Nick Acheson is an author, conservationist and environmentalist living in North Norfolk. He has written for BBC Wildlife, British Birds, British Wildlife, The Guardian, The Big Issue, BTO News, The Countryman and numerous other publications. His book The Meaning of Geese was published in February 2023, and was awarded the East Anglian Book of the Year 2023.

Together, Ellie and Nick discuss his book The Meaning of Geese, and why he decided to build the book with journal entries, and structuring non-fiction. They also touch on writing about climate change, the editing process for non-fiction books, and how to interest readers with a topic that they may not have previously considered.

Steph

Welcome to the Writing Life podcast for anyone who writes. My name is Steph and I’m broadcasting to you from the Writers’ Room at National Centre for Writing, which is a brilliant and new little spot in our building. So, in case you weren’t aware, our home at Dragon Hall has a newly opened Writers’ Room on Thursdays and Fridays. We’ve kitted out two adjoining spaces downstairs with desks, charging banks and headphones.

Bookings are now open online for anyone to book a three-hour slot for free each week. So, if you’re creative and you’re local to Norwich or perhaps a visitor passing through, why not book a little time for yourself in our Writers’ Room? You can find out more by visiting nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/writers-room/

Anyway, now we have housekeeping out of the way, we’re onto the main segment of today’s podcast, which is a conversation with author and presenter Nick Acheson on structuring non-fiction and how to create rhythm in your writing. Nick Acheson is an author, conservationist and environmentalist living in North Norfolk. He’s written for BBC Wildlife, British Birds, British Wildlife, The Guardian, The Big Issue, BTO News, The Countryman and numerous other publications.

His book The Meaning of Geese was published in February 2023, and it was awarded the East Anglian Book of the Year. Nick spoke to my colleague, Ellie Reeves, about the writing of The Meaning of Geese, and why he decided to build the book around journal entries. They also touch on writing about climate change, the editing process for non-fiction books, and how to interest readers with a topic that they may not have previously considered.

This all sounds very fascinating. So, without further ado, I’m going to hand over to Nick Acheson in conversation with Ellie Reeves.

 

 Ellie

Hello, Nick. How are you doing today?

 

 Nick

Awfully well, thank you, Ellie. Lovely to see you.

 

 Ellie

Yeah, you too. Thanks for joining me. We are in the UEA Broadcast House today. We’re not in our home of Dragon Hall, so the environment is a little bit different.

A little bit more high-tech than the ancient oak beams.

 

Nick

Slightly less medieval.

 

Ellie

Ever so slightly. Not too much. Not too much. So, what we are here to talk about today is the meaning of geese. It is your brilliant nonfiction book all about the migration of geese in Norfolk and much, much more beyond that. And I thoroughly enjoyed it.

And I’m hoping as well that through our conversation, we’re going to touch on climate change. We’re going to touch on how do you interest the reader in a topic that they might not have previously considered or known that they would be enticed by, and the story of how the book came to be? And that, I think, is where we should start.

So, this book came out of lockdown, out of the global pandemic, and it’s written in journal entries, which I found very interesting. What made you first decide to start documenting it? That first entry, that second entry. Where did it all begin?

 

Nick

It began, as you say, Ellie, with the lockdowns of the pandemic. For many of us, I have the privilege of living in North Norfolk.

I live in a village. For the early lockdown, the first lockdown, the spring lockdown, the weather was nice and if you if you knew that your friends and family were largely safe, it was a very worrying and disturbing time. But it was also relatively because the weather was lovely and I lived in the countryside an easier time, and by the end of the year, when it was really, really obvious, we were going to have a brutally nasty winter, we were going to be lockdown and three circumstances in my life.

I neither had people around me because I live by myself and my close family were shielded for various reasons. I also had no income because the pandemic had taken away income, so I had no people, I had no money, and I thought, I’m not going to get through this winter unless I do something. And in my shed, I had my mother’s 42-year-old bicycle, and I spent my lifetime in north Norfolk watching the wild geese.

And I thought, right, I can’t have people, so I’ll flock with the geese and the way I will do this because the rules – you remember that the rules were changing constantly during that lockdown winter

 

Ellie

Oh, yes.

 

Nick

But the rules allowed us to exercise as much as we liked. So, I could be out on a bike as much as I liked.

So, I thought, right: ‘you’ll get on your bike, and you’ll cycle through the whole season that the geese are around, and you will follow geese, and you will get home. And you’ll write.’ And, of course, I had no idea it will end up as a book. I hoped it would. The plan was for it to be a book, but I didn’t know it would be.

And I thought, ‘okay, this is a this is a lived experience. So, I’ll start writing it as I experience it.’ And that’s exactly how it came about.

 

Ellie

Oh, that’s amazing. And perhaps I know slight spoilers having read it, but how did the bike compare to the wings of geese as a transport?

 

Nick

Well, it’s impossible to know in that much, though.

I spent a great, great, great deal of time with the geese. I don’t ultimately know what it’s like to live life as a goose. The bike is quite old and quite heavy, and by the time I came to stop watching geese, I’d cycled 1200 miles on it.

 

 Ellie

Wow!

 

Nick

And the famous quotation that Norfolk is very flat is not really true.

In glacial North Norfolk, when there are a great deal of hills and on a 42-year-old steel bike, it’s actually quite a lot of work. So, I stayed very fit, which the geese do because they fly all over the county in search of food, while the pink-footed geese do. But I was rather belittled by the fact that it took me an entire winter, seven months of cycling to cycle the distance that the pink for the geese fly essentially in a day when they’re on their way to Norfolk.

 

Ellie

Oh, they put you to shame!

 

Nick

They have put me to shame. Oh, very much. But then I’m. I’m put to shame by the natural world all together, because we’re surrounded by creatures that are doing the most extraordinary things that we don’t even begin to notice or think about.

 

Ellie

Yeah, very true. And I can barely get up without a coffee.

So, really, they are they are leading and we are following. Of course, you’re no stranger to writing. More generally, you’ve written for The Guardian, you’ve written for the BBC, you were an editor for the Wildlife Trust for a few years as well. But this is a book. This is different. How was that process different for you?

 

Nick

That’s… Yes, I, I’d never dared write a book because it is a big thing to commit to.

And it’s also a big scary thing to assume that people would want to read your words. It’s a very- you are exposing a huge amount of yourself and that takes a lot. Some of the people, right, from all sorts of circumstances. Some people think that they have something to say, that people ought to listen to them. Others write because they don’t know how not to write. They write because the world makes no sense unless they’re writing about it, and then that becomes read. And we’re all on a spectrum of of writing. And for me, it’s been something I’ve never really dared do. I hadn’t dared assume the world would want to read the things that I would write, and so I’d never dared write a book.

But it became an imperative because I needed something to do to survive. And then there was another level of agony and pain. Oddly enough, just yesterday I. So my great friend Patrick Barkham, who is a much-loved writer about these parts and all over the country and he was talking about the process because he was hugely helpful.

He was the first person who read a draft of the first half of the book, and who said, this must see the light of day. But then he sent it to countless agents and publishers, all of whom just batted it aside and dismissed it and said, nah not going there. Not interested.

 

Ellie

That’s a familiar tale

 

Nick

Absolutely. So, absolutely. So, it is quite extraordinary.

And I think perhaps the publishing industry is, is simply playing safe and is afraid of anything novel. Given that there are so many excellent writers and commercially valuable writers being published, they don’t want to waste their time on somebody who’s new, somebody who doesn’t have a big name in their field. And I don’t question that. I’m not saying ‘oh, this terrible thing. It’s so unfair.’

But there are countless writers out there with stories begging to be told in the most thrilling, exciting, creative, novel ways whose stories aren’t being told because the publishing industry is forced to play safe. So, my book was rejected more times than I care to remember before I found Chelsea Green, who immediately really pricked up their ears and said, ‘we like this. Yes.’

 

Ellie

That’s a good sign.

 

Nick

So, I was very, very under and it landed in the right place. My flock of geese landed on the right pond and my editor was utterly, utterly fantastic. Really, really brilliant at taking the manuscript as it was and not meddling because I, I know what words I want, I know how I want my sentences to work, I know how I want my paragraphs to work.

I know what my voice sounds like. And had she meddled, we’d have ended up fighting. But what she did was say, do you think this bit of information might work better, add more impact if it came later in the story or whatever. And I would cock my head, think for a bit, and then go, actually, that’s a really good idea.

So, she had strong ideas about how the book could be improved, but without micromanaging. Then in the last stages, the death throes, we argued a lot over semicolons. We have different interpretations of semicolons. But we agreed to love one another despite that.

 

Ellie

I’m glad. I’m glad you’ve been able to move past

 

Nick

Past the semicolons. Yes.

 

Ellie

Brilliant. Well, we’re thrilled that it did eventually come to light, because of course, it then went on to be entered into the East Anglian Book Awards, which is a regional book awards. And it won book of the year after winning the general nonfiction category. And I think having read it, it’s fairly evident why it was able to win that.

And it really captures the essence of East Anglia and that the, the patch of it that it’s delving into. And it is also really beautifully written. So, you’ve got both of those elements going on. I’m very interested to hear a little bit more about this editorial relationship. I wonder how much it differs when a fiction writer is working with an editor versus a nonfiction writer.

And of course, you have a little bit of editorial background as well. Would you say that this has changed – this final published version has changed quite a lot from the original journal entries then?

 

Nick

No, it hasn’t actually, it broadly speaking, there were journal entries that in the light of working with my editor, I realized were much though they may have contained interesting facts and some quite nice text, they actually didn’t help the flow of the book.

And so, there were bits, you know, the writing expression ‘kill your children’ just as a spoiler hit. Don’t go anybody kill their children. But in writing terms, you have to be prepared to. And when my editor questions sections, I actually went further usually than she suggested and took out entire passages, which then, with the benefit of hindsight, I know she was absolutely right.

And then there were also sections. So, I, I didn’t like because it was a true account of a winter. I didn’t like to play fast and loose with chronology, but there were also times when I slightly tweaked what happened when, simply because it made the story more coherent. And you do have to. I mean, as any writer knows, if you’re not taking your reader with you, then there’s absolutely no point writing it.

 

Ellie

Yeah, yeah. (both laughing)

 

Nick

If your reader isn’t going, oh, I’m learning new things and I’m learning new things in a way that’s enjoyable and opening new avenues of thinking for me, then really, you’re wasting your time. And sometimes that involves slightly bending the factual truth because it makes for a more understandable story. And if and if your reader doesn’t understand and feel, then then you’re just wasting your time.

 

Ellie

Yes!

 

Nick

And that’s really what my editor did. But no, I would say that the manuscript and the final book really are very similar.

 

 Ellie

Oh, that’s lovely to hear

 

Nick

Really very similar. Really. It was a pruning exercise, I would say. And that was where my editor, her name’s Muna Reyal at Chelsea Green, and she is wonderful. And we’ve spoken actually about the process of editing because she edits books from-

There are authors who for whom words are not their natural habitat, and there are authors who interpret the world in terms of words. And my silly mind is always playing with words. I love words. I love the patterns they make. I love the feelings they inspire. I love the colours they launch in my head.

And so meddling with my words, as I would put it, wouldn’t work because I would fight with the because that’s not the rhythm that I’m trying to set up. I do, I try to play with words. I like them to be springboards towards particular ideas. And my editor was saying to me that she has she has authors who have stories to tell, but for whom prose isn’t their natural habitat.

And with them she might edit more deeply in the sense that she’s not just helping a structure, but she’s also helping the structure of individual sentences and changing language. Whereas with me, she would never really change language. She would flag things and say, is this image too obscure or is this? And then I’d think and go, ‘actually, Muna, you’re right there.’

I’m living in my head. And that’s a really, really important part of the process of being edited. It’s knowing when you’re indulging your own head too much because you’re not taking your reader with you.

 

Ellie

Yes.

 

Nick

And at that point, you have to listen to your editor and go, you know what? You don’t know North Norfolk and the geese, or you’re not getting that whimsical reference that I’m setting up.

My amazing friend, Simon Barnes, another wonderful Norfolk writer, amazing nature writer and sports writer and general thinker. But he does the most incredible- He buries references to music, lyrics, poetry in his prose and sets them up as little jokes and is so, so, so, so clever. I’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent there, but sometimes when I was doing that sort of thing, Muna would say to me, ‘I’m not sure people are getting that on.’ And I’d sit back – after my huff – I would sit back and go, ‘you know what, Muna? You’re absolutely right.’ She is a woman of great wisdom and great skill. Just to manage me requires tremendous skills

 

Ellie

Some gentle directing (both laughing)

 

Nick

And sometimes quite firm directing. (both laughing)

 

Ellie

Yeah, it’s very, very true. A lot of a lot of killing of darlings, a lot of trimming of fat. There’s lots of phrases that get tossed around for that process, and it applies to any book.

I think that’s very, very true regardless of genre.

 

 Nick

It applies to any writing

 

 Ellie

Any writing.

 

Nick

Any writing. It really, really does. And when I write articles, which I do all the time, I write a great deal for Norfolk Wildlife Trust. I write-I’ve written now for a decade for the Norfolk magazine every month I write, and then I always leave it to rest for a couple of days and then come back with a clear head.

Because when you’re in the writing, sometimes the words come out and then you look at it two days later and broadly, you might like the shape of it or the message of it or whatever, but you, you then go, ‘oh, that’s- Oh no, that’s a clumsy sentence. Who wrote that?’

 

Ellie

‘Couldn’t be me!’ (both laughing)

 

Nick

‘I could never have put those words together!’ (both laughing)

 

Ellie

Brush that one under the carpet. (both laughing)

 

 

Nick

Really will. ‘Kill it. Kill it now.’

 

Ellie

And there’s a sort of an odd satisfaction that writers, I think, eventually find with doing this. But I know that it can be a real struggle for writers to let go of their precious sentences, their favourite words, those lovely images that they’ve crafted.

 

Nick

Yes

 

Ellie

Because they don’t serve the reader and therefore they don’t serve the book.

 

Nick

Yeah! And you really, really do have to. There is no point in a book if the reader doesn’t enjoy it, get something from it. And that- jumping much, much further forward in the process – the thing you don’t know before you publish a book that you cannot possibly know is the moment it lives in the world. It’s not your thing at all anymore, and you get this flood.

I have been it’s still every week I get a message somewhere on social media, an email, something via my website from someone saying what the geese mean to them, what the geese meant to their father in the 1950s, what the landscape means to them, some little thing that they’ve read in the book that you perhaps didn’t even it wasn’t a particularly significant thing for you.

And it is just the most beautiful thing. It is the most humbling, every single one of them is precious. Every single one. And still they come. It’s it is the most humbling thing. And the book ceases. It surprises me. There’s a copy sitting on the table in front of us. It surprises me to see my name on the cover because the book has ceased to be my thing.

It has become a thing that other people and the people who tell me that they read it. ‘Oh, I’m reading it again next winter but on the days that you wrote it’,

 

Ellie

Wow!

 

Nick

and that’s been something lots of people have said to me and that I’m sitting here with chills going up my spine because it just means the world. It really, really does.

Because you sit alone for thousands of hours writing and then editing, and then suddenly little words, little taps on a computer that become squiggles on a page mean something to someone. That is the most humbling and beautiful thing.

 

Ellie

They become folded into something so much greater.

 

Nick

Yes, truly so! Truly so.

 

Ellie

Amazing. And I want to delve into a conversation about the writing of the geese and how that came to shape.

But first, I’d like to pop back. You spoke about description, and I think it is fair to say that this book is brimming with very vivid and very creative as well. Descriptions of of geese that the more wacky ones weren’t all cuts, I was laughing. I can’t remember the exact phrasing, but something about geese as a Victorian ladies in a big in a big huff or something along those lines.

And it was really, I laughed out loud. Well, I was

 

Nick

Oh, that’s lovely.

 

Ellie

And it’s and it’s full of them. And I think it’s very impressive as well that they don’t feel repetitive. As someone who doesn’t know or didn’t know, I do now, who didn’t know geese in any real way, and to not feel that these dozens of descriptions of pink-feet or brants were repetitive is impressive.

And I’m curious to know, as a lover of words and the crafting of words and that sort of lyricism, what is your approach to description?

 

Nick

That’s really interesting. The reason that I wanted it to be a journal and to stay as a journal was because every day when I went out, I was jotting notes the entire time, and the notes I made were the images were almost all written at the moment of watching.

Yeah. But then they were back checked in the sense that when I got home, I was ruthless throughout the writing that I wasn’t going to keep going back to the same tired imagery. And I was very aware that I was writing over a period of seven months about the same cast members, time and time and time again. And I needed to describe their voices, their habits, their appearance, their way of flying in new ways repeatedly.

And so I, I had this jotting down sometimes on a physical notebook and sometimes in my phone, depending on where I was and how cold my fingers were, I jotted down whatever struck me at the time, and my mind is quite fizzy. It’s always throwing ideas.

 

Ellie

(laughing) That’s lovely

 

Nick

I jot down images the entire time, and that’s what I did write the way through.

But then the back checking as I was saying, I then as I wrote the book, it was it was actually divided up into months. But I had the whole thing as, as one document. And then if I felt I had used an image before or if I thought, ‘have I used something similar to that before?’ I would word search the whole document to make sure I wasn’t repeating myself, because I didn’t want it to become there are I?

This sounds awful, but I as an editor, I have a few. So I edit largely things about nature and the moment somebody describes a barn owl is floating ghostly over a marsh, I go, ‘No!’

 

Ellie

‘Not again!’

 

Nick

Yes. ‘Not again.’ And we’ve had that for hundreds of years. Can we just not have something new about barn owls in the same water voles, for example, did you know that Kenneth Grahame’s Ratty was actually a water vole?’ ‘YES! Everybody who’s ever read anything about water voles knows, because that’s been used so many hundreds of times!’

And I have those and so I, I refuse just to trot out the same images again and again and again and again and again. So I anything I thought, because by the end of seven months, you’ve written so many thousands of words and you have a pretty good idea of everything you’ve said, but you don’t want to be repetitive.

And again, repetition when you’re writing about, in theory, a single subject – although the geese are a metaphor for so many other things – when you’re writing about a single subject for seven months, you’ve got to keep it fresh and you’ve got to keep surprising, amusing, and at times tweaking the emotions. And that gets harder and harder and harder.

So you fact check to make sure that you haven’t slipped into repetition.

 

Ellie

Mmm. So there’s, an element of in the moment creation to get that really vivid image. But then there’s also quite a bit more of a structured approach going on in the background t just make sure.

 

Nick

Yes, very much so. Very, very much so. And there are moments when you’re thinking of one fairly early on, there were two stoats that bounded towards me along a road, and I jotted down the expression, it’s just springing to my mind right now.

But ‘elderberry eyes a-glint in the morning sun’ or something like that. And when you write that down, you suddenly think, that’s going to work. There are moments when you think, that captures exactly what I’m seeing And there are moments when you actually end up killing something because it wasn’t. You write more notes than you use.

 

Ellie

Yeah, of course, of course. Always about the trimming.

 

Nick

But the thing, the other thing, and perhaps you’ll stray into this. The other thing that I wanted to do is to use the geese, and my experience of the geese and the, the knowledge and company of the geese to do was talk about various other big issues: climate, shooting, landscape change, farming, people’s relationships with one another and with nature.

And I tried and this was more difficult and required a different level of architecture. But I tried to theme those things more or less together during the book. So all the bits about shooting and lead and the management of the land for shooting are broadly in one set of diary entries, because you don’t want the reader to be like

‘Why is he talking about this now?’ You want it all to fit into one bit. And so the other thing I was doing, as I cycled around looking at the geese, was trying to find bigger stories to be telling about them, that the connected stories. And then so at the start of a month, let’s say I would see some particular thing that made me think, okay, well, that’s very Peter Scott.

Let’s talk about this. And then I would try to build on that theme through the writing.

 

Ellie

That’s very interesting because I did want to ask you questions about particularly climate change. But as you say, there are a lot of other big issues that are woven in to the text. It’s very interesting to hear that it was quite deliberate, because my initial question around that is particularly with the climate change, but also with the discussions in there about shooting and about farming and all of these topics.

Was it intentional and what sort of came first? And you’ve touched on it there, but I’m curious to know, was the seeking out of conversations with a lot of experts that you include in the book, whether they are friends or colleagues, were those put in later? When in the journey- When in the seven months did you go, ‘ah, I think this is going to be a necessary feature in this book’?

 

Nick

That- that was also part of the architecture from the start.

I was very, very clear from the start that I couldn’t tell a meaningful, forgive me (both laughing), meaningful story of ‘The Meaning of Geese’ unless I spoke to those others whose lives revolve around the geese, the comings and goings of the geese, the the idea of sending them home via the voices of others came to me much later, because I was looking for ways to, in the knowledge that the geese were going north again and leaving me alone.

I thought, given that a part of the story is that I’d reached the conclusion that I wouldn’t fly anymore, and I wanted to live a very low carbon lifestyle. And I’d spent seven months on a bicycle. I was hardly going to get in a plane and fly to Iceland to see- that would. That’s a trope that in much nature writing is repeated.

So I went on a journey to explore the lives of these things. And I got on a plane and I went to the place they live or the place they then went to. And the point of this book is that I wasn’t going to do that. This was a book research on an extremely low carbon budget. And so the only way to see them home was in the voices of others.

But by that point, so many people had contributed their own stories that it, I hope, made some sort of sense that I was passing the geese on to other witnesses and other voices as they went north, and one of the Icelanders, Helgi he ran out of my interview with him to see the geese arriving in the field behind him, which was so beautiful.

 

Ellie

I remember!

 

Nick

Because I might have seen those self-same geese during my winter.

And there he was, welcoming them. And the fact that he was so excited by it that he ran out of our zoom conversation. That was thrilling. Absolutely beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful. But yes, I always had it in my mind that others would have to contribute their stories because I alone can’t give geese a meaning. And they mean different things to different people.

 

Ellie

Oh I thought you were about to give a definite answer and I was about to stop the podcast!

 

Nick

Yes. 42 in a Douglas Adams sort of- (both laughing) No. Because of course they mean different things to different people. Yeah. But going back to the theme thing, what I would do, I had I did a lot of research when I, it was about two weeks before I realized what I was going to do for the winter.

I had the idea in the middle of August and started early in September. And during those two weeks I made a ton of notes and spoke to a ton of well, I spoke in particular to Andy Bloomfield, who’s the Warden at Holkham, and he suggested several books, some of which I knew already and some of which I didn’t.

And I made a ton of notes in advance, and had jotted down the themes I wanted to touch on, but I didn’t know how and when I was going to slot them into the story. And that arose from things the geese did or things I saw. And then I thought, ‘okay, we’ve hit on a place to talk about farming, so I’ll try and group as much of the farming stuff here’ so that it makes sense to the readers so they feel they’ve understood a little bit this bit of the story, and then something would happen that would then lead me on to shooting or climate change or whatever.

And in fact, climate change was one where my editor was quite fierce. I’d written a lot more overt stuff about climate change, and she said, ‘I don’t like this bit, this is too full on, this is too, this goes too. ’And I said, ‘it’s the point. This is a book about climate change.’ And she said ‘it will work better if you show and don’t tell.’

And I was cross, that she was wrong. Except she wasn’t. And in fact, one of the things many people have commented on about is how it’s a book about climate change, which it is, but it doesn’t tell. And my ranty section told.

 

Ellie

Mm. It reminds me of- I am a huge David Attenborough fan, just to quote, everybody really, (Nick laughing) and I am very familiar, you know, growing up watching his shows and often at the end, whilst there would be mentions of climate and environmental changes throughout the episode, often he would do a dedicated portion at the end where he would go in really quite hard with the impact of human action on the environment, and he would not soften that at all. And it used to be quite, difficult to watch, but important. And I’m very glad that I had that exposure. I’m very grateful to him, as I think a lot of people are, and I am fascinated to hear you say that there were more moments, perhaps a little bit similar to that in this book, because I agree that it does not tell.

It only shows and with all topics, but we can mainly focus on climate change. You give quite a balanced view, particularly with shooting and topics like that, which I thought I would have a more definite opinion on. By the end of the book., actually, I was, more balanced and had heard perspectives that had never been I’d never been exposed to before.

And I was very grateful for that. With climate change, I wouldn’t say that is exactly the route that it takes. It’s just more of a showing and less direct in what you’re trying to say. But it is a book about climate change. It absolutely is a book about climate change. And if you were to do a follow up or a second book, perhaps not about geese, but about anything

 

Nick

There will not be another book about geese. (laughing)

 

Ellie

Damn!

 

Nick

Yes. Sorry. (both laughing)

 

 Ellie

We’ve done geese.

 

Nick

I think we’ve done geese. And also I would not want to be typecast as Goose Boy forever stuck with geese. I mean, and I think we’ve, I think we’ve done geese.

 

Ellie

Very, very fair. But if there was to be another book on whatever beautiful topic you would choose, do you think that the writing about climate change would remain something that was a priority?

 

Nick

Yes. Yes, definitely. In that I am an environmentalist by vocation, by passion, by dedication, that there’s no there’s no ifs or buts about that. That is my role in the world. And climate change is one of the most significant things. It is. I believe climate change is the greatest threat the humanity has ever faced, and we have faced countless threats through our millions of years in this place and climate change really does threaten everything that we are and have and do.

And so there’s no way it would ever be not there.

llie

Mm. I think what I particularly loved as well, I do, I do encourage people to read the book and to realize this for themselves is the softness of nature and it’s sort of deliberate carrying on. It just crept on regardless of what you were doing, regardless of these discussions of what humans were up to around them and these broader conversations, the geese just continued.

And the other animals that populate the book just continued on instinct and on pattern and in the most natural way. And it gets to the point where, because of the way in which you’ve told it, the showing rather than the telling, it feels very much that we are disrupting something entirely peaceful and natural. And if we would just bugger off a little bit, then they would be completely unaffected by us.

And that softness is was really calming to read. And I thoroughly, I thoroughly enjoyed being in that space for a little bit rather than in the more human centric side of things.

 

Nick

That’s really touching, and I’m really grateful that for what you say. Riffing on that, I really didn’t want it to be a book about Covid. It is also a book about Covid inherently.

It was written. It was written in exactly the period of the, the lockdowns. And and if we cast our minds back, I mean, it all seems so long ago now. It’s another life ago, but we hadn’t been vaccinated and we were all still living in fear for our elderly, frail friends and relatives. And we all were wondering when we were going to come out of this and whether this was going to be the shape of our lives for a long time.

And of course, we all still have friends who are vulnerable and who do still live in very real fear. And we must keep that present. But we were all in that stage then, but I didn’t want it to be that. There is a lot of me in the book, of course. How could you write a book that isn’t doesn’t contain a lot of you? But one of the things my editor wanted was more of my emotions, and I wanted the emotions to be felt rather than too on the surface.

And there were times there were very agonizing times. There are times around my family and things that happened that was sad and difficult, which I mentioned or touched on or even gone into in some detail, but I didn’t want it. I in nature writing over the past few years, there’s been a real trend to wallow. And that sounds a really harsh word, but I use it just as a as a way of colouring the idea not to criticise anyone, but of wallowing in pain and then saying, ‘well, nature has been a way to heal myself.’

There have been many, many, many books about nature recently that have been ‘this awful thing has happened in my life, and then nature has been my way to heal or work out or process.’ And because that’s become a trope, sounds dismissive, but it because that has become a genre within nature writing. I really wanted to avoid that. And the more so because all of us were suffering.

 

Ellie

Yeah.

 

Nick

All of us. All of us. All of us. This wasn’t my pandemic to wallow in and say, I’m, you know, I’m all my work’s gone. My family is very vulnerable. Everyone was in the same boat, everyone was in the same boat.

 

Ellie

And in with people’s relationship with writing as well. We knew of people who they suddenly found time that they hadn’t had previously, because of other commitments in life that became available and they could dedicate to writing, and they actually found a great amount of peace and progress in their creative writing.

And on the flip side, we had people who had been writing before who were actively trying to get into it, who were completely, creatively blocked. They were too wound up with the emotions and everything else that was going on, to really be able to put pen to paper in any sort of progressive or helpful way. And so, as you say, everybody’s journey was completely different, even though we were going through it together.

 

Nick

Yes, together. But apart. It was the most extraordinary thing that we were utterly isolated and yet utterly unified.

 

 Ellie

Yeah, it’s very, very true. And just to broaden out that question around that topic of climate change, writing in general, whether it’s nonfiction or fiction or memoir, is a brilliant way to tell stories. It’s a fantastic way to build empathy and wash away ignorance of things that perhaps we didn’t even know we were ignorant of – myself and geese, for instance.

 

Nick

Well, welcome to the flock! Welcome to the flock. (both laughing)

 

Ellie

Oh, thank you, thank you. I’m happy to be here. It’s a lovely, lovely place, lovely view. But of course, that can also apply to much broader things. It can apply to climate change. It can apply to social prejudice. The list is fairly endless. Writers often seeds these broader issues.

I’m a fan of fiction, mostly, and I find it very intriguing, very clever, the way that writers will weave these things into the narratives that they’re telling. And I wonder if you have any advice as someone who has done it very effectively in this book with climate change and other topics, what would your advice be to writers who want their work to be a vehicle for these conversations?

 

Nick

Oh my goodness.

 

Ellie

Big question.

 

Nick

That’s a big, big question. Deep dive. I mean, the first thing that my immediate reaction is, goodness me, I don’t deserve to have any advice for anybody. (Ellie laughing) I really I don’t know how I would advise anybody.

 

Ellie

I would disagree.

 

Nick

Oh, well, that I’m really, really touched. Thank you. I think I would go back to what I was saying earlier, which is that if you’re not taking your reader with you, then then you really have lost it all.

You’ve given up because your reader has to feel the intensity of what you feel about an issue. Whichever issue it is, however you want to make the world better. And actually, my editor’s attack – I love you, Muna, I really do – my editors attack on my section that was really blatant about climate change and my reasons for giving up flying and working abroad and all of these things, the section that was so obvious and, and quite agonized because I was and am agonised.

It didn’t help that because it would have alienated or lost my reader. And so that’s a really good example of I would think: ‘Does my reader, is my reader coming with me in this journey?’ because if my reader isn’t coming with me, then I’m just wasting their time, my time, everyone’s time. And this isn’t going to be a readable or interesting or worthwhile thing.

 

Ellie

Yeah, that they hopped off the bike and left you.

 

Nick

Absolutely. Yes. They’ve gone off to do something a lot warmer than watching geese for a whole winter

 

Ellie

Get a coffee in a cafe.

 

Nick

Absolutely (both laughing). I’m not sure we could do that then, but now they can.

 

Ellie

Yeah, yeah, it’s very true. And there’s also there’s something in there about the fact that this is a book predominantly on the surface about geese, even if underneath is a very different landscape.

And it was described by The Observer, I think it was as ‘a magisterial diary for bird lovers.’ I’m not a bird lover, a little bit more now, but I loved the book, and I think that whilst that statement is true, this isn’t just a book for bird lovers. I don’t think this is a book necessarily for any particular kind of person.

As is the case with most books, but with a topic that is so specific, there are. You have to find a way in. You have to find a way to bring your readers in with you to something that they haven’t previously thought that they might be interested in. Did you think when you wrote this book, were you angling it towards bird lovers?

Who with the people you envisioned picking it up?

 

Nick

That’s such a good question because I was trying, and now I realize that the temerity of the having this ambition. But I was trying to do two things at once. I was trying to write something that told a truth that real experts on birds could read and say, ‘this is an accurate, up to date statement on what we know about geese and what we feel about geese’ and all of these things.

So I wanted really expert bird people to be able to read it and go, ‘yeah, that’s all right.’ But I also wanted to take non-goosers,

 

Ellie

That’s me.

 

Nick

on a journey with me. And perhaps make them think more deeply about this beautiful planet that we share with so many organisms, including the beautiful geese. This great flow. And I think really that was the that was the thing that I wanted to get across more than anything, this huge flow of energy and genes and carbon and life between the Arctic and the temperate area and my little temperate area of the world, which happens to be north Norfolk.

So I wanted to take people on that journey. And looking at the lovely, lovely cover that I feel so privileged sits on my book now. That springing of the geese into the air represents that that feeling of this great flow of these birds who are so much more than birds. They are. They’re the Arctic coming to us and us giving genes and carbon and water and life back to the Arctic.

And they will be here. The pink-feet will be here now in about ten days time. Yes. And as Andy Bloomfield, Warden at Holkham says the ‘the first pink-feet in September are like the first swallows of spring.’ There’s that quivering and I’m excited for it. I’m excited to see my friends back. And there will be geese in the flocks who were in the flocks I was watching when I was cycling around, researching the book.

 

Ellie

Wow. And that’s the cycle.

 

Nick

And that is the cycle. Although this winter I will not be on a cycle.

 

Ellie

I think that’s there. We can let you off this year. (both laughing)

 

Nick

Yeah. Although the 42-year-old now, 40- whatever it is- five-year-old seat is still embedded in my backside from a thousand miles of cycling on that 197- What was it? 1979 bicycle seat.

 

Ellie

My god. Wow. Could maybe get a new one.

 

Nick

Maybe I could, but it was. I want to preserve the integrity of my steed.

 

Ellie

I would like us to. We’re going to wrap up fairly soon, but I would like us to bring it home. You mentioned your little corner of the world, North Norfolk.

And am I right in saying that you’ve been to every continent?

 

Nick

I’ve worked on every continent, every ocean.

 

Ellie

Amazing, amazing. I think that writing text is a big adventure. I like fantasy, so I’m very interested in the biggest adventures, the furthest away that we can go. But the writing of landscape in the book is very powerful. It’s very transportive. Everything that you’ve been saying during our conversation today, I think reflects that as well.

But beyond this book, there’s something to be learned in the availability of life worth writing right here, wherever that happens to be. And I am curious, as someone who has travelled the world, what was that experience of writing your home?

 

Nick

And it is my home. I’m. I was born and brought up in North Norfolk. I was born here in Norwich, but I grew up in North Norfolk.

I live only a couple of miles away from where I. I grew up, my parents were born in North Norfolk. My grandparents were born in North Norfolk. It really is home, and it’s also the home I have made in that. It’s what gives meaning to my life. It simply makes sense to me that landscape. And the older I get, the more it makes sense.

It is the place where the echoes of my life and my family’s life and the friends I’ve made. Their lives. And the friends don’t necessarily have two legs and hands. They might have feathers and a beak. They might have six legs and be an insect – friends come in all shapes and sizes. It just makes sense. And I don’t, I if you said this to five years ago, me who is giving up flying, you won’t regret it at all.

You won’t miss. You won’t pine. I lived in Amazonia for ten years. And I’ll see something. I don’t have a telly, so I don’t see television, but I. I will see a post on social media or something. I’ve, a place I used to live and work in the Amazon, Amazon or a particular species I used to see.

And that will quicken my heart. I’ll see it and I’ll remember with tremendous love the fact of having been there and lived there and had the privilege of becoming part of that landscape in a small way, too. But my life is full with the landscape I inhabit

 

Ellie

And I think that is true for everybody. If we take the time.

 

Nick

Absolutely. Absolutely. And life really in this hyperconnected world, this hyper speed world that we inhabit now, I think the meaning comes in the moments of stillness and observation and being. And there are moments. There are moments in the book where I telescope from the grandness of a great flock of geese to the minuteness of a tiny bird that’s next to me.

And there’s meaning in both the great planetary powers and processes that are happening all around us, and the quiver of a flower in the breeze.

 

Ellie

That’s a beautiful place for us to draw to a close, I would say. Thank you so much, Nick, for chatting today, and thank you as well for writing the book, and I am very excited to find out what you get up to next.

 

Nick

It’s been an absolute joy and an honour, and thank you very much for inviting me.

 

Steph

A big thank you to Nick Acheson and Ellie for their time. Don’t forget to pick up a copy of Nick’s book, ‘The Meaning of Geese’, from your favourite bookshop or library. If you have any questions or you want to get in touch, you can find us at Writers Centre on Twitter and Instagram or on Facebook, and you can sign up to the NCW newsletter at nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk.

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Thanks again. Keep writing and I’ll catch you on the next episode.