Introducing Runes

My next seasonal notebook, running throughout June.

I am nervous about June’s notebook (my eighth seasonal notebook already!).

There are two reasons I am nervous. Firstly, for every other notebook, I have had a fair bit planned or lined up by the time I have announced my notebook title, or I have been confident that I had the material squirrelled away in my mind somewhere, and that it wouldn’t take too much encouraging to bring it bubbling to the surface given a little encouragement and time. (Time, there is always so little time!) My first notebook was Leaves of Poetry, and I launched that with nothing but the idea. In fact, I’d only just had the idea for the whole Scribbles and Sketches theme; but, as I know I have mentioned before, it was one of those ideas that immediately felt so right that it wasn’t possible to do anything but to jump in with both feet. Nevertheless, Leaves of Poetry – as with Commonplace Folklore – was really delving into existing archives of sorts to find the core written content. I was merely a glorified curator. Hidden Messages, Life in Numbers, and Marzipan and Mistletoe were all reactive. I had an idea about the type of things I might capture, but they were drafted on a daily basis in real-time. Daughter of Claus took more organising, but I still knew at the point of announcing the notebook that the content was there, just waiting to be captured and organised.

The second reason I am nervous is that this will be my first notebook focussing on fiction proper. Last June’s The Back-Folk more than strayed into this territory, but this will be the first time I tell a story. A bedtime story, to be precise.

I first had the idea for Runes several years ago, not too long after we moved into our previous house. I sketched out some key parts of the story, but I could never really see the whole arc. Time slipped by, life got in the way (daughters, specifically), and it sat there gathering digital dust.

I still haven’t reopened that file, though I will take a peek at some point this next month. Over the years that followed, the idea gnawed away at me, as a project I really did want to revisit and finish (I don’t always have this feeling about projects, and am quite happy to park projects permanently if it feels right). Every now and then, I would spend a few moments thinking about it, and without me really realising, it eventually morphed into a story I could read to Auri each night before bed.

I have long been interested in serialised fiction, and was extolling to friends the virtues and excitement – the potential! the fun! – of serialised fiction, shared online, more than fifteen years ago. Throughout 2010, I ran a year-long serial, simply titled “Journal (2010)”, which I shared on ShiverWriggle, my old website (most of the website content has been taken offline now and the site is currently on a possibly-permanent hiatus, though I have flickers of ideas about that, too). At times, I think about revisiting and rewriting that serial.

At present, I have nothing more than a list of headline beats for Runes, trying to understand how the story might work as a serial spread out evenly in terms of pace and content, over thirty consecutive days. This list – all my planning – totals a grand sum of 183 words.

Part of me is wondering if I am doing the right thing going live with this as my next notebook, but a bigger part of me thinks this might just be how this story is going to get written: to throw a proverbial firework into the mix, complete with (a rather intense!) deadline. After June, if I want to rewrite it, I can do. And, anyway, the worst case scenario? I don’t manage to do it. Or the story doesn’t really work. The balance is off, it isn’t compelling enough, the pace is wrong. And, in the big scheme of things, none of those are really that drastic.

So here’s to my biggest notebook challenge yet: not just writing a whole story over the next two months which meets my self-imposed notebook parameters, but, critically, writing one which Auri will enjoy as a bedtime story. Something tells me she might end up my biggest critic, after all.

I’ll see you all on the first of June.

Lydia Crow
The Highlands, Scotland