Swimming in circles

Another month has rolled around, and suddenly 2021 is half over. How did that happen? It feels like only yesterday it was 1st January and I was charging up my laptop to start writing Book 3, and now my brain is refusing not to think about Book 4.

I did try my best – structural edits for Book 2 went off to my editor two weeks ago, Book 3 is doing the rounds of my publisher and my plan was to take the summer off and do no writing at all, other than maybe dabbling around with some ideas. But it seems that once my brain has hooked onto something, it won’t let go until I offload it onto the page.

So I’ve started writing again, but only in the loosest possible sense because I’m refusing to give into the urge to do it in a committed, structured fashion. Instead I’m letting my brain fill up with bits of plot and characters, then emptying it out in short bursts of keyboard hammering.

I’m also making the most of (patchy) warmer weather and spending as much time as possible outdoors. It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago, and one of my presents was a trip to the Cotswold Water Park to swim around a lake at 8.30am with a hangover. This may not sound like many people’s ideal way to start their birthday, but I was delighted. I’ve always been a keen outdoor swimmer, but North Wiltshire is famous for its lack of coastline and my nearest lido is in Cirencester, where parking is a nightmare and you have to book seventeen years in advance to get a space.

In lots of ways I’m glad, because if there was an outdoor pool nearby I’d never have discovered the joy of swimming around a lake for an hour, accompanied by ducks and diving swallows. It doesn’t count as wild swimming because you have to pay five pounds and there are lifeguards, but other than that it’s about as wild as it gets.

When I arrived on my birthday there were a dozen other people waiting for the session to start, every one of them wearing a wetsuit. I had a mild panic thinking they knew something I didn’t, then got in the water in nothing but a swimsuit and a pink hat and swam an hour’s gentle breaststroke with no problems at all. Either west country people feel the cold, or they all get a kick out of head to toe rubber. Who am I to judge?

In that first swim I wrote a chapter of Book 4 in my head, so I went back the following Saturday and wrote another chapter. It was so calming and peaceful and life-affirming that I went back on Sunday too, and my plan is to keep going every weekend until the season finishes at the end of September. There’s something about being in cold water than reminds me to breathe and lets my mind gently wander to interesting places, without the usual catastrophising and disconnected thought patterns.

Finding a place that offers you this kind of peace and clarity feels really important when the world is such a mess and we’re all juggling so many different things. Where do you find yours?