Have been off social media for a week or so and it’s clear to me I made a great decision. I feel very free. I also have a lot of thoughts and ideas about what social media is doing to writing and writers, but I’ll save them for another day.
Just a quick heads up for anyone who enjoys podcasts, ghost stories, or being read to: this fantastic podcast by Tony Walker is one you won’t want to miss. He recently did an episode on Little Heart, from my collection This House of Wounds, and it was such a wonderful experience. Tony’s reading brought so much insight into the story and we had a great discussion afterwards about what it all could mean.
It inspired me to write some story notes about my novella Honeybones, which weirdly enough tie in with a lot of my thoughts about social media. I suppose it’s not that weird, given that Honeybones is a story about mind control and violence and not living in reality but inhabiting a simulated world which is designed to disempower you and alienate you from your material existence… Anyway, it’s interesting to think about, and if anyone wants to have me on their podcast or blog or publication to talk about this stuff, that would be great.
CYMERA 2020 took place online a couple of weeks ago and was a fantastic experience. I really enjoyed all the panels I saw and appreciated how much work went into making them run so smoothly. My own panel was on ‘writing the weird’ with Laura Mauro and Kit Power, and was a really fun and interesting chat. But my highlight of the weekend was Penny Jones, Tracy Fahey and Katie Hale discussing ‘The Female Monster’ – they covered so much in the discussion but it felt like they could have gone on for hours, and I would have been there for it! All the panels from CYMERA are on youtube and worth checking out.
That’s all for now! Hope you are all staying well and safe <3
I write in various places: coffee-shops, my living room, my back garden, but most commonly in my study. It’s a south-facing room that overlooks the hills, with a comfy green leather chair and ottoman, lots of horror books, an old writing desk my father found for me in an antiques shop, a collection of pens and quills, various skull prints on the walls and esoteric objects on the shelves including a phrenology head, a skeleton candle-holder, a Gubu doll, a Tibetan demon mask, jade figurines and a typewriter with a skeletal hand attached. Did I mention I like skeletons? Good. I was afraid I might forget to say that.
When I’m writing, I like best to listen to music with lyrics I don’t understand, so words don’t distract me. Sigur Ros are my ultimate writing soundtrack. But I’m also fond of atmospheric music. I listened a lot to Villagers’ ‘Becoming A Jackal’ when I was writing New Music For Old Rituals because it’s Irish, creepy and contemporary – the mood I was aiming for.
I couldn’t claim to have anything like a routine. But I try to get up early and write for an hour or so before work claims my soul. It gives me a sense of self before the ‘real’ day begins, and it’s my most productive time. I find I write most coherently either early in the morning or late at night. I wish I had the discipline to have a writing method, but it mostly consists of scribbling, pacing, typing, making cups of tea and looking vacantly around. I write scraps and ephemera when inspired, and when I’m feeling workmanlike I’ll start shoehorning them into an actual form. I find it useful to break up writing if I’m uninspired – I’ll take my dog for a walk, or draw, or take photographs of ruins or make prints. Sometimes moving about and thinking in non-verbal ways will suddenly present me with a new way in to what I’ve been worrying at.
Silence outside and warmth inside are essential for writing. I need my series of ink-stained kimonos a.k.a. writing clothes. I also need a notebook and my special pens which are hybrids; Uniball eye micro pens with a Staedler stick cap to make them feel longer in my hand. It’s a thing. If I were being truthful, at one point I would have said I needed anxiety to write; I write a lot about fear, and anxiety informs that. But that’s not healthy, so I try not to write from that place, but from a place of wanting to tell a story.
I’m working – very slowly – on a collection titled I Spit Myself Out. The title is a quote from Julia Kristeva’s The Powers of Horror which deals with (among other subjects) the idea of the body and the abject – that which the body casts off. In this collection I’m interested in interrogating terrors that arise from simply being ourselves; exploring the divisions between what-is-us and what-is-not-us, and what happens when these boundaries are perforated and transgressed. So it’s dealing with illness, dysfunction, skin, blood, contagion – writing the body.
When I’m in the wrong mood EVERYTHING distracts me from writing. Social media is bad – leaving Facebook was a good step, although I have yet to block my ears to the siren song of Twitter. Noise is the worst distraction, and I’m eternally grateful that my room faces the back of the house and not the front where my little neighbours play. They’re sweet kids, but nothing fans my rage when I’m trying to concentrate like the dulcet tones of happy children at play. Yes, I use headphones or ear-plugs, but I prefer not to have to. If I hit The Flow, everything disappears; tea cools, time is forgotten, words suddenly fit and sequence and dance. Magic stuff.
Tracy Fahey is an Irish writer of Gothic fiction. Her latest collection, NEW MUSIC FOR OLD RITUALS, is published by Black Shuck books. You can find her website here. .
