Plot Twist

I’ve been called on a side quest.

I started the process of writing this novel when I left the landscape of Scotland that inspired it. That distance felt necessary. What I’ve learned in the process is this particular story requires something really specific of me. I need to be resourced, whole, and safe to go there. I need to be free to spend days in thought and going down dead ends with the story. I need time to practice the scriptorium tasks and wrestle with my own beliefs about Christianity and how they impact the story. And since leaving the UK I’ve struggled to be able to provide myself with the resources to do that.

And when it comes to wholeness, well coming home to Canada has brought to the forefront for me how much of my younger self I was back here to collect and reintegrate into my current idea of myself. I have gone through many iterations of myself like shedding a skin never knowing that one-day-(apparently present day)-me would require me to collect them.

There was an incessant call that brought me home, one I could no more ignore than the one that took me from here 25 years ago. I thought I would just be closer to my family LOL. But bringing my rewilded self from my three years on the west coast of Scotland back here to where my 11 year old self was STILL wild and deeply connected to nature, it has become abundantly clear that the intervening years need some attention. I’ve really tried to just ignore them and get on with writing this story and it would not be moved. Not without her it seems to say while planting its feet.

How do those middle years, the building my career in marketing and business development in international horse racing, fit in? The places I lived and visited, the work I did and the people I knew… I’d mostly just dropped that all to the ground when I moved to Scotland. I did a few consulting projects to pay the bills, but it wasn’t my focus at all. I was absorbed in the landscape and the greenhouse and walking myself back into my body. There was a time that I loved my horse racing life with all my heart and I gave everything to make it. Burnout and some blows and challenges made me lose that love for quite a while. But the funny thing about rest and change is that the wounded stuff heals or dies and the love bubbles back up.

So instead of something (a large portion of my life) that just once was, I am charged to complete this integration of myself into wholeness. To digest and decide for myself what that time and those experiences meant. And if you’ve been here for a while you know I do that by writing.

For the next little bit I am actually going to prioritise writing a book about the girl from Saskatchewan who created a career that everyone said wasn’t possible. It will be part a love letter/travelogue about the experience of human connection through horse racing events in disparate parts of the world and part business mentoring, like my other project on here Permission Granted, for people who want something unique. I don’t know how long it will take.

In the meantime here on Saints and Stones I’ve paused paid subscriptions for now. I don’t know how often I will write. Thank you to everyone who supports me with actual money to try and make this creative life. If my suspicions are correct I will be back on this project with a lot more energy when I complete the racing book. In the meantime I may write more to you here when I’m moved to as I’m always grabbing pieces of this story. But I wanted to let you know what was going on because I appreciate so much that you are here. I know this project is one of the most important things I will do and it will also not be rushed.

Maybe this is all Erna’s magic at work on me. I’ll report back.

Susie