serendipity takes a hand

(the feeling of writing a book)

Summer in the city on one of the hottest days of the hottest year—an ice-cream van on the corner of every square, the London pavements an endless parade of iced coffees and pretty sundresses. In Fitzrovia, cafe tables spill out onto the street, plane trees shading the corners, but I sit in a dark, airless room: empty except for a microphone, an iPad, and the voice of my producer through my headphones. On the other side of the wall, a well-known comedian is speaking in the studio next door. I am here to record the audio book of Chasing Fog.

Catching the early morning train, I had been nervous. Outside the window, fireweed flashed past in a streak of pink. I listened to a voice note on my phone—my friend’s kind father, a Welshman, had sweetly recorded himself reading the list of Welsh names I needed to learn for chapter three. His gentle voice soothed me as I sipped a bottle of cool iced tea, having been told to avoid coffee and dairy so as to preserve my own voice.

Writing and publishing this book has been a series of what my friend

Beth Kempton

calls ‘pinch me moments’. These have included: discovering the book was an Editor’s Choice in the Bookseller, being recommended on

Dr Sharon Blackie

’s Substack, featuring in the i’s ‘best new books to read in August’ and receiving brilliant blurbs for the book from authors I greatly admire, but stepping into the soundproof booth to read Chasing Fog for the audio book was one of the greatest pinch me moments of all. In writing the book, I never considered that I might end up reading it out loud (if I had, I may have been more cautious about including names in languages that I do not speak…so perhaps it was for the best that I did not think of it, for each of those names brings a poetry of its own).

It began as a book that combined place-writing with literary exploration, but the final version of Chasing Fog had become what Rebecca Schiller describes as a ‘surprising mix of nature-writing and memoir’. I am used to reading out loud—I spent five years as a teacher, I have given many presentations, I read countless bedtime stories to my own children—but recording my own book felt different. As Ruth Allen notes in this excellent post (the advice from which I found invaluable), ‘you find new meaning in your own words.’ I was taken aback by the intensity of reading out the more personal passages; I felt vulnerable, but also strangely energised. To write about an experience or feeling is to put yourself back into in the moment. To read the passage aloud is to return once more to that same moment, to try and take the reader there with you. As I read, I imagined stretching out my hand to the reader and leading them into the fog.

On the advice of

Jess Pan

, I crunched my way through a paper bag of apples bought the day before from my local fruit and veg shop and I drank glass after glass of water. In my lunch break, having just read out the chapter about climbing Welsh mountain Cadair Idris, my friend’s father’s voice still echoing in my ears. I ducked into the Oxfam shop next door and happened upon a copy of Robert Macfarlane’s Mountains of the Mind. At each location I visited for the book, I had asked myself the two questions that, in The Old Ways, Macfarlane suggests posing of any strong landscape:

…firstly, what do I know when I am in this place that I can know nowhere else? And then, vainly, what does this place know of me that I cannot know of myself?

The answers had often surprised me.

I bought the book and slipped it into my bag alongside my proof copy of Chasing Fog.

Later, walking to the tube station in a daze, as heat radiated from the early evening city, I found myself standing in Fitzroy Square where Virginia Woolf, who appears more than once in the pages of Chasing Fog, lived for a time at number twenty-nine. I stopped to look up at the arched windows, their sills covered in trailing geraniums, and felt, not for the first time in my book journey, that serendipity had taken a hand.

If audio books are your thing, you can pre-order the Chasing Fog audio book here, or if you, like me, prefer a book you can hold in your hands, I’d be hugely grateful if you would pre-order a hardback copy of Chasing Fog.

Novelist

Catherine Newman

(if you have yet to read her books, I cannot recommend them to you highly enough) explains it like this:

'I know that every author natters on beggingly about this, but preorders are important because they cue booksellers and publishers about how well a book is likely to do, and then this is kind of a spiral up (or, sob, down) situation: the more a book seems like it’s going to sell, the more resources everyone puts into selling it. (And conversely, the less, the fewer, etc.)’

So I hope you’ll forgive me for mentioning it.

Thank you for reading,

Laura x

PS: This edition of The Feeling of Writing a Book has been free for all subscribers. For the next edition, this series will return behind the paywall.

PPS: A couple of updates…

You’ll find an interview with me on

Lyndsay Kaldor

’s lovely Substack, Story & Thread as part of her ATELIER series (a collaborative interview series exploring our creative spaces, processes and rituals):

Why writing sometimes looks like walking with Laura Pashby.

Next week, on 16th August I’ll be speaking at

The Sparkle Summit - Substack x Publishing

, hosted by

Claire Venus

and

Russell Nohelty

, with a starry lineup of Substackers!

Follow below for details—it’s free to attend…

‘THE SPARKLE SUMMIT’ Schedule