Inhabiting a landscape, walking a landscape, writing a place and time

For Linda Cracknell, exposure to wind, rock, mist, and salt water is integral to her writing process. She follows Susan Sontag's advice to "Love words, agonise over sentences, and pay attention to the world," observing and writing her landscapes from the particulars of each moment.

In this varied essay collection, Linda backpacks on a small island that is connected to the mainland only at low tide. In winter snow, she hikes the wooded hillside close to her home, a place she is intimately familiar with in all seasons. And she retraces over three days the steps of a trek made by her parents seven decades earlier. She explores her inspirations, in nature and from other artists and their work, and she offers thoughtful writing prompts.

Reading this collection will take you to new places, open your eyes to the world, and suggest ways to take note and make notes as you go-to inspire your own attentive looking, journaling, and writing practice.

About the Author
Linda Cracknell is a writer of narrative nonfiction on the natural world, as well as of fiction and radio scripts. Her first story collection was nominated for a Saltire Award (Scotland's National Book Awards) and the Robin Jenkins Literary Award for environmental writing, and her essay collection Doubling Back: Ten Paths Trodden in Memory, about journeys she took on foot in Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, and Kenya, was serialised for BBC Radio as a Book of the Week. All of Linda's writing is inspired first and foremost by place, and she teaches nature and place writing as well as creative fiction writing.

Reviews

"A revealing and meditative reflection on writing and the facilitation of writing ... Cracknell's deep engagement with and love of nature runs through the essays ... What elevates these essays ... is their sheer depth and range ... A fantastic insight into the creative process and the necessity of the wilderness to the construction, presentation and consumption of art. Whether to help your own creativity or simply to learn the art of Serious Noticing, this book is an inspiring read for every writer or nature-lover."

-- The Bottle Imp



Book Information
ISBN 9781913393724
Author Linda Cracknell
Format Paperback
Page Count 144
Imprint Saraband
Publisher Saraband