GILLY SMITH

Did I mention that I’ve got a book coming out on Friday? Maybe not, because I thought the publication date was the 30th. But hey, it was orignally supposed to be out in May… So, next week, I shall be doing the rounds of radio, TV, newspapers as I’ve done pretty much every year for the last 13 or so with launch of a new book. Then there’s the bookshops,…

One of the things that we shall teach on our retreats, and which I am only now promising myself, is the discipline of writing every day. Splurging your dream-state onto a messy bedside diary is the best of course, a kind of Dumbledore’s ‘Pensieve’ in which he stores all his extraneous thoughts. But only for one short period in my life was I able to set the alarm early enough,…

My head is buzzing with the idea of our writers’ retreat(s). We shall take our charges to write about food in Tuscan villas, music in the desert around Fez and travel in the olive groves in Marrakech. Our firepits and parties will become legendary and inspiring to writers just dipping their pens for the first time and old hacks finding our welcome enough to remind them why they began to…

So there we were, trying out the tent for our first ever family camping holiday on the same strip of Welsh sand as I used to sift between my toes as a child, when a job comes in from an inflight magazine. Damn. I had vowed that I would fly no more,leaving carbon footprinting for the much more childish who just won’t take responsibility for their role in climate chaos.…

I’ve let you down. I promised you the highs and lows of being a writer and I’ve hidden away all summer, nursing my creative bruises, shielding myself from that passive aggression known perhaps only to the freelance writer. The non-response email, the reply to my pitches so heavily not in my inbox with its heartless menace, its threat to my entire way of life – and its mean disrespect for…