Let's start autumn as we mean to go on
Details of the Creative Hour this Sunday... Plus, thoughts on writing about climate when you're not a 'climate writer'.
Paying subscribers can hear me read this aloud here or via your podcast app.
Writers of the northern hemisphere: how has this summer been for you? It’s been weird in London: mostly grey, not particularly warm, and personally challenging as I’ve tried to both work hard and simultaneously enjoy myself hard. The result is that I have mostly been quite tired, and we’ve all been confused by the weather – as evidenced by my cousin Emma, on a day out in August, absentmindedly saying, ‘I bet it’s lovely here in the summer.’
When I was studying creative writing at Birkbeck, University of London, we had a lecture from
, who on Substack writes . Toby is involved with Writers Rebel, which is part of the environmental movement Extinction Rebellion, and he said some things that day that have stuck with me. You can read the lecture in full here.What he said, during the lecture and in the Q&A that followed, is that if you’re working creatively today, you should think about how that work can reflect and acknowledge the climate emergency. This threw me, because I mostly write about relationships between people, with the backdrop a bit of an afterthought – but of course, you don’t have to write a novel that’s explicitly about the climate to follow his advice. You just have to think about the world that you’re situating your story in.
If your characters are experiencing summer, for example, are you describing the summer as it appears in your imagination, or as it did in your childhood or your grandparents’ childhood? Or are you writing about it as many of us have seen it recently – an era when summer crops up fiercely at unexpected times of year, in unexpected parts of the world, and in the UK sometimes gets so hot that trees shed their leaves in August just to stay alive?
I remember my childhood summers in northern England as being mostly grey and underwhelming, like this one – but in London, this is the first in several years not to be alarmingly hot. Last year, the temperature reached 40º here for the first time in recorded history. The dreary July and August we’ve had in 2023 have not been typical of recent times, and large parts of Europe have suffered extreme heatwaves.
Toby’s opinion is still on my mind a year and a half later, and I’d be really interested to know whether our changing climate is something you address in some form in your writing – especially if you’re finding ways to do that in projects that are explicitly about something else. Tell us in the comments, and maybe you’ll inspire someone.
Though it feels bewildering to say goodbye today to August when it hasn’t really felt like August – I do always like September, which for me marks a much more intuitive ‘new year’ than January. I’m looking forward to this Sunday’s In Writing Creative Hour (an explanation of that here, in case you’re new to the newsletter), to mark the beginning of the season. We usually start the session by talking about what we’re writing that day, but this time I’d like to talk about our creative hopes for the rest of 2023 – so come along and set your intentions with us.
This Creative Hour will be at 5pm UK time on Sunday 3rd September on Google Meet. Use this timezone converter if you’re not in the UK – just put your own location into the second box. Look out for the link to join the session – I’ll email it to paying subscribers earlier in the day.
The photo at the top of this newsletter was taken by the photographer Oliver Holms a few weeks ago. I needed some photos for work purposes, and I was very lucky to get him, because he’s very talented and has also photographed people like Tilda Swinton, Gillian Anderson and Mahershala Ali – you can have a look at his work and book him here. He’s also great company. Thank you Oliver for being so kind and so good at your job.
Here’s a more sceptical/moody one, just to prove that I have range.
Hope to see lots of you on Sunday – until then, good luck with your writing!
Hattie, thank you so much for this. I'm really glad that stayed with you. I hope it's been a useful preoccupation. I think about these questions all the time. In a way, you, me, any writer can't help but write now about a summer that's framed by the Climate and Ecological Emergency. Even if you object to this, there's the strong likelihood that this is how your summer will be read in the future - perhaps the very near future. I believe writers using whatever platform they have to say this clearly (that this is the fight of our time), even when their fiction seems unrelated (say, it's set in 1493) is extremely important. Writers Rebel (thanks for the link) is organizing a slow walk in central London on October 29th as a way for all writers to show their support. Any of your readers would be very welcome to attend. It will be friendly, non-arrestable, non-scary and a great way to connect. Best way to learn more is subscribe to the Writers Rebel newsletter - https://writersrebel.com/
Your post really hit home for me. I'm constantly chewing over how the whole climate mess relates to my writing journey. With all the craziness going on, I've seriously wondered if I should ditch my current path for something that feels more hands-on and impactful.
Lately, my experiment has been trying to sneak climate reality into my stories without sounding too preachy.
It's comforting to know I'm not alone :p Thanks for the great food for thought.