There is something very special about this place. Time, here, feels inconsequential – I am rarely aware of what day it is, whilst the clock I work to becomes biological, creative; rather than dictated by the whims of a boss or client. Though still I fight the ingrained notion that I must start work early in the morning, and finish late afternoon, I am slowly finding that this is just not how my brain works best.
Instead, I seem to get the majority of my best writing done later in the evening: locked away in my tower until 8 or 9pm. This, then, is partly the magic of Marchmont and a funded writer’s residency – I am granted the space to hone my creative process, outwith the constraints of normal life. But there is more to it than that.
Take yesterday, for example. I was determined to finish the next chapter of my novel (more of an update on that in a second), but was fighting fatigue. Still figuring out my optimal working habits, eating has become a sporadic, spur of the moment thing. I eat like a hamster – cramming my cheeks full with odd bits and pieces as quickly as possible, before returning to my sprint at the wheel. So, I was tired, hungry, and a little disgruntled that yet again it was approaching 8pm (I’d been in the tower since 11am), and I still wasn’t quite finished. The chapter kept expanding, demanding a little more depth of character, a little more tension, a bigger build-up to the climax.
I needed a pick-me-up, but more coffee was out of the question (RIP my chill). Just then, I chanced to look out of the window in the direction of the big house, and what should I see but a big, beautiful, cream-faced barn owl gliding silently across the grass, her wings golden, her poise balletic. The sight was majestic, filling me with purest, childlike joy. I’d never seen a barn owl in daylight before – indeed, I’m unsure I’d seen one before at all, though I’d heard their calls in the night. As an amateur birder – as you might have deduced from the poetry I’ve written here – this was a wonderful moment. A little later, again on a random glance out of the window, I saw the same owl leave the tree she had perched on, off in search of prey. I shook my head; what were the odds? My energies re-infused, I knuckled down and ended the chapter. Finally, I could retire for the day.
A half-hour later, shovelling back a steaming bowl of soy-glazed noodles and broccoli from the comfort of my Hobbit Pod, I watched a little bunny rabbit hop up onto the decking outside, to watch me through the glass of the French doors. Living in the city, moments like these are sheer fantasy; here, they are part of the fabric of every day. Words cannot do justice to how immensely invigorating it is to live, for a day or for a month, amidst such nature. I think it is for this that I feel free and easy writing my poetry, my book – I can enter a flow state with just a little patience, for the nature around me already exists in a flow state. Nothing is permanent, everything is in motion.
#
Now, to The Book.
I realise that, to anyone reading this (hi!), it may be unclear exactly what it is I am at Marchmont House to do. A month-long funded writer’s residency is, after all, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and not granted (nor taken) lightly. And though the wonderful folks at Marchmont would say that my time with the Makers Foundation is mine to do with as I please – experiment, doodle, draft poetry, write songs – it was for the space to work on my novel that I originally applied.
The book is called Anima, though it has other working titles, too, like: A Shadowless Life and Porcelain.
Anima is the story of an entity, trapped in the minds of those about to die. The entity, from whose perspective the book is written, has only ever known our waking world through the minds of hosts on the last day of their lives, and now – after untold millennia of existing like this – they are ready for a life of their own. Unable to affect change in their hosts, and with their hosts unaware of their presence, the entity travels the length and breadth of space & time, searching for a soul they hope might serve as an escape pod from this interminable cycle. From the gardens of medieval Japan, a spaceship on the brink of disaster, and the Great Plains of the Sioux, Crow, Blackfoot & Cheyenne, to a dystopian plague society in the near-future, and a baby born on the morning of Vesuvius’s disastrous eruption – Anima explores the human experience, and the extraordinary lengths an incorporeal entity will go to know it.
#
When I first arrived at Marchmont, I felt that the first draft of the novel was about eight-tenths of the way finished, but I was stuck. With only the odd Wednesday afternoon to work on the book, I had been struggling for some time to find a flow. Each time I returned to Anima, sometimes with a gap of a month or more since I’d last worked on it, I’d spend so much time refamiliarising myself with the style and tone of the book, that I’d have very little time left to actually write it. So close to the end, I was also aware that the quality of my writing was suffering because of this dissonance. But what else could I do? I wrote as much as I had the time and energy for, whilst juggling a shaky portfolio of freelance clients, for whom I spent 4.5 days of the week also writing. My energies were frazzled, my priorities in disarray.
And then, along came Marchmont.
Since my very first day here, I’ve been chipping away at the wall between me and the end of the novel; dismantling the mental block which was harshing my vibe, my rhythm. Now, eleven full days of writing into my residency, and I can happily say that the Walls of Jericho have fallen. I feel, for the first time in a long time, in a freely creative flow. I’m not worrying (much) about time, nor word count, nor having the odd difficult day, because I have the breathing space – here, in this peaceful pocket of the Borders – to produce my art in a safe wee bubble of support and inspiration.
I am so endlessly thankful to everyone at Marchmont Creative Spaces and the Marchmont Makers Foundation for choosing to give me, of all people, this opportunity. This is a place and time which I will not soon forget.
I am perhaps around nine-tenths of the way through Anima, now.
It’s not clear whether I’ll ultimately be able to finish it in its entirety before the end of my residency, but that doesn’t concern me so much as it did eleven days ago. Marchmont has helped me reconnect with my protagonist and the central narratives of my novel in a powerfully intimate way, such that I can’t imagine losing upon my return to Glasgow. Whether I finish Anima here, or in another few months’ time, the end is nigh, my friends. The end is nigh.
#
If you’d like to read a little of the book before it’s done, you can find the first chapter already published in Issue Four of Extra Teeth, the Scottish literary magazine for words with bite. The chapter was published in November 2021 under the title ‘Atemporal’. If you’re interested to read the finished manuscript in full, either as an agent or publisher, you can contact me via this website or at cbannerman1@hotmail.com.
Cal Bannerman 
Leave a comment