Spinning a tale

Sunweys and widdershins is my latest story to spread its wings and find a home in the outside world. It was published by the lovely Soor Ploom Press on 6 March 2023 and can be read and listened to on their blog.

This isn’t a new piece, however, having been first – and substantially – written in October 2021. It’s also the first externally published piece in over a year. On this writing journey I am learning that tenacity and luck are sometimes as important as my writing skill in getting my words out. Also that finding someone who not only agrees to publish my writing but who says, please can I publish your story because ‘I loved it’, is well worth waiting for.

Sunweys and widdershins can trace its origins to my list of ‘words and phrases’ that serve as writing and title prompts. Two words, ‘whirligig’ and ‘widdershins’ were the seed and the egg of this piece and, together with my desire to keep my writing anchored in Scotland and an abiding fascination with things that seem to happen in the spaces between reality and fantasy, gave rise to this wee story.

I leave it to my readers (or maybe even listeners in this case) to decide what the piece means for them, but during writing and editing I was thinking about the powers of nature, folklore and superstition, motherhood and identity, congregations of magpies, and tiny nudges that precipitate change.