Na het lezen van Winteren (Katherine May) en tijdens The electricity of every living thing, waaraan ik begin omdat het essayistische, memoirachtige Winteren me bevalt, bezoek ik katherinemay.com en vind een wandelpad voor schrijvers, online, waar het licht is, de belofte van een journey – en donker, een oefenruimte…
‘This is a backstage space. It’s not a place to try to present your best side. You can let go of that for a while. You don’t have to shop-front your practice over here, to express your delight at the achievements of others (while you feel like you’re losing ground), to post up word counts (that feel as though they might as well be pages of blah blah blah), to portray a breezy author life (while you’re secretly wondering if anyone will ever care about what you do). That person is no use to you here.
Show up as yourself, and take as much privacy as you need. You can go through this entire process without talking to another soul, and that’s absolutely fine. They won’t even know you’re here. You’ll still get loads of work done.
[…]
I’ll let you into a secret: if you can bear to share, you’ll almost certainly find other people who feel exactly the same way you do. I know this, because my whole writing career has been based on radical vulnerability. Whenever I put myself on the line, I find a tribe of people who have the same tangle that I do.
It’s always, always massively affirming to meet them.
So, hello.
Let’s get started.’