot of places. From the mining communities south of Edinburgh in the ‘70s to Ukraine in the 1920s. I am gently pulling stories from the earth through space and time. Building characters from the dust, blood and whispers.

I’ve lived in this area since I moved back to Edinburgh in 2018 and I have walked all over it. Wandering from Hillend to Roslin, weaving through the fields between the three tined fork of road that will run you south and southeast away from the city. You can snake your way from Bilston Glen to the Gunpowder Factory, then find old railways that will eventually take you back to the coast. I love these paths. They’re beautiful in every season. They are often empty and I feel like they’re mine.

I’m teasing the book out of my brain in similar layers. It feels more like an excavation. History, place and people are pulling the details of the narrative into sharp focus. The way these thoughts are stacked in the pages of the notebook is pleasing. Character notes, scraps of dialogue and ideas about light. I’m wandering what time of year it will be. The Book of Murmurs, originally published as The Shenk, was in its very first iteration The Summer of the Shenk. Perhaps because that strange desert plateau that is the school summer holiday reads to me like a blank page filled with possibility and empty dread.

Is that a normal way to feel about childhood summers?

Comments to your therapist, please.

DogBird’s stories are also coming up through the silt in bits and pieces. I’m gathering them into paper jars like so much beach flotsam. Arranging them on pages to try and find their shapes. The initial ideas that are scattered through sketchbooks, stray bits of paper or simply echoing around my brain are beginning to gain substance.

Once upon a time, et cetera et cetera, the end.