This blog was written by 2023 Writer in Residence Jude Piesse, author of The Ghost in the Garden
Four days into my fortnight at Gladstone’s I come to a realisation about what, as a newly inaugurated writer in residence, I feel temporarily confident enough to term my creative process. It is this: by an unlucky disposition, it is only at precisely the hour that the kids usually come home from school that I begin to, well, do anything. Every day, time runs out just when I seem to be on the point of grasping it. 3pm. And 3pm happens again and again.
This matters because writing is all about timing, in both a mundane sense and a deep one. Depending on the temporalities dictated by form, writing relies as much on catching a moment’s moving currents, or on remodeling decades through narration, as it does on carving out a usable slab of hours to work on in the first place. Often you try – and it’s just no good. The tide turns, the light shifts, the line won’t scan. The judge’s eye passes. The kids come home.
At Gladstone’s Library, I am gifted both rare time away from everyday commitments and the freedom to order that time to suit my own rhythms. When left to my own devices – as I can be, quite wonderfully, in the library – I stretch, breakfast, walk for an hour in neighbouring woods, read and procrastinate until just after lunch, and then write from 2.30pm. Every second day, because rhythm thrives on variation, I make a foray into the voluptuous, gentlemanly lounge after dark. I pour a measure of red wine into the silver cylinder provided and scribble down notes I would usually forget.
While some favour the fresh, empty promise of morning, it is only in these latter hours that I find writing ready to happen. These hours alone, stretched and prepared by all that came before them, seem limber enough to hold new words. At the end of a good day, duration disappears.
In the woods, I witness summer turn to autumn for the first time in years, conscious that I am also in the process of turning towards the work I’m uncovering. Details of moss, bark, light, snatches of overheard conversation – things in the outside world start to merge tentatively with the messy, awkward forms inside. I know it can’t last, but it shouldn’t last either. For just long enough, the timing is perfect. Writing is born, both here and now.