Setting Sunday #3

Samhain and welcoming the dark

Setting Sunday #3 October 29^th 2023

How’s your week been?

It’s late on Sunday evening  and I’m thinking about what’s happened since I last posted and what I’m taking with me into next week. This is a very late post indeed, much later than planned. But luckily, the clocks have gone back and bought me some more time.

Samhain

I’ve also been looking at the full Moon, including Saturday’s partial eclipse (did you see it?)  which has been utterly beautiful the last two nights, and thinking about this time of year, as it is nearly Samhain. This is possibly the most important time of year for me, as Samhain is the traditional end of the Celtic year, a time to look back on the year, and look forward, to feel grateful for the harvest – in whatever form that takes, and to remember the people we love who have gone. It is also a welcoming in of the dark, to go underground and to rest, and to sow some metaphorical seeds for the future…

Winter Warmer Workshops

This time three years ago, we were in the pandemic, and I was gearing up to run my Winter Warmer writing workshops via Zoom. It was the first set of online writing workshops I’d run, and we were at the time living in Wexford, in the Republic of Ireland, where my dad’s side of the family come from. We’d gone on holiday there on March 12^th 2020 and arrived off a storm-tossed ferry to find ourselves in a strict lock-down two days later, and we ended up living there. I could write a book about that time, and I may do that one day but it’s still far too close for comfort right now. Although we faced many challenges and serious difficulties, I fell in love with the land of Wexford in a profound way – more so than anywhere else I’ve ever been.

Curracloe beach, Wexford, October 2021

The Winter Warmer workshops were borne out of the isolation of yet another lockdown in Autumn 2020, as another wave of covid hit, and a wish to connect with people and do something creative and sustaining to get us through the darkest time of the year. For eight weeks from just after Samhain to the Winter Solstice, every Sunday evening I ran a workshop, each one connecting to the next, to take us through the Dark and back to the Light.

It was a wonderful group, and we really had a great time doing it. I had hoped to run it again but the following year my son became very seriously ill and my dad was back in the UK going through double chemotherapy and very poorly. In December 2021, once my son was vaccinated, I made the decision to move back to the UK and care for both of them.

I was surprised by how well the workshops went over Zoom as although I had taught many students one to one using Zoom and Skype, I hadn’t run a workshop that way. I’d always had face to face, round the table writing groups and workshops. What I also loved is that people from anywhere could dial in – which meant the Winter Warmer workshops had people from Ireland, the UK, Spain and France. And the workshops I’ve run since have also had people connecting from all over the place!

This week I read a beautiful piece of writing on the Dark Mountain web site, about lighting the Winter Solstice fire, by Sharon English:

“All territory is bones and compost and seeds and winds and tides, an ancient-and-future matrix of beings moving through our bodies every single moment.”

Setting Sundays Workshops

My intention with Setting Sundays is to have a workshop every Sunday evening – where we connect via Zoom, do some writing, have some discussion and set a couple of intentions, creative and otherwise and then meet up the next week to see how everyone is doing and do some writing and set some more intentions. This is a way of being creatively accountable and getting support if you have a project, whether it’s poetry, collage, a novel etc. But also, and just as important, it’s for you if you want to make that connection and do that creative writing, have that conversation as a way of rejuvenating yourself for the week ahead.

An all-purpose creative check-in!

I’m planning these at the moment - do let me know if you are interested and would like more information.

Setting Intentions

Last week I set two intentions:

1. go to bed at 10.30pm each night.

2. Sit at my desk and write for an hour each day, with the aim of writing another 1500 words of a short story by Saturday 28^th October.

I failed to do it every day on both counts but managed a few, so I’m seeing it as progress. For the first time in months I have written more of my short story and found new strands of research for it. This is exciting as I’ve had that lovely feeling of being able to focus on writing and get a few hundred words down, and know that I’ve found a stopping place where I can start again. I’ve missed this so much.

This is Ernest Hemingway’s famous advice on the matter:

“The most important thing I’ve learned about writing is never write too much at a time… Never pump yourself dry. Leave a little for the next day. The main thing is to know when to stop. Don’t wait till you’ve written yourself out. When you’re still going good and you come to an interesting place and you know what’s going to happen next, that’s the time to stop. Then leave it alone and don’t think about it; let your subconscious mind do the work.”

I have always found it to work for me, which is why it has been so frustrating not to have been able to write at all for so long. But I know that it’s been down to extenuating circumstances, especially now that I’ve started again.

This post from the Marginalian’s post on Hemingway’s writing advice is definitely worth a look.

I managed about two nights of getting into bed at 10.30 – and this isn’t going to be another. But generally I’ve been getting to bed earlier, sleeping better and reading more. Which is the point – I’m catching up with the huge pile of reading I haven’t had a chance to get to this year…and last year…and the year before.

I’m going to take advantage of this ‘extra’ hour and get up early this week. Will it be more successful than my attempts at being consistent with my bedtime? Let’s try. I’m going to stick with the aim of 10.30pm bedtime and add in 6am getting up, so that I’ve got focused time to write every morning before the day comes crashing in with its endless To Do list and rushing about looking after people.

What are your intentions this week? I would love to know – please do leave a comment!

Writing idea – Samhain

What is good about the dark? How can we welcome it in?

I will leave you with this, one of my favourite pieces of music, Late October by Harold Budd and Brian Eno – prefect for this time of year.

See you on the Other Side….

Lucy x