It’s Something About Sharing
by Tanya Shadrick and Izzy Dignum
TANYA
I emerged as a published writer in my mid-forties, and by a strangely communal route.
A short essay published locally led to a two-year residency beside the historic lido in my small town, where I wrote a mile on scrolls of paper as long as the pool – collecting stories from those who encountered me and weaving them into the work.
That feat of long-distance writing won me acclaim and many opportunities – an overseas residency, Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts, and the chance to meet and be mentored by some of the artists and authors I most admire. I went from being a mother of young children, bounded by the school-run, to a woman with many circles of belonging, in my local community and far beyond it. Just five years after my first short essay, I now earn a living from my vocation: which is not only to write, but also to create projects and conversations that encourage others to share what they want most to send into the world.
All through this last pandemic year, I was cut off from this public story-gathering twice over – by our shared restrictions on travel, and because I needed anyway to stay in a room writing to deadline my first book The Cure For Sleep (W&N: Feb 2022) a memoir which celebrates life-changing moments of chance and connection.
Once my book was with its editor, what I wanted was not to curl up and rest, but to turn outwards. And so I offered a fortnight of free one-off conversations to anyone who wanted to grow or recover their creative lives.
The only qualifying conditions to become a mentee were these: the desire to make things, even just words or pictures in private notebooks (as I did for decades); the courage to ask for my time and speak honestly about that tender thing which wanting to be creative is for so many of us.
Izzy was one of the people who answered my call. To encounter her now as she comes to the end of her English degree – a first-generation scholar, as I was a quarter-century ago – makes our connection powerful to me. I have a chance to share practical things – CVs, contacts – that might make her journey into a writing life a good deal swifter than mine!
IZZY
My writing practice has always been solitary.
The pile of journals shut up in my bedside cabinet testify to this, alongside parental comments like 'maybe you should get out more'. From the age of eight I cultivated a habit of writing like Keats's knight, 'Alone and palely loitering'. Loitering in the figurative and physical sense, because sometimes I loiter outside of my childhood bedroom, wandering the Downs or the Meadows with my notebook in my pocket and my head anywhere it shouldn't be.
My writing is rarely allowed to roam beyond my private mind-space.
I keep it safe, slapped between notebook pages or given cryptic file names like 'sheep', 'sheep but longer', and 'sheep but longer draft 2'. I'm held back by a skittishness about both the quality of my writing and the validity of my experience.
I saw Tanya's offer of mentorship late in the evening of Christmas Day. I didn't want to make myself a nuisance on a public holiday, and instead decided to wait all of four hours until the clock slipped into Boxing Day. Perhaps it was the Yuletide good cheer, or the alarming quantity of sloe gin consumed, but something released my emotions, bang-snap, a miniature firework that burned through my socks to inspire this uncharacteristic slide into a stranger's direct messages.
Perhaps it was coincidence that half an hour after I contacted Tanya, I wrote to tell my boyfriend that I loved him. But perhaps not.
This emotion has sustained me. I was – am – taken aback by Tanya's generosity. As a natural introvert (only child, avid reader, spectacled – you get the gist) I sometimes forget that there are others in the world who willingly share their experiences and wisdom. Tanya is one of these people. She created a space in which I felt comfortable to talk about myself and the work that has been softly yellowing.
I realise now that writing can – and should be – a communal practice. I want to sew myself into this tapestry of kindness, upon which for far too long I have felt like a missed stitch.
Having moved from chalk downland to fenland for university, I sometimes feel displaced, stuck within the so-called 'Cambridge bubble' and the constriction that implies. But something has clicked. I'm not sure if I can quite articulate it, yet.
It's something about community, about sharing, kindness, listening, and I will continue to wave my hands at the wonderful this, the astounding generosity of time until I, one day, can give back.
Each time I walk I tread my internal monologue into the ground beneath me. I wonder what it will feel like to have these words lifted up, shrug off soil and take shape.
