In this episode of The Writing Life podcast, former NCW CEO Chris Gribble caught up with author Fiona Mason to discuss her memoir 36 Hours and the craft of life writing.

Originally from the Midlands, Fiona Mason now lives between the salt marshes of the east of England, and the Ariege Pyrenees in southwest France where she’s renovating a house with her partner. She holds MAs in Philosophy and Creative and Life Writing, and combines her work as a writer with roles as a coach, mentor and creative writing tutor.

Together, they discuss how she was compelled to write her incredibly personal memoir. She explores her journey into writing, the stigma around talking and writing about death and how she makes a living from her writing.

Fiona also mentions that she received a Developing Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England, which helped her to dedicate time and energy to writing this memoir. You can find out more about Arts Council funding on their website here.

 

Edited by Omni Mix

Image © Andrew Reynolds

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Transcript

MOLLY

Welcome to The Writing Life, the podcast for anyone who writes. I’m Molly-Rose Medhurst, the Communications Assistant for the National Centre for Writing, here at Dragon Hall in Norwich UNESCO City of Literature.

We’re nearing the end of October now and looking forward to some brilliant winter activity here at NCW. Our next round of online tutored courses, developed in partnership with the University of East Anglia, is on sale now. Our practical and carefully supported 12- and 18-week courses are aimed at developing works in progress, honing your writing skills, and boosting your confidence. All of our courses start on Monday 12 February.

In this episode of The Writing Life, author Fiona Mason and former NCW CEO Chris discuss life writing. At the beginning of the City of Literature weekend, which is part of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, Chris spoke to Fiona about the process of writing her memoir, 36 Hours.

Originally from the Midlands, Fiona Mason now lives between the salt marshes of the East of England and the Ariège Pyrenees in southwest France, where she’s renovating a house with her partner. She holds MAs in both philosophy and creative and life writing and combines her work as a writer with roles as a coach, mentor, and creative writing tutor. Fiona discusses how she was compelled to write her incredibly personal memoir. She explores the stigma around talking and writing about death, how she grappled with writing such a vulnerable book, and how she makes a living from her work.

So now, I’m delighted to hand over to Chris in conversation with Fiona Mason.

 

CHRIS

Welcome, Fiona Mason. It’s a real delight to have you on The Writing Life podcast. How are you doing today?

 

FIONA

I’m doing very well, thank you. I’m really pleased to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

 

CHRIS

Our pleasure. We’re recording this at the start of our City of Literature weekend as part of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, so it feels like a really nice point to jump off into a literary few days. So, thanks for joining us. As you’ll know from the introduction, Fiona is a writer, a mentor, an arts professional and an arts consultant who splits her time between the East of England salt marshes and the Ariège Pyrenees in southwest France, I read online. Is that correct?

 

FIONA

That’s right, yes.

 

CHRIS

I just want to kind of rehearse your CV a little bit and just point out that you’ve got MAs in both philosophy from excellent Essex University and creative and life writing from Goldsmiths. So, you’ve been to two brilliant places, which I’m sure we’ll talk about

and how that’s informed your writing as we go along. And we’re here today to talk in part about your book, 36 Hours, which in 2016 was shortlisted for the Pat Kavanagh Prize and has now finally been published as of the end of last year.

 

FIONA

That’s right, yes.

 

CHRIS

Brilliant. So do you want to talk to us a little bit about why you’re here in Norwich as part of the City of Literature Festival and we’ll kick off from there.

 

FIONA

Yes. Well, we’re here today, obviously, to record this podcast, which is brilliant. And then tomorrow, on Friday, I will be doing a panel event with writer Dr Rupa Faruqi and Caroline Elton. And we’ll be talking about the process of writing medical memoirs, life writing and the issues that might arise from writing about life, death, grief, and such matters. And then on Saturday morning, I’m running a creative writing workshop, which I’ve called Lifelines, which I’m very pleased to say has sold out. In the workshop, we will be looking at, again, how you take your personal narrative and craft it into a story

that’s interesting for other people to read. You know, and it’s not just a blow-by-blow account of your life from day one. So, we’ll be exploring a few different kinds of writing exercises and prompts and ideas to help people think about and steer how they might go about that process.

 

CHRIS

Brilliant. Well, we’re recording this on Thursday 25 May 2023. And while listeners won’t be able to recreate your workshop, hopefully by the time this is out there in the world as a podcast, they will be able to download the soundtrack of the event.

 

FIONA

Oh, brilliant.

 

CHRIS

So, 36 Hours is the book. And ‘medical memoirs’ is a really interesting term. I think the group of people that you’re working with tomorrow have had a very broad experience of both the personal and the professional worlds of medicine and how it fits in with life writing. But I think that it’s also potentially a term that slightly masks the real centrality, the life centrality of the issues that you cover.

Would you like to tell us a little bit about 36 Hours and how it came to be?

 

FIONA

Yes. I mean, it was quite a journey to get from where it was in my mind to a published book. The book covers the last 36 hours of my late husband’s life. He had lung cancer and was ill for 11 months before he died.

I was his carer – I cared for him. And because of the way that his disease progressed, you know, as with any awful diagnosis like that, things became quite difficult. But the last 36 hours in particular were really fixed in my mind.

I mean, I will probably maybe go on to talk a little bit more about the format. But it felt really important to me to somehow capture the intensity of the whole experience of the period of illness, and sort of distill it into those 36 hours, because that’s what became really ingrained in my memory.

Part of the exercise of writing was to almost get the stuff out of my head and onto the page. So, I didn’t have to carry it around anymore, because I think I probably had a degree of PTSD from the experience. And it was a very troubling time for a long time. You know, it’s taken me quite a lot of healing, I suppose, to get through that experience. And I think that I realised early on that I can’t be unique in my experience. You know, everybody dies, we’ll all lose somebody. And I wanted to find something to read afterwards, because probably like a lot of writers and a lot of readers, you know, we turn to literature, poetry, we look out into the world for something to help us to navigate the experience that we’ve had…

And I couldn’t find anything, you know, it all seemed quite saccharine, lots of sort of Disney-vied versions of, you know, deathbed scenes and that kind of thing. And it just wasn’t my experience.

 

CHRIS

Snowy coverlets and sort of breezes, drifting the curtains…

 

FIONA

Exactly, exactly. And everybody, you know, the vigil around the bed and the gentleness and all of that. And yes, it completely wasn’t my experience. So, I thought, well, if you can’t find the book you want to read, you must write it. So that’s what I did.

 

CHRIS

Wonderful. Well, perhaps we should start with the form, because I think that what you’ve done in the book, you’ve used a particular kind of formal structure that allows the reader both to be very much in the minutes and the hours of that last 36-hour stretch,

but also, to see the refraction of the whole journey of the illness through that. Tell us a little bit about how you approached that form and what you decided?

 

FIONA

Yes, it came very spontaneously, actually. I decided to write it in first-person present.

I wanted to just put down the memory, I suppose, really. I mean, as I started writing it, it was literally writing down everything I could remember minute by minute of that last period. And I wanted this hour-by-hour account both for myself as a writer going through a process of putting it down on the page, but also, for the reader, I wanted to invite the reader into the intensity of that experience, into the kind of claustrophobic, closed silence of the space of the house, to get a really strong sense of place. So, the objects and the rooms and the moving from one place to the other within the house during that time, all of these things became really, really important to me. And I think they’re what really bring the reader into that experience. So it was spontaneous. But once I realised I was sort of going down that route, I thought, yes, this is actually the right way to go. I mean, I wrote it very, very quickly, actually. I would have blasts of writing a whole chunk and then I’d have to put it away for a bit because it was too much, you know. But the way I wasn’t doing a bit every day, I would probably wake up and just be, OK, right, this is the moment something’s got to come out and then put it away and come back to it and sort of have a bit of kind of distance from it again.

 

CHRIS

And once you’d sort of kind of externalised and captured to what degree we can capture all of those memories and thoughts in that first person present, how did you then choose to present it to the reader?

 

FIONA

Well, I wanted to really give them an hour-by-hour account. So the format of the book is every hour of that 36 hours. And it’s completely my experience.

So, although there are other people present in the book, the story is my story.

It’s everything that’s going on in my mind at that time. And, yeah, I think that format is certainly integral from the feedback I’ve received. And that sort of gives me a sense that the idea worked, was, you know, wanting the reader to just be with me. And maybe they’ll get some insight and some understanding of what that experience is like,

of caring for someone at home in the last days of life. And by having the reader, it’s a kind of an idea to have someone walking alongside you, you know, rather than kind of observing at a distance, I suppose.

 

CHRIS

Well, absolutely. I mean, as a reader, I had at the end of last year, a very close friend,

two close friends, a married couple. One of their fathers was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer. And within seven weeks, I think, of diagnosis, he had died.

And I had a very minor part in that last sort of few days. But everything about this just rang incredibly true from their experiences. So, it felt like a very powerful evocation from that side of things. So, I wonder if, before we come back to the writing and kind of your story, if you’d like to tell us just a little bit about Michael, because he was such a, obviously, a powerful presence in the book and prompted this writing.

 

FIONA

Yes. Well, he was a brilliant man. He was an academic, computer scientist, and a great family man, you know. Two wonderful kids. And, you know, he loved concrete.

Before he’d gone into academia, because he went into academia quite late, he’d been a builder and a plumber and all sorts of things. And he was someone who, I think, just loved constructing. And I suppose there’s an elegance in computer science and programming and so on, the architecture of large-scale operating systems and things like that in computing map quite closely to the architecture in a built environment. And I could see that there was a real sort of link for him there. Because the way that his illness progressed, the lung cancer, he developed secondary tumours in his brain. And this led to some sort of personality changes. As anyone who knows someone who has gone through any kind of brain cancer, whether that’s primary or secondary, it can make quite profound changes to the person.

So, I think that’s a real sort of cruelty of it, you know, that for some people with an awful diagnosis, they can kind of keep going right up until the end, in a way, and still feel, there’s still a sense that it’s that person and they’re present, you know. And that sort of changed, I think, for us. And that was a really difficult thing to navigate. Because when you see someone who’s mind and their brain and their sort of intellect is so present and so much a part of everything, it’s, the sort of tragedy of that is really amplified. It was for me, certainly, and I think for the family.

And certainly, that’s the very shocking and immediately engaging opening of the 36 hours, that trying to deal with that understanding that the person that you are caring for is both the person that you love and also not, in some ways.

 

CHRIS

Yes. Were you able to use your analytic, writerly skills at the time to help understand that, or was it only with past, with reflection, that that was apparent to you?

 

FIONA

I think with reflection, because unusually for me, during the period of the illness, I wrote very little. I wasn’t keeping a diary. My memory of it is incredibly intense and vivid.

Maybe in a way because I wasn’t writing, perhaps that’s why it’s remained so vivid.

You know, I’ve always had a practice of journal writing, but I think I almost couldn’t approach doing that during the period of illness. It was maybe admitting too much reality to keep putting it on the page and say, ‘Oh gosh, today’s been a terrible day’. You know, somehow not committing it to the page, I could perhaps have some magical thinking about, you know, ‘La la la, we’re going on as normal here, and we’ll go and have a day out in the camper van, and we’ll go and do the normal things of life as much as we can.’ And it wasn’t until afterwards, I mean, afterwards I pretty much immediately started my journaling again, but it was quite a long time before that, I mean years before that became something like a book. You know, I wasn’t writing a book when I was journaling. I was just trying to heal myself, I suppose.

 

CHRIS

And what prompted, do you think, that kind of the change in kind of making the decision to kind of revisit and write and then shape that experience into a book?

 

FIONA

Well, actually there’s another sort of deeper tangent, or sort of, I don’t know if you can have a deep tangent, but anyway, my mum died in January 2014, and she’d been ill with breast cancer for some years. My mum was a writer, and as is my brother, and I always felt it was something they did, that I couldn’t. I wasn’t a big reader in childhood, you know, and I was a bit inattentive, and I spent a lot of time at school staring out the window. I completely flunked everything. I mean, it’s just ridiculous how badly I did. But then, you know, obviously, I came back, did my philosophy degrees and so on, and so, you know, I knew I could do this thing, and I’d always written, even if I’d kept it quite secret because I felt a bit intimidated, to be honest.

And I don’t think had my mum still been around that I would have been able to do it.

And it’s not that she, I mean, she’s a very encouraging  and lovely person, but somehow, as we all have our things with our parents, that thing with that parent for me, I think, as I reflect on it, have reflected on it over the years, it probably sort of held me back a bit. And I felt free to find my voice as a fully-fledged person, you know, after she died. She died in January 2014, and then that autumn I started at Goldsmiths, I applied for and got onto the MA in Creative and Life Writing. And that was, the line in the sand.

 

CHRIS

This is… I’m fascinated by that kind of decision, you know, was it something that just crept up on you, the decision to go from sort of naught to 60 really rapidly, you know, from not necessarily writing or considering yourself as a writer, to going on to one of the most prestigious writing MAs in the country.

 

FIONA

I know, I know, it sounds a bit crazy. It’s great, you know, it’s wonderful. I mean, I do tend to make a decision to do something and then I’ll kind of go, right, I’m going to really do this. But I had been writing, it’s not like I hadn’t, I guess I would never have said I was a writer, even though all my life I had written poetry, stories, journal, you know, and of course in my professional life working within the arts and cultural sector, it’s all about, well, it’s certainly the way I work, it’s kind of all about writing. I mean, I spent…

 

CHRIS

Telling stories.

 

FIONA

Telling stories. You know, endless funding applications. And, you know, it’s an amazing training ground. Anyone out there who’s wondering, ‘oh, you know, all I do is write grant applications, I really want to write a novel, but I’ll never be a proper writer’. Well, it’s the best training ground because the kind of editorial skills that you develop by having to, you know, especially if you’re working with someone else and they give you 12,000 words and you have to turn it into a thousand and you can turn it into a thousand words that are really full of meaning and intensity and all the other things. So, I think that although I didn’t call myself a writer, I was a writer. I was actually earning my living out of writing, just not creative writing. So, I think, therefore, it wasn’t such a massive leap for me. I had things I could send to Goldsmiths. You know, I had pieces I’d written; poetry, stories, reflective pieces, essays and so on. And they obviously looked at it and thought, yes, that’s OK. This person can do it, and sufficiently get something out of the program.

 

CHRIS

Fantastic. Well, you know, here at NCW, we work a lot with writers and translators in the early stages of their career. And it’s so common, that kind of threshold between sort of understanding that one writes and calling oneself, however quietly, a writer is such a big kind of threshold, even though it might sound very minor. And psychologically, it’s huge.

 

FIONA

Yes, absolutely. It is huge.

 

CHRIS

And finding other people to do it with on the other side of that threshold is possibly the biggest thing, you know, we do in terms of supporting writers. And did you find that a good experience at Goldsmiths, kind of finding that community of writers there?

 

FIONA

Yes. And I mean, it really took me a while to find my voice with it because I was trying to write bits of fiction and, you know, in a way I was trying to follow the herd a little bit. And it was in the second term of the first year, because I did it part time over two years. So, in early 2015, it was coming up to the anniversary of Michael’s death. And I was just sitting in the living room and in the house that, you know, he died in, looking down the hallway. And one of my big experiences of, it’s almost like a PTSD experience, is I would, I would see him, completely see him, like, not like a ghost, but I would see him walking, shuffling down the hallway. It was so vivid to me. And the way the light was that morning and so on, I just started writing, you know. And I realised, oh, this is actually why I’m doing this programme. This is what I’ve got to do. And I took that because, you know, you have to have the group grit. It can be incredibly bruising, you know, especially at MA level. It’s not like your kind of local bookshop writing class, you know.

You know, people really, really take the gloves off. And I presented something to my tutorial group. That term was with Francis Buffard, and it was just an amazing moment of everybody read something. And they were like, okay, yeah, this is it. You’ve got to really try and progress with this. And I got a massive amount of encouragement.

 

CHRIS

And did that feel like a kind of a professional as well as a personal catharsis or affirmation even?

 

FIONA

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

 

CHRIS

So that point in doing your MA and the discovery of the sort of the excavation of why you were really there or what it was going to do for you. Also, it seems kind of pushed you out into the world of where literature meets medicine. Could you tell us a little bit about kind of that wider world and those experts that you’ve since come across in your research processes and in the conversations, for example, that you’re going to be having tomorrow?

 

FIONA

Yes. Well, I had a great experience. So, the year after I’d more or less finished the manuscript, I mean, it took lots of editing until it was published. But in 2017, I think it was, I attended an Arvon walking retreat – and I think it was ‘walking and poetry week’ at the Hearst. The marvellous the Hearst. Anyone who loves Shropshire in the country said go. It’s just a brilliant place. And that was with Sasha Dugdale, poet Sasha Dugdale and Jean Aitken. I met some great people on that week and we all shared some of our personal work and did a reading on the last night, and that kind of thing. And one of my fellow participants put me in touch with Professor Bobbie Farsili at Brighton and Sussex Medical School because she was a poet and she’d done some work with Bobbie in a previous project, which looked at creativity and health narratives and how you can use creative writing to improve communication and bridge gaps of understanding. And that was a massive change of step for me, because I got in touch with Bobbie. Bobbie read the manuscript and immediately saw the potential of it as a tool to help medics in their medical school to help medics in training to have a greater understanding of the patient and carer experience, and that it would be really informative, it would be an educational tool. And so that relationship has continued.

You know, we’ve gone on to do various writing projects together that are all about using writing as a tool in that way. And we had a lovely project with them a couple of years ago during lockdown, which was working with a group of parents of young people with rare genetic disorders and helping them to articulate their experience so that when they go and have their appointments with consultants, or they’re talking to the wider world or their family, they can better articulate that experience. And so, in a way, that’s taking the form and the ideas and the values that are behind 36 Hours and applying those in a different setting. And that’s what I really, really love about it. I mean, I’m really, really passionate about that kind of work because I think helping people to develop their own voice and develop confidence in their voice and to somehow put on the page these incredibly difficult experiences which are really hard to get other people to understand.

And we did all sorts of things like, you know, just using list poems and basic forms that were a revelation to the people who were writing them. You know, suddenly they could understand their own experience better. And so, I think I’ve seen and understand that there is this real power in the medical world, not just in terms of end of life care, which is something I’m really passionate about. There should be more kind of conversation around death and dying, but also in other medical contexts as well.

 

CHRIS

Yeah, I mean, certainly as a reader, kind of those absolutely piercing moments of when other professionals around you sort of probably not in any sort of willful way, just misunderstand the emotional context. And it just makes you catch your breath as a reader. It’s very well done. So, I mean, I can see how powerful this could be in those contexts. And how, and how, how, where might you want to take this particular approach?

 

FIONA

Well, I did an event with Bobby and a medic from the Martlitz Hospice in Brighton and Hove, and with a death doula. And that was part of Death and Dying Week or Dying Matters Week in 2021. And that was, again, having a big conversation about how we talk better about death and dying? You know, most of the listenership for that was mostly nurses, paramedic care nurses and doctors.

And so I was really, really pleased about that. And I feel that the audience, it’s the doctors, nurses, medics, you know, even people working within administration in the NHS or other health services. And, and then its also people going through an experience themselves, where there is a carer or they’ve lost somebody, or perhaps even the dying person themselves who is also often absent in consideration in a very strange way.

And I really want to be able to do more of that conversation. So, I’m working with a doctor in Essex who is at the St Helena Hospice, and I’m doing a project with them and Colchester Arts Centre in the autumn. I’m going to be working with a group of carers to do a similar thing that I did with the group in Brighton and Sussex Medical School, where we’ll be using the techniques of life writing to help people have a voice, and to feel validated and seen in their own experience. What they do with that is, you know, will be what it will be. But I really want this book to be a vehicle for conversation, I suppose. I mean, that’s, that’s ultimately why it’s out in the world. It’s very exposing, very personal text, it’s not something I’ve put out lightly, I suppose. I really wrestled with whether I should or not. But in the end, I have felt that it can do some good in the world. And that’s why it’s there.

 

CHRIS

Do you want to say a little bit about how it’s felt over recent months, having this book out there and being, you know, literally being an open book in terms of this, this very, very intensely personal experience.

 

FIONA

Well, it’s been an incredible experience, really, because the response to it has been everything I’ve hoped for it, I suppose. I’ve had people contact me who have read it and are going through something similar. And they say to me ‘I feel seen, thank you so much’. And I haven’t put it out there to get positive strokes for me, but it just tells me that there was a gap. This is needed. And it’s valid, it’s validating to me as a writer, because of course, it’s my words, and words have power. The way we put one word after another, in a very precise way, we as writers choose to do that.

It has a purpose, every word on the page has to earn its place on the page, in my view. All of it, the years of editing, down to 500 characters and so on. That’s the training ground, because there’s no room to spare, I suppose. Yeah, I think it’s been a pretty incredible experience. And I believe it can do more. I think it’s conversations like this, like the ones I have over the weekend, the workshop, the workshops with the hospice, etc. I want to do more of that with it. And I think it can, it’s its own entity now. I mean, that’s the thing, when you put a book out in the world, it sort of no longer belongs to you, really. You put it in the public domain, you’ve done your work with it, and it takes on a life of its own. And all you can do is be a sort of custodian of it. I feel like it’s out there, it’s a fledgling, it’s doing its thing.

 

CHRIS

It certainly is. And I love the cover image, which is sort of a dandelion clock with the individual pieces coming off it. So it’s also going out into the world.

 

FIONA

That’s right. And that was, that’s a drawing of mine. And there are 36 little seeds on there.

 

CHRIS

Yes. One for every hour. Yeah, fantastic.

 

RECORDING ENDS / NEXT SESSION:

 

CHRIS

Good morning again, Fee. It’s lovely to see you.

 

FIONA

Great, it’s good to be here.

 

CHRIS

I know, we’ve regathered at Dragon Hall the day after yesterday’s first part was recorded.

 

FIONA

That’s right.

 

CHRIS

Thanks to the joys of technology, we’re going to add a second section to our recording today.

 

FIONA

Fantastic.

 

CHRIS

We’ve come to a close talking about the really, the heart of 36 Hours and your kind of journey and experience as a writer and how, what did it take to get you there and the book there and what your experience has been. I want to kind of make a jump from that artistic conversation to kind of more prosaic side of things. All writers have to exist in the world and they’ve got to pay bills and live and as well as create. So, can you tell us a little bit about how you managed to balance that aspect of your writing career and where you found support?

 

FIONA

Yes. Well, I mean, I’ve been able to carry on with the day job, which is working in the arts and cultural sector. So, doing a lot of fundraising and that kind of thing.

But I was also fortunate in 2018 to get a Developing Your Creative Practice or DYCP grant from Arts Council England. And that’s been a real game changing grant because it meant I could buy out some of my time from my day job and have time to focus on my writing and also resource a little bit of mentoring just to help me build relationships that would further my writing career, and looking at partnerships and collaborations.

 

CHRIS

And which elements of that kind of that Developing Your Creative Practice programme did you find most helpful for you?

 

FIONA

I think a big part of it actually was the advocacy because having an award like that meant that Arts Council believed I was a writer. And so that really made a difference to me. It was probably the first time where I started calling myself a writer, I suppose, as opposed to just somebody who liked writing, you know. So that really did make a difference to me. And it meant that I could go to other people and organisations, and  suggest we get involved in a project together and show legitimacy and validation by having this grant. So, it made a really massive difference to me. And in fact, it was at that point that a lot of those sort of relationships that have now gradually developed into projects and partnerships really began.

 

CHRIS

And you briefly mentioned mentoring as well. Would you like to tell us a little bit about what that consisted of – and what value you found in it?

 

FIONA

Yeah, I mean, a lot of that was really finding people to talk to who would encourage me and say, yes, you are a writer. I mean, a lot of it was that. I’ve been an emerging writer, even though I’m now nearly 60. So, you know, I think sometimes when you’re a bit of a late starter in something and you’re kind of needing a bit of a confidence boost, being able to talk to people, share your writing and just get that kind of validation and feedback is really massive. So I was able to work with poet Sacha Dugdale, for example, and worked with Jenny Uglow and various other authors, poets, people writing in different forms, to just talk through the work. I shared the work with a lot of people before it came anywhere near publishing.

 

CHRIS

Yeah. And the Developing Your Creative Practice offer is part of the Arts Council England’s wider support for artists and organisations, and anyone interested in those grants can go to the Arts Council England website and just click on the funding section for that and you’ll find out information there. I think they run about four times a year.

 

FIONA

Yes, I think so, yeah.

 

CHRIS

So, the deadline’s open. Yeah. And what’s interesting about it is that you don’t have to commit to finishing a piece of work or publishing something in particular or doing a particular piece of engagement work. It’s more open.

 

FIONA

That’s right, yeah. It’s really about supporting the artist at a critical point in their career.

Yes, an artist across art forms, so writers, visual artists, dancers, whatever.

And, yeah, it’s really asking the artist to think about what’s the step-changing moment for them and what’s going to really make a difference. So, anyone who’s thinking of applying, it’s really looking at their practice, I guess, and thinking what’s going to really make the massive difference and take me from point A to point, you know, G or something like that. And so, it really is a step change.

 

CHRIS

And what was that particular moment of change for you? What was that kind of sudden realisation that you needed to push on a certain door?

 

FIONA

For me, it was very much about confidence, I’d say. So, being able to share my work with writers I really admired and to get feedback from them and ultimately get encouragement. That’s what really made a difference to me because it gave me the confidence to say, ‘Okay, this is a real thing.’ I’m not just kind of twiddling on the laptop here. This is a real artefact, I suppose, because I think as writers we start off writing a book or a collection of poetry or whatever. And to start with, we’re so deeply and personally invested in it, but there’s a point at which it becomes an artefact. It becomes something in its own right where we have to put it out into the world. That’s quite a kind of maturing moment and a transition and it really helped me to have that mentoring from more experienced authors to help me through that.

 

CHRIS

And so, the book is out in the world. You’ve launched it at the wonderful Widenhoe Bookshop in Essex and you’ve got events here and other places and a sold-out workshop here as well.

What’s next on your radar? What things are you pondering at the moment?

 

FIONA

Well, a lot of my focus for the next 12 months is going to be devoting my time to the book and talking about it and getting the work out, because the content of the book and the conversations that it will generate, or I hope it will generate, are really important to me. So, that’s a major focus. But in terms of my own writing, I’m looking at a number of different life writing projects.

I’ve got a project I’m working on. Ten years ago, actually, this year, I did this crazy cycle ride from Lansden to Shetland, carrying a guitar, writing a blog, and never quite got the book out because of various personal events during the last decade which got in the way of that. But I’m quite determined to get that out. And also, a book that relates to my mother and my mother’s experience as a writer and how I, as a writer, kind of relate to that.

So, yeah, a few irons in the fire there.

 

CHRIS

And that’s all material that’s sort of percolating and just sort of coming to maturity in the background while you focus on 36 Hours.

 

FIONA

Yes, exactly. And I mean, I have a daily writing practice. I write a journal every day.

And so, I guess that’s also a space where I practice and think about those ideas and test them.

 

CHRIS

Do you reread your journal regularly or do you very rarely go back?

 

FIONA

I rarely go back. Yeah, I’ve got volumes and volumes of it. I recently reorganised my shelf, having unpacked from moving houses, and flicked through a few pages. And it’s always quite a strange encounter, I have to say. Not always an entirely good encounter, you know, but it’s okay. It is what it is. It’s a process. And yeah, there are funny moments, you know, I see things in there and I think, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ I might read something that actually has a new relevance to me now. But generally speaking, no, I don’t reread.

It’s a place where I splurge. But by doing that, it’s like going to the gym, I think. I always say to other writers, you know, on workshops and so on, that doing that kind of daily practice, it really is like going to the gym or doing a yoga or whatever your sort of thing is. It’s just exercising those writing muscles.

 

CHRIS

Well, thank you so much for joining us. I mean, as a reader, you know, the conversations and the thoughts that have been provoked by 36 Hours have been really profound over the last week or so. I feel really privileged to have had access to those 36 hours, as well as the many years it’s taken to write and create that book. I really can’t recommend it enough. And I just thank you for putting it out into the world and taking that chance. I think it’s really appreciated. And it’s not often enough that writers are just thanked for actually taking the risk. So thank you from all of us. Thank you for being on this Writing Life podcast. And we’re looking forward to your event this afternoon.

 

FIONA

Thank you very much, Chris. It’s been absolutely brilliant and really looking forward to this afternoon, too. Thank you.

 

MOLLY

A big thank you to Fiona Mason and Chris for their time. If you have any questions or you want to get in touch, you can find us @WritersCentre on Twitter and Instagram.

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

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