Sense of Community

SUSANNA JONES has recently completed a short appointment as writer in residence with Shetland Arts, and reflects on the experience of getting to know the islands and the people, and on the influence that may have on her own work
 

WHEN ALEX CLUNESS of Shetland Arts invited me to spend a month in Shetland as writer-in-residence, I accepted immediately.

I had no idea what to expect, either from Shetland, since I had never been there, or the position of writer-in-residence (a job title that seems to have as many interpretations as there are residencies), but I never like to turn down an opportunity for a new experience, especially when it involves travel.

Alex described the place where I would stay and I knew I’d made the right decision. The Booth, in the Mainland village of Scalloway, was built on the foundations of an old fishing hut and has a stunning view of the sea and bay.

It’s usually a residence for visual artists but once a year the writer-in-residence moves in. Apparently the only thing I would have to do without was trees. I thought I could manage that. On a shiny blue afternoon in late August, I flew into Sumburgh Airport to spend a month working with readers and writers of Shetland.

My programme was worked out beautifully by Alex Cluness and Donald Anderson at Shetland Arts. I led fiction workshops, visited readers’ groups around the islands, talked to classes in schools, and took part in the Wordplay Festival.

It is unsettling to walk into a room full of people who have been forced, this particular month, to read one’s own books

I also had plenty of time to stay at home in the Booth and get on with my own writing, or gaze out of the huge windows and watch the fishing boats come and go.

Shetland has a wealth of writers’ and readers’ groups. I was impressed by their enthusiasm and sense of community. Complete beginners attended the workshops alongside published and soon-to-be published writers, but there was no hint of the kind of hierarchy and competition one sometimes finds in writers’ groups.
 
I took each group for three sessions so there was time to try out different exercises, to watch ideas develop and flourish. We looked at basic elements of craft in prose fiction, such as character, setting and structure.

Certain themes and motifs appeared repeatedly in the writing, the most noticeable one – not surprisingly – being our relationship with the sea. There were stories about fishing, sailing, sea birds, couples meeting on beaches and more, but even when the story was not directly related to the sea, the sense of it was often there in the background, providing the story’s pulse.

The concerns of the writing seemed to reflect the make-up of the groups; they were both local and cosmopolitan. I read stories set on Shetland trawlers and stories set around the world.

One Saturday afternoon in Lerwick library I gave a one-off workshop to a small group of teenagers. They were lively and fun and the sheer vivacity and wit with which they approached the writing exercises – and the pleasure they showed in hearing each other read – made me feel excited all over again to be a fiction writer.

I also visited secondary schools in Lerwick and Brae, working with students of different ages and levels. In one class I gave out photographs of people with – I thought – interesting faces, and got the students to imagine them as story characters.

There was one boy who simply would not write. At least, I thought he would not write. As far as he was concerned, he could not write. As the students around him scratched away at their paper, he glared at his picture.

He said to me, ‘I’ve no talent for writing’, but when I talked to him it turned out he had a head full of ideas and just seemed to want someone to tell him that it was all right to write them down. Perhaps a useful purpose of the writer-in-residence is not to tell this person that he can write it down, but to help him see that he doesn’t need to ask.

And finally, the readers’ groups. It is unsettling to walk into a room full of people who have been forced, this particular month, to read one’s own books. Even assuming that most will be polite enough not to tell you that they hated it, to see all those books on the table can leave the author feeling strangely naked.

From a café on a cliff top to a small school building on the island of Whalsay, the groups welcomed me with wine and questions. The discussions were warm and thoughtful and made me think afresh about my novels.

Alex and Donald made sure I didn’t leave the islands without some sightseeing. Toward the end of my stay Alex and I drove up to the north of Unst. In my head now the day’s images are vivid: ruined houses, a torch-lit walk around Muness castle, a flock of sheep scattering across a sandy beach, an ancient church with a graveyard still in use, endless stretches of green and blue.

During the month I was also making a start on a screenplay I am writing that is set in the Swiss Alps. I won’t attempt to draw connections between this and these images of the landscape in Shetland, since there are clearly few.

Yet I know that, even if it is hard to say exactly where and how, some of these things will find their way into my new work. Meanwhile, I wonder what new writing will come from the many people I worked with in Shetland.

Susanna Jones lives in Brighton and teaches creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has published two novels, ‘TheEarthquake Bird’ and ‘Water Lily’ (both Picador) and her third, ‘The
Missing Person’s Guide to Love’, will be published next year.

© Susanna Jones, 2006