My aim is to post these essays once month, but because life sometimes gets in the way, both of writing and reading, let’s start with a recap in chronological order, or, if you’re all up to date, you can scroll down to skip to the next part of the story:

…OR IN SHORT

On 3rd September 1939, the British Prime Minster Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany. That same evening the German U-boat U-30 fired a torpedo at the British passenger ship SS Athenia which was on route from Liverpool to Montreal, bringing home many American and Canadian passengers who had wished to escape the threat of war over Britain. This torpedo, as it bulleted through the water towards the ship, not only represented the first shot of World War II in the west, but it also ignited The Battle of the Atlantic. At least this is the story told so far on a global scale, while on a personal level, my grandmother-in-law, Ruth, had just been rescued by the destroyer Escort, after having spent nine hours bobbing on the high seas in life boat number 3.

The frantic worry of not knowing who had survived and who had perished

During the chaos of boarding the lifeboats families, friends and travelling companions lost sight of each other. Some were aware that their loved ones had boarded a different lifeboat, others had not seen theirs since before the torpedo exploded and these survivors had no way of knowing whether their children, parents, spouses, friends had been killed or survived.

More passengers were lost during the perilous rescue operation when two lifeboats capsized, even with one woman throwing herself into the sea after she realised her baby had been lost.

In terms of the rescue ships, there were four: SS City of Flint (with passengers transferred from Southern Cross, because this luxury yacht wasn’t equipped to cater for hundreds of passengers) which was steaming across the Atlantic towards Nova Scotia in Canada; Knut Nelson going to Galway in Ireland; the destroyers Electra and Escort heading towards Glasgow. This dispersion of survivors meant it would be over a week before they’d find out for sure who had survived and who had perished. On these ships were parents missing children and children missing parents:

One puzzle was that of a baby girl without her parents. Those looking after her could not quite make out what she called herself. It sounded like she said Rose Marie Caspicks, possibly from Oxford. Her desperate parents in Glasgow could figure it out, however: she was Rosemary Cass-Beggs, and they were the only family on board the Athenia from Oxford. She had been carefully looked after in the lifeboat, on the Southern Cross, and now on the City of Flint by Mrs. Winifred Davidson of Winnipeg. The Cass-Beggs cabled friends in Canada to meet the City of Flint and baby Rosemary in Halifax.1

Because Athenia’s passengers had boarded in the three different cities of Glasgow, Belfast and Liverpool, this also meant that the Donaldson Line was struggling to put together an accurate passenger list.

On the one hand we have the relief of survival after the horror of the cold night in the lifeboats on the open seas, and on the other hand we have survivors being sick with worry over not knowing who was safe and who had perished at sea.

City of Flint goes to Nova Scotia in Canada

The first rescued passenger to board City of Flint was ironically a German. The passengers were welcomed by Captain Gainard and sent to get dried off and cleaned up. Many were covered in fuel oil from the explosion as well as drenched in seawater and in their nightclothes or even only half-clothed. Several were so distraught they were crying, but on the whole great relief was felt at having boarded an American ship.

The ship itself was a merchant ship, which had neither the equipment nor the provisions to accommodate the 236 survivors it had picked up. Passengers were soon set to work to build berths, and to help with cooking and clearing up and the general day-to-day running of accommodating so many people. Sailors gave up what clothing they could and made sandals out of ropes and cloth for the survivors.

The journey back on City of Flint was traumatic though. Many survivors kept their clothes on at night wanting to be prepared should there be another submarine attack. They jumped at loud noises and the deteriorating weather leading to violent movement of the ship made them fearful. When the lighting system went out at one point people screamed and children started to cry.

But there were highlights too, a children’s birthday party which cook managed to bake a cake for, and a fashion show arranged by some Texas college girls where the survivors strolled up and down showing off their makeshift clothing, such as sailors’ dungarees, blankets and handmade rope sandals.

Below is a video that contains first a spoiler, of how the survivors taken to Glasgow eventually returned home, but after that there’s a clip about City of Flint.

Knute Nelson goes to Galway in Ireland

Galway in Ireland opened its arms to receive the survivors off the Knute Nelson. The mayor, the town clerk and the Catholic bishop formed a committee to work with the council and health departments to look after the survivors. The mayor’s wife got a group of women together, as well as the Girl Guides, to volunteer. Food, clothing and medical care was to be provided, and the local school was made available.

When Knute Nelson pulled into Galway a great cheer went up among the survivors and many wept openly. Ten survivors were so seriously injured that they had to be carried off the ship on stretchers. People were still in a state of shock and children were crying for their parents, and even though the whole town of Galway had come out to meet the ship with a sense of joy, that soon changed shock at the bedraggled state of the survivors in their borrowed clothes.

Once on land the survivors were given a cup of Bovril as well as butter and bread. Then the registration began in order to begin to untangle this question that the entire western world was waiting for an answer to, of who had survived the sinking and who hadn’t.

Once registration was completed the survivors were taken on buses into the hotels and homes where they’d be able to stay until transport home could be arranged - Galway truly opened its arms to these distressed survivors.

Escort and Electra go to Greenock in Scotland

The night on the two destroyers was not uneventful. Especially after these two ships had sounded alarm bells and dropped depth chargers on what the crew thought was a submarine. These actions frightened the survivors who were already in a high state of anxiety.

The destroyers were heading towards Glasgow, but the fog on the Clyde was so thick that the ships had to pull into Greenock instead, a town several miles away from Glasgow along the river. The survivors made their way down the gangway, again in borrowed clothes, and many with burns, broken limbs, severe bruising, and here as well were children in distress crying for missing parents and siblings. Each person was registered as they left the ship, adding more pieces to the puzzle as to who had survived and who had been lost.

In Greenock no preparations had been made to receive the survivors due to the sudden change of course. They were only met by dock workers, who shared their food with them. One of these workers went into town to get cigarettes where he told his wife of the arrival of the survivors. Word spread and within moments wives of the dockworkers streamed in carrying all manner of garments.

Later that morning, the buses that had been arranged to pick up the survivors at Glasgow arrived at Greenock to take them into town, to hotels where they were given food, toiletries, money and clothes from a local clothing store.

This was also the first chance for the survivors to send telegrams and receive news of family members.

Politically, the question remained of what had actually happened to cause the Athenia to sink? Who had fired the torpedo? To determine this affidavits were taken from all the survivors, and it gradually became clear that the torpedo had, in all likelihood, been fired by a German submarine. Germany denied all involvement and tried to pass the blame onto Churchill, claiming it was an act by him to persuade America to abandon their neutral status and join the war on the side of Britain.

There was also the question of how to get the survivors home, and what official could take responsibility for them seeing as the embassy and consular staffs were already up to their necks in dealing with Americans wanting to leave Britain after the outbreak of war. The American ambassador to Britain found a solution:

[He] sent his twenty-two-year-old son, John F. Kennedy, up to Glasgow on the night train to represent him and to assure the survivors that the American government was concerned about them and would see that they got home to the United States. Young “Jack” Kennedy had been given leave from Harvard to join his parents in the spring of 1939 and he had spent the summer travelling extensively in Europe, visiting many of the places that were at the very centre of the War crisis, and returning to London just as the war broke out.2

It then became the responsibility of a very young JFK to break the news to the survivors that they’d have to return to America on a ship without any kind of escort. Needless to say this caused great anxiety among the survivors who had already been torpedoed once, and especially now that war had fully broken out, which hadn’t been the case when they’d first boarded the SS Athenia. Kennedy tried to reassure them that they would be safe because of America’s neutral status and this would be shown by having the American flag painted on the ship, and the ship itself would be fully illuminated at night. The survivors protested.

“Ninety destroyers have just been commissioned by the United States Navy and surely they can spare us a few.” Someone else claimed that “two years ago the whole Pacific fleet was sent out for one woman (Amelia Earhart).” One of the young women stated, “We defiantly refuse to go until we have a convoy. You have seen what they will do to us.” Gladys Strain, the organizer for the Texas college girls, declared, “We can’t go through that again,” and many women agreed.3

And yet this is exactly what happened, the Orizaba picked up the survivors and took them to New York where they were left to rebuild their lives after this deeply traumatic experience during which many had lost close family members and all of them had lost everything they’d brought with them.

I leave you once more with Ruth describing the experience in her own words. Sadly it turned out that Margaret’s parents were not among the survivors.

As I’m making this post free for a week, I’m including some ways to support me below. I write these articles out of a love for the craft and a fascination with this story. But neither love nor fascination will put food on the table, so if you’ve enjoyed this article, please consider upgrading your subscription.

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Or if you’re unable to commit to a subscription, buying me a coffee would help fund my work.

☕Coffee for Lisa coming right up!☕

My novel The Shape of Guilt is available to buy with free delivery from Blackwell’s in the UK or from Barnes & Noble in the States, and if you’re a Swedish speaker you can find out more about where to buy my Swedish children’s books here. Or you can leave a review of The Shape of Guilt here. And finally, here’s a tip jar.

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The wheel I reinvented this time is Method Writing.

Most of us will know what Method Acting is. At least if we’ve ever watched a film starring Daniel Day Lewis. Other actors of the past known to use this method were Marlon Brando, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe. But just in case you don’t know, in brief, Method Acting is a dramatic technique where actors draw on personal memories and emotions to create a genuine psychologically authentic peformance rather than “pretending” to feel. The goal is to “be” rather than “show” emotion, achieving a lived reality in an imaginary situation. If I’ve understood correctly, if used authentically in writing, this “being” rather than “showing” emotion would, ironically, generate a story that “shows” rather than “tells”.

The Method is built upon the teachings of Russian Director Konstantin Stanislavski, and I must have sensed the similarities between an actor drawing on her genuine emotions to create a character within theatre and a writer drawing on the same source to create a character within a story very early on in This Writing Life of mine, because I bought Stanislavski’s book, An Actor Prepares, during my first year on The Creative Writing Programme twelve years ago.

Of course I haven’t read it yet, but I will, especially now, that I’ve found my own way into this process.

For just over a year now, I’ve been researching my grandmother-in-law’s (Ruth) experiences during the outbreak of World War II. I have spent days in the archives of the Imperial War Museum in London and in Somerville College Oxford. I have downloaded articles from the New York Times and from relevant local papers. I have read history books and e-mailed back and forth with Francis M. Carroll, a Professor Emeritus of history in Canada. I’ve talked with family members to learn of often used expressions and favourite pastimes. I’m reading novels written by women which are set in New York and written at this time, and I’m studying the fashion, the politics, the Depression, the corruption, the buildings, the judicial system, the religious beliefs and on and on it goes.

This year I jokingly started telling writerly friends that I’m engaging in Method Writing. It all started when a non-writerly friend came round for a cup of tea, looked at my files and gasped at the amount of (unpaid) work I’ve put in. “Do all writers do this?” she asked. And I replied that I didn’t know. Because I don’t know. I’d guess probably not, but more importantly, whenever my attention strays towards the methods of other writers I bring it back to my own, because that way lies only comparison, which truly is the thief of joy. I love my method, and I hope that other authors love their methods too.

The truth is that without all this preparation, I wouldn’t be able to write the book. If I am to tap into my own experiences of complicated father-daughter-relationship, betrayal, gender inequalities, scandal, conflict, heart-break, near death-experiences, alienation through emigration/immigration, depression etc. I need the stage to be set first, or rather, the world to have been built, painted, decorated and furnished. Only then will I be able to navigate within it and populate Ruth’s lived experiences with my own truths, which, if I’m equal to the task, will come across as authentic to the reader.

It’s a painstakingly slow, but ever so rewarding process. I’m a detective delving ever deeper into a forgotten story, finding pieces of a puzzle that I’m the first one ever to put together. Ruth’s story becomes more remarkable with every detail I unearth. Or as Professor Francis M Carroll wrote in one of our earlier e-mail exchanges when he agreed to write a letter of recommendation for me:

Of course, all I knew of Ruth was from the State Department paper, so her very interesting and well connected life remained unknown to me. Your outline in the grant proposal reveals the incredible and complex career of this remarkable young woman. The phrase, “You can’t make this up” comes to mind.

I only hope, come September when I’ll start writing, that the Method will have freed me enough to be able to do Ruth’s story justice.

Meanwhile you’ll find below some links to different articles on Method Writing.

Method Writing: What Novelists Can Learn from Actors About Self-Expression

What is Method Writing?

Could ‘method writing’ be the future for the novelist

My Substack read of the week was And Ghosts … #2 Oliver Onions by because I had never heard of Oliver Onions and now I must read him:

Ghost of a Smile

And Ghosts ... #2 Oliver Onions

This is a four-part series of short form pieces which detail a writer’s typical writing routine …. And Ghosts – (that is delving into any dealings they had (or are having!) with the supernatural …

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a month ago · 15 likes · 7 comments · Marie Waller

In other writing news:

• My agent submitted a short short story collection (only six stories long) to a publisher who had a call-out for such things. Now we wait!

• Edited and submitted short story number #13 to Fiction Desk.

• Got 1200 words into short story #15, and didn’t want to stop, but this week has been busy with life admin that could be ignored no longer.

• Did ten hours worth of research compiling and am halfway through lever arch file #2.

• Remember the picture book I’d just submitted to publishers in my last newsletter? Well, since then I’ve had:

  • Three Four rejections - one more came in just as I was about to hit publish.

  • One offer of hybrid publishing which would make the cost price per book £85.

• And remember the grant I was awarded to do an author visit at the Swedish School in London, which took two years with much chasing to get approved? Well, now I’ve chased the payment of it three times and I’m being ghosted. My last message was “Do you need anything else from me before you can transfer it?” - Any tips of what else I can do to shake it out of them would be gratefully received.

• Received another rejection for another picture book manuscript, where the message was “This is extremely well crafted, but we’ve shifted our focus away from picture books”, which seems to be the message across the board - unless you’re a celebrity or an already established, well-selling author. But do I ever give up?

• At least not yet, because I also wrote up and edited another Swedish picture book manuscript, which will now go off to a Beta reader with whom I share Swedish manuscripts.

• Received a rejection for a Swedish work-in-progress grant.

• Had a slot on The Publishing Industry Day to talk about My Journey to Publication.

• Joined in a discussion on 2026 - The Year of Reading with Donna Scott of The Slab Press, an independent press, on her brand new YouTube channel The Good Book Life. Feel free to give it some love as it currently only has seven subscribers and, as I keep saying, the independent presses are the lifeblood of the publishing industry.

• Conceived an idea of a series of lives to do here on Substack, which I’m excited by and I’m currently busy gathering guest appearances.

• No news on The Legend of Maderwerth but I’m getting close to chasing the one publisher I still have hopes for, just need to wait the decent six months, or conceive of another reason to open up communications to find out where we are with it.

• Currently reading A Time to Be Born by Dawn Powell.

If you have read this far you’ve already made a difference to This Writing Life of mine. But should you wish to, here are a few other options of how to support me:

Subscribing to this from now on roughly fortnightly missive will remain free for everyone, but I do aim to deliver a well-thought-through observation, hopefully with a positive spin, a lesson learned, knowledge shared. This takes time, which is why, if you enjoy reading and have the means, there’s an option here to upgrade to a paid subscription. As paying subscribers you’ll get access to monthly video diaries in which I tell you what I’ve been working on for the past month (basically what your contribution has funded) and any news to hold myself accountable to you, as well as a monthly historical essay that ties in with Ruth’s Story.

Subscribe now

Or if you’re unable to commit to a subscription, a coffee to fuel my writing would be most welcome.

☕Coffee for Lisa coming right up!☕

My novel The Shape of Guilt is available to buy with free delivery from Blackwell’s in the UK or from Barnes & Noble in the States, and if you’re a Swedish speaker you can find out more about where to buy my Swedish children’s books here. Or you can leave a review of The Shape of Guilt here. And finally, here’s a tip jar:

Tip jar

In this series I talk about what I’ve been up to during the past month, about This Writing Life of mine as well as give tips and inspiration on how to keep going in the face of the sort of adversity that all but a handful of writers and artists are faced with in what seems to be an ever narrowing and risk-averse industry.

Basically, this is my way of letting you know you’re not alone.

The weekly newsletter has changed to being fortnightly rather than weekly (but still free) newsletter to allow for time to write monthly historical essays as a perk for paying subscribers. These essays deal with topics and historical figures relating to my work-in-progress. If you’re an existing subscriber who’d like access to these essays as well as these monthly video diaries you can upgrade to a paid subscription below.

This Writing Life is a reader supported publication and the paid subscriptions are an important part of my income. So if you like the stories I write, in Swedish or in English, please do consider becoming a paid subscriber as it will enable me to keep writing them.

But if you, like me, are needing to pinch the pennies and can’t afford a paid for subscription, then a click on the like button would be much appreciated. It will make the algorithm sit up and take notice, and in turn make my posts on Substack more visible and reach even more readers.

Much love to you all. 🥰

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What lives on are the stories, and throughout history, we have weaved stories around the natural world, and in doing so, finding our own place within it. This weave of stories make up a rich harvest that we can turn to once the flowers have bloomed out. At least for as long as we remember them, and remember our own place within them.

May is the month of magic. It dances in on Beltane when the walls between this world and The Other World are thin, and which is the very day when my novel Legend of Maderwerth (out on submission) takes its beginning. As The Legend of Maderwerth is infused with plant lore, this morning, I set myself the challenge of writing about the plants I photographed, to add my own thread into the weave of plant lore, and pass that weave onto you to do with as you wish.

Sea campion (Silene uniflora)

Sea Campion thrive along the steep cliff-edges and rocky outcrops of the Cornish coast, cliffs with sheer drops into the sea, so perhaps it’s no surprise this flower was once called “dead man’s bells”. The flower itself, because of where it grows, made a warning against the steep cliffs beyond. Other names were “Witches thimbles” “Dead man’s grief” and “Devil’s hatties”. In the past these flowers were never picked or brought into the house, as they were thought to bring death.1

Lady’s bedstraw (Galium Verum)

Our Lady’s Bedstraw (Galium Verum) filled the manger on which the infant Jesus was laid. in a painting of the Nativity by N. Poussin, this straw is introduced.2

The soft puffy stems and yellow flowers of Lady’s bedstraw was indeed used for bedding, even for ladies of rank. Apparently it’s from this use that the expression “in the straw”, meaning to be pregnant, or giving birth, comes. The plant was also used to curdle milk for cheese-making and to give Cheshire cheese its colour.

According to herbalists of old the root when mixed with wine would stir up desire, and to smell the flowers for long enough would have the same effect.

The 17th century herbalist and astrologer Robert Turner wrote of the plant that:

It challenges the preheminence above Maywort, for preventing the sore weariness of travellers: the decoction of the herb and flowers, used warm, is excellent good to bath the surbated feet of footmen and lackies in hot weather, and also lissome and mollifie the stiffness and weariness of their joynts and sinews.3

Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum)

Herb Robert has in traditional herbal medicine been used as an antiseptic and to treat stomach problems and nosebleeds. The leaves are edible and can be picked to make tea, as well as crushed and rubbed on the skin as an insect repellant, but apparently the smell is unpleasant so tread with caution. Traditionally this flower was carried to bring good luck and fertility.

The name is thought to come from that trickster house goblin of English folklore Robin Goodfellow, better known as Puck, who could bring death to a household. Perhaps this is the reason for another one of Herb Robert’s folk names “death-come-quick” and why some people would not allow it in the house.

Thistle (Cirsium)

The thistle is such a storied plant that it would make for too long a text if I were to include all of its lore here. In my mind the thistle is one of the most beautiful plants that grow upon the South Downs, but it’s certainly not well liked by farmers. Indeed, it was cast upon Cain as part of the curse sent by the Almighty: “Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.”

In herbal medicine thistles have, at various points, been thought to cure bites by venomous animals, boils and plague sores, used as an emetic and diuretic, and been thought to have the properties to suppress fever, also to cure lesions and rashes.4

Legend says that the thistle was adopted as the emblem of Scotland after one of a party of invading Danes stepped on a prickly thistle and let out a cry, and so rousing the Scots, who took up their arms and chased the enemy away.

But the following legend, the one I leave you with, is the one that really caught my attention:

In Mecklenburg there is a legend current which relates that in a certain wild and barren spot, where once a murder had been committed, there grows every day at noon a strangely-formed Thistle: on the weird plant are to be seen human, arms, hands and heads, and when twelve heads have appeared, the ghastly plant mysteriously vanishes.5

My Substack read of the week was Charlotte Brontë & Arthur Bell Nichols by because the fate of the Brontë siblings never ceases to move me:

Magpie Tidings

Charlotte Brontë & Arthur Bell Nichols

After working on this for awhile, I realized that there is so much rich material (mostly in the form of letters from Charlotte Brontë to her friend Ellen Nussey), that I am going to break this post into two parts…

Read more

a month ago · 5 likes · 4 comments · Mairi Bontorno

In other writing news:

• Finished drafting the short story that I was re-writing from a different point of view, one I wrote last year that wasn’t working - 3500 words in two weeks, this makes me happy.

• Finished compiling research from lever arch file #1 and began on lever arch file #2.

• Submitted a brand new picture book manuscript to six publishers in Sweden.

• Received my first rejection for that same picture book.

• Was awarded a grant to do an author visit at the Swedish School in London. It took two years, with much chasing, to get the grant approved, and now I wait for the money. Perhaps it’ll be another two years?

• Got on with some back office stuff, updating my business cards, tidying my Start here page on Substack, and my website, trying to revive my Instagram account in an attempt to reach my Swedish audience (I don’t mind it so much this time, I’ve let go of all expectations and pretensions), and sent out some feelers for possible events (which I haven’t done for a very long time).

• An overwhelm of non-writing tasks have been taking up both time and headspace this past week and I think perhaps it’s important to mention that real life bang relentlessly on the door to my writing space. This week I’ve been supporting middle child through moving out of her student room. This has easily taken two full working days out of my week. Even today, through the writing of this post, I’ve been making phone calls, answering messages, dealing with missing labels for her boxes (which turned out to be vital for the pick-up) while being seven hours away. But I kept typing, in the moments in between, through all the stress, this post for you.

• Currently reading The Wise Witch of Orkney by Anna Caig.

If you have read this far you’ve already made a difference to This Writing Life of mine. But should you wish to, here are a few other options of how to support me:

Subscribing to this from now on roughly fortnightly missive will remain free for everyone, but I do aim to deliver a well-thought-through observation, hopefully with a positive spin, a lesson learned, knowledge shared. This takes time, which is why, if you enjoy reading and have the means, there’s an option here to upgrade to a paid subscription. As paying subscribers you’ll get access to monthly video diaries in which I tell you what I’ve been working on for the past month (basically what your contribution has funded) and any news to hold myself accountable to you, and from now on I’m also starting to add monthly historical essays as yet another perk. Your contributions make it possible for me to continue writing stories.

Subscribe now

Or if you’re unable to commit to a subscription, a coffee to fuel my writing would be most welcome.

☕Coffee for Lisa coming right up!☕

My novel The Shape of Guilt is available to buy with free delivery from Blackwell’s in the UK or from Barnes & Noble in the States, and if you’re a Swedish speaker you can find out more about where to buy my Swedish children’s books here. Or you can leave a review of The Shape of Guilt here. And finally, here’s a tip jar:

Tip jar

My aim is to post these essays once month, but because life sometimes gets in the way, let’s start with a recap in chronological order, or scroll down to skip to the next part of the story:

…OR IN SHORT

On 3rd September 1939, the British Prime Minster Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany. That same evening the German U-boat U-30 fired a torpedo at the British passenger ship SS Athenia which was on route from Liverpool to Montreal, bringing home many American and Canadian passengers who had wished to escape the threat of war over Britain. This torpedo, as it bulleted through the water towards the ship, not only represented the first shot of World War II in the west, but it also ignited The Battle of the Atlantic. At least this is the story told so far on a global scale, while on a personal level, there out on the North Atlantic Sea, just off the coast of Ireland, we last left my grandmother-in-law, Ruth, bobbing in life boat number 3 at night, on a high sea.

THE RESCUE SHIPS

Knute Nelson

It was after midnight when the survivors in the lifeboat first saw lights on the horizon, of the Norwegian freighter ship Knute Nelson. The ship had picked up the rescue signal at 20.45 and signaled back, “THE OLD MAN1 DOESN’T BELIEVE YOU’VE BEEN TORPEDOED - BUT HE’S COMING TO YOUR ASSISTANCE ANYWAY.”

The Rescue

Standing up in his lifeboat at an oar was Elwood MacPherson who began to row towards Knute Nelson at 12.30 am, but the sea was so rough that it took two hours for these survivors to get close to the ship, only to then drift right past it. It was only through rowing so hard the oars bent that they managed to turn their boat around and get on the lee side. The ship was riding high, between fifteen-twenty feet above the surface, which made it difficult to climb aboard, especially considering the ten foot swells. Women and children were hoisted up by botswain’s chairs. Exhausted passengers climbed up the cargo net in spite of hands bleeding from rowing and some already had rope burns from entering the life boats.

Donald Wilcox, who was only ten years old at the time, recalled being told to wait for the boat to surge upward before grabbing hold of the cargo net. Many passengers were slick with oil from having been in the sea as the Athenia leaked fuel oil into the water and therefore found it hard to get a grip on the netting. Everyone scraped their hands and knees as they climbed.

Lady Dorothy Lake’s hands slipped as she was being hoisted up in a chair, but as she fell backwards her legs caught on the ropes either side of the seat leaving her to hang suspended upside down with her skirts falling over her head. A sailor climbed over the side, took hold of her ankles and pulled her up onto deck. That lady straightened herself up and said “Whew! That was a close one! If I had fallen into the boat, I would have killed them.”

On deck the crew gave the survivors all the dry clothes they could spare. They also made clothes out of canvas sacks and slippers out of bits of cloth.

Lifeboat 5A met a terrible fate. A line had been passed to the boat to stop it from drifting, but when the engine on Knute Nelson was switched on and the ship moved forward, the line parted and 5A drifted under the vessel’s stern. Desperate attempts to push the boat away from the ship using oars proved futile. The boat was drawn under the propeller which sliced through the boat and shattered it. Andrew Allen witnessed the man sitting in front of him being cut in half by a propeller blade. His only instinct was to get away from the blades and so he dived into the sea which he remembered being a “churning red”. The boat turned seventy or so people into the sea as it capsized, and it seemed an eternity to Allan before he reached the surface and could breathe again, and also find his fiancé, Judith Evelyn.

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The Southern Cross

The Southern Cross, one of the largest and most luxurious yachts in the world, was owned by Swedish entrepreneur and millionaire Axel Wenner-Gren and his American wife Marguerite Gautier. By the early 1930’s Wenner-Gren had become the majority owner of Electrolux, having not only been responsible for the renaming of the company from Lux to Electrolux, but also realising early that these industrial contraptions could be adapted for domestic use.

Wenner-Gren was reportedly a friend of Hermann Göring and he became convinced that he, single-handedly, would be able to avert the threatening war through acting as a go-between between The British and American Governments and the Nazi regime. But on this night of 3 September 1939, his yacht was the second vessel to arrive on the scene of the stricken SS Athenia.

After having assessed the placement of the lifeboats in the sea, Captain Sjödahl and Chief Officer Rothman positioned The Southern Cross, in such a way that would allow them to rescue the boats that were unable to reach the Knut Nelson, or which had drifted past her.

In one of the lifeboats a survivor asked what they ought to do if this vessel turned out to be German. An exhausted Gustav Anderson replied that he was “glad to be rescued by anyone”, although he had already recognised the large blue-and-yellow flag hanging over the side of the boat.

The rescue

The sailors did what they had to in order to get the survivors out of the lifeboats and onto the yacht, including carrying up babies and toddler, some held by their clothing in the sailors’ teeth.

DeWitt Smith had been in boat 11A all night and climbed aboard The Southern Cross just as the sun came over the horizon. Boat 11A had been damaged during launch, and had required constant bailing as it leaked badly. The bailing stopped when the boat reached The Southern Cross and DeWitt Smith witnessed the lifeboat sink as soon as the last passenger got out.

Able-bodied Seaman W.J. Macintosh, who was in charge of lifeboat number 8 found himself unable to get his boat from the weather side of The Southern Cross to the lee side where they’d be taken on board. He was attempting to go around the bow, but had to reverse course and steer around the stern with the help of his passengers, many of whom were refugees and didn’t understand English. So whereas Macintosh was attempting to get the boat a safe distance from the yacht, those at the oars were desperate to get closer. One person took hold of a line and attempted to climb it, which led to the boat surging on a wave and capsizing, with Macintosh and all the passengers tumbling into the water. Montgomery Evans saw one of the sailors holding a child by its clothing in the water: “like a cat with a kitten”. Fifty or sixty were rescued, but six were estimated lost:

A young woman who had been pulled from the water sat quietly in the rescue boat for a moment, and then screaming, “My baby,” she leaped into the sea.2

Once aboard the survivors were in a state of shock, with many not knowing the fate of family members. In total 376 survivors were rescued by The Southern Cross.

The Destroyers

HMS Electra

HMS Electra was an E-class destroyer built in the 1930s for the Royal Navy during the 1930s, and she was eventually sunk in the Battle of the Java Seas. The Captain of HMS Eelectra on the night of the sinking of the SS Athenia was Stuart Austen “Sammy” Buss.

HMS Electra could begin bringing survivors aboard at 7.00 after HMS Fame had arrived to take over the antisubmarine patrol.

The Rescue

To Herbet Spiegelberg the rescue operation at first seemed “rather problematic” with the seas as high as they were and it looked certain to him that the lifeboats would smash against the side of the ship. But just as the lifeboats came alongside some fenders made of oakum were lowered to provide a cushioning barrier. Next a rope ladder was lowered, which must have looked flimsy against the ship. But then two sailors climbed over the side of the ship, each holding onto one side of the ladder with one hand and the other onto the railing of the ship while resting one foot on the ladder. In this way they were able to pick passengers up by their hands as the lifeboats surged on the swells. As Spiegelberg said, “it was not always a very dignified sight, but still an admirable performance.”

In total HMS Electra rescued 238 passengers and then took aboard another 140 passengers from The Southern Cross which didn’t have the facilities to cater for the survivors it had rescued.

It was from HMS Electra that Chief Office Copland, at about eleven o'clock on 4th September 1939, watched the Athenia rise almost straight out of the water, showing water streaming off her red bottom paint, before she sank, stern first, into the sea.

HMS Escort

HMS Escort was a sister ship of HMS Electra. She was on antisubmarine patrol when WWII broke out. She foundered on 11th July 1940 being torpedoed by the Italian ship Guglielmo Marconi. Her Captain on the night of the sinking of Athenia was Lieutenant Commander Bostock.

The Rescue

After undertaking an antisubmarine patrol around the Athenia and the lifeboats, HMS Escort used her searchlights to begin looking for lifeboats.

Professor Charles Wharton Stork described this as “the most terrifying experience of the night”. The motion of the eight to ten feet waves became exaggerated once the lifeboats got alongside the ship, but even so it was another ten feet to the deck. Helen Edna Campbell described the “tall, grim, dark, wall of the destroyer”, and her fear wasn’t helped when the first woman to climb up the ladder fell back into the boat and broke her leg. But a sailor shouted down to Edna, “Here you, put your hands on that ladder and hang your weight on them. Don’t you dare let go,” before he hoisted her up onto deck.

The most dramatic rescue by Escort was without doubt that of the shattered and overturned boat of Quartermaster Dillon, 5A, that had been smashed by the Knute Nelson's propeller. Twenty or so people had managed to cling to the keel and the ridges of the strakes that made up the hull of the boat, but they were constantly swept by waves that washed them back in the sea. The boat drifted past the Southern Cross and fell momentarily into the beam of its searchlight and was then swallowed up by the night again… Judith Evelyn managed to get to the ladder [of HMS Escort]. She was so weak that she could not lift her arms or take a step and was in danger of falling back into the water when sailors grabbed her lifejacket and hoisted her onto the deck. Allan followed, wrapping ropes around his hand so that he would not let go. But few were left. In addition to Evelyn and Allan, only Quatermaster Dillon, one steward, two stewardesses, and perhaps three passengers were all who remained to be saved on the wreckage of boat No 5A.3

Survivors stood about the deck of HMS Escort exhausted. Among them was Ruth, who describes the rescue in her own words like this:

As I’ve decided to make this post free for a week, I’m including some ways to support me below. If you have enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription.

Subscribe now

Or if you’re unable to commit to a subscription, buying me a coffee would help fund the writing of this novel.

☕Coffee for Lisa coming right up!☕

My novel The Shape of Guilt is available to buy with free delivery from Blackwell’s in the UK or from Barnes & Noble in the States, and if you’re a Swedish speaker you can find out more about where to buy my Swedish children’s books here. Or you can leave a review of The Shape of Guilt here. And finally, here’s a tip jar.

Tip jar

The quest consists of two things:

1. Not to dwell, and

2. to be content.

Things I’m not to dwell on are:

1. The empty space left behind by my two girls who are at university.

2. Having depleted energy due to asthma triggered by a recent virus.

3. The fact that my days are unstructured and my time is now my own.

4. Questions like: What is my purpose?

Things I’m to be content with are:

1. That there are far fewer distractions now that my two girls have left home.

2. That I’m so much better than I was just two weeks ago.

3. That my days are unstructured and my time is my own.

4. That I’m finally free to forge my own purpose in life.

Being proactive is key, because it pre-empts the dwelling, and on the occasions that I become tired of taking action to relish… Nay, to revel in contentment.

Here are some actions I’m taking to pre-empt dwelling:

1. I exercise - I swim, do yoga and walk the hills, only that doesn’t work if I

2. get ill, so I sit outside in the sunshine with my research and my asthma medication to hand, and the first thing I do in the morning

3. is to write a list of tasks that nobody ever asked me to do, but I make sure they sound important, because they are hugely important to me, things like working on stories, doing my homework for the storytelling course, and I’ve began sorting out some back office stuff, and of course there’s actual translation work, which does give me a certain sense of importance, because someone else has asked for it and will be paying me for it eventually, and then as the day progresses I will gradually

4. tick things off my list, and there is nothing more satisfying than putting a ✔️ next to a task that says “write 500 words on a short story,” or “spend an hour going through research”, or “edit a picture book manuscript”, or “write an article on Substack”, because these things all taken together make a good show of answering the question as to what my purpose is now.

Here are some ways I practice feeling contentment:

1. There was a time when all three were under the age of five and when I was sleep-deprived to the point where I didn’t know how I would survive the days and days and days of being responsible for the survival and well-being of small children that I wished for nothing more than a quiet moment to myself, and those of you who have read fairytales will know that wishes do come true and thankfully I am now able to enjoy vast stretches of quiet time

2. especially when a virus strikes and I have weeks of not being able to socialise much due to post-viral fatigue and the anti-social nature of chesty coughing, but all that means is that

3. I can make my days my own by focusing entirely on being content, and for the first time in years I have picked up my guitar again, having to begin from scratch, because I never really learnt it in the first place, and I can do crafts without little fingers wanting to join in, so I have started crocheting a blanket that will require one-hundred squares of the same pattern repeated over and over again, and I’m reading so many books: books made of paper in my hands, and books made of sound in my ears, and books made of pixels in a cloud, and for the first time in twenty-one years the house is tidy, things in their proper places, and oh am I ever clearing out, emptying cupboards and shelves, as if I require

4. some space, once I’ve manifested it into existence, and then I shall sit there, a non-dwelling human being, entirely content with having been able to forge, out of empty space and illness and unclaimed time and unstructured days such a very real, and tangible, and strong sense of purpose.

My Substack read of the week was this short story, In defense of doing all of it, bored by Thursday by and published by:

All That You Are

In defence of doing all of it, bored by Thursday

My therapist — I don’t have a therapist, but if I did — would probably describe my relationship with productivity as complicated…

Read more

a month ago · 11 likes · 15 comments · Elina Haverinen

In other writing news:

• Edited another short story, though I don’t think it’s quite ready yet. Will do another read-through next week.

• Got a 500 words down on another short story. I’m re-writing one I wrote last year that wasn’t working from a different point of view.

• By the time this goes out, I will have only about ten pages left of research to compile in lever arch file number 1, for Ruth’s Story. Bring on lever arch file number 2!

• Edited a Swedish picture book manuscript. I’m really happy with how its turned out. Next is to divide the text into spreads and write down my own thoughts on illustrations.

• Received an invitation to talk about my publishing journey on a publishing industry day on 6th June.

• Was interviewed by Real Writers Circle. I will share link once it’s up.

• Kept going with Friday afternoon picture book hour, although I might switch it up a bit and do Friday mornings for a while.

• And Happy Publication Day to You can buy her book A Year Without a Summer here.

• Currently reading All the Colours of the Dark by Chris Whitaker.

If you have read this far you’ve already made a difference to This Writing Life of mine. But should you wish to, here are a few other options of how to support me:

Subscribing to this from now on roughly fortnightly missive will remain free for everyone, but I do aim to deliver a well-thought-through observation, hopefully with a positive spin, a lesson learned, knowledge shared. This takes time, which is why, if you enjoy reading and have the means, there’s an option here to upgrade to a paid subscription. As paying subscribers you’ll get access to monthly video diaries in which I tell you what I’ve been working on for the past month (basically what your contribution has funded) and any news to hold myself accountable to you, and from now on I’m also starting to add monthly historical essays as yet another perk. Your contributions make it possible for me to continue writing stories.

Subscribe now

Or if you’re unable to commit to a subscription, a coffee to fuel my writing would be most welcome.

☕Coffee for Lisa coming right up!☕

My novel The Shape of Guilt is available to buy with free delivery from Blackwell’s in the UK or from Barnes & Noble in the States, and if you’re a Swedish speaker you can find out more about where to buy my Swedish children’s books here. Or you can leave a review of The Shape of Guilt here. And finally, here’s a tip jar:

Tip jar

In this series I’m posting a monthly video diary in which I talk about what I’ve been up to during the past month, about This Writing Life of mine as well as give tips and inspiration on how to keep going in the face of the sort of adversity that all but a handful of writers and artists are faced with in what seems to be an ever narrowing and risk-averse industry.

Basically, this is my way of letting you know you’re not alone.

The weekly newsletter has changed to being fortnightly rather than weekly (but still free) newsletter to allow for time to write monthly historical essays as a perk for paying subscribers. These essays deal with topics and historical figures relating to my work-in-progress. If you’re an existing subscriber who’d like access to these essays as well as these monthly video diaries you can upgrade to a paid subscription below.

This Writing Life is a reader supported publication and the paid subscriptions are an important part of my income. So if you like the stories I write, in Swedish or in English, please do consider becoming a paid subscriber as it will enable me to keep writing them.

But if you, like me, are needing to pinch the pennies and can’t afford a paid for subscription, then a click on the like button would be much appreciated. It will make the algorithm sit up and take notice, and in turn make my posts on Substack more visible and reach even more readers.

Much love to you all. 🥰

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Get more from Lisa Fransson in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

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I’ve been thinking about “hope”, both what it means to us as humans and how it might manifest in reality, in our individual lives. If you’ve noticed a silence from me in the last few weeks it’s because I’ve been ill, and for once I decided not to push through, which meant letting things slip. But I hoped that it would be ok, that you’d still be here once I got better, and I hoped that I wouldn’t have to struggle with the post-viral aftermath for months as I have done in the past.

Whether you’re still here reading this or not and my recovery are both largely beyond my control, so what is this hope that us humans cling onto whenever we face a worry or a difficulty? According to Merriam-Webster hope means “to cherish a desire with anticipation : to want something to happen or be true.” But also:

• Hope was what remained in Pandora’s box after all the evils had escaped into the world.

• Hope in Christian philosophy is trust grounded in faith, helping people to endure without despair.

• Hope according to Camus was to be treated with caution lest it would stop us from confronting the absurdity of life.

For me, all of these three perspectives hold true, and it then follows that to be human and to have hope is to walk a tightrope between hardships with a view towards a better future, but always at risk of loosing our balance should we tip over into too much wishful thinking.

From a writer’s perspective, we are nothing without hope. From the moment we first put pen to paper until the day we put that pen down for the very final time hope is what propels us forward. Nobody ever asked us to write books. Nobody ever came up to us in the street and said, “Hey, you look like a writer. If you write a story, I’ll publish it and make you lots of money.” That can change with time of course, if we get a deal for several books or if our careers have built to the point where we’ll get commissioned for stories. But this is increasingly rare, and so, still, when I sit down to work on a story I have no idea if anyone will want to publish it. All I have is hope. Hope that an idea will come, hope that I’ll have the skill to do the idea justice, hope that I’ll be able to finish the story, hope that I’ll be able to place it, and finally, hope that readers will be willing to spend their hard-earned cash on it.

The hurdles a writer faces ‒ such as finding the time to write, finding an agent, finding a publisher ‒ are enormous. The most persistent of us (because “talent” is nothing without “persistence”) clear those hurdles only to discover that there is, in fact, no finishing line. Only more hurdles, as far as the eye can see. This discovery is the real make-or-break-point in a writer’s life, because this is the point when the writers with the largest capacity for hope take to heart the realisation of this endless stretch-of-no-guarantees and keep going while others fall by the wayside.

These days I’m no longer running to clear the hurdles, or even towards any kind of end-goal. I walk at my own pace, stop to inspect the hurdles, consider if they’re worth the effort before I even try to overcome them. Some I walk around, some I take aim for, some I go back and try to clear again and again and again. By this point I fully expect you to have gotten lost in the metaphor, so let me, with quite brutal honesty (to the extent that I still at the point of publishing this hesitate to share) give you a couple of examples of how this hope manifests in my own life.

My first example is my second novel, The Legend of Maderwerth. We’re currently unravelling at great speed through the end of April and towards 1st May which will mark the second anniversary since we started submitting it to publishers. We’ve had incredible feedback from many, but “choosing to step aside” seems to be the industry phrase for being unwilling to take the risk. We’re still waiting for a handful of publishers, and one of them I’m particularly hopeful for, but in the back of my mind I’m working on plans Bs, Cs and Ds, because if there’s one thing I know for sure it’s that this novel will out in the world. Somehow! So while I’m waiting, while I’m hoping for a positive answer to make all plans Bs, Cs and Ds null and void, I’m also circling this particular hurdle, studying it from all angles, working out how it could be moved, or positioned, in a way that would work for me. When it comes to it, there are things that will need to fall into place before I’ll be able to do anything with it, but meanwhile I’d really like your opinion on a possible way forward. Feel free to motivate your answer in the comments, and if you choose option five, don’t forget to provide an e-mail address.

My second example is the one that leaves me feeling the most vulnerable in sharing, but here we go, in April I received the annual royalty statement for my debut novel The Shape of Guilt and over the past year we’ve sold twelve physical copies and six e-book copies. That’s eighteen in total during its second full year of life. Now one option here would be to glare in resentment at the £15 I earned from book sales for the year, but I’ve been an author for long enough now to know exactly how hard it is to sell books, so I was actually pleasantly surprised. Because what it means is that once every twenty days last year somebody bought and read my book. For several hours my words occupied their minds and that’s nothing short of incredible. Another wonderful thing is that I know I have the 🙏Substack community🙏 to thank for at least ninety percent of those sales. One sale I know is due to a very dear friend who buys a copy for a friend every Christmas. What’s more, this hope I carry makes me believe that we’ll do even better next year, because of the incredible reviews I’m getting from the readers who do find their way to the book. This all means that this is a hurdle I’ll keep running towards, keep trying to clear with ever more graceful jumps.

The eagle-eyed reader will have noticed that I like to engage in my hope with a strong sense of agency. I’m always asking myself, “What can I do to move forward”? The answer is never obvious, behind me I have years of experimentation with still no very clear idea of what’s worked. But it’s worth remembering that there are two aspects to success. One is the view of the world, which the wise writer will never ever allow inside their writing space. The other view is the only one that matters, i.e. what’s sustainable and what makes us happy, because there are readers out there for whom my stories mean something, and for those readers I’ll keep writing.

With this potent mixture of hope and agency in mind, I want to take this opportunity to make it as easy as possible for you to support me, should you wish to, so here are the links to my books so far:

In English
The Shape of Guilt - Blackwells and Barnes and Noble. Leaving a review would also be extremely helpful.

In Swedish (If you’re in the UK, I have copies available at home)
Älgpappan - Last few copies as it’s now out of print
Beckmörkret - Also available as e-book
Strandglas - Award-winner and best seller at 25 copies last year
Hängeken - Also available as audio book
Tegelstenen - My worst-seller, although I know that children, the actual end users, love this book.
Eben von Ruben och husbarnet - Also available as e-book

Libraries are also wonderful places, request my books, borrow them, do not steal them! 😉

And time to toot some other people’s horns, my Substack read of the week was this short story, Five Salmon Dancing by and published by :

The Dark Mountain Project

Five Salmon Dancing

'Let us start like this: there are three salmon dancing in the river.' To celebrate the publication of our new Spring issue, an anthology about the animal world, we bring you Jaden McGinty's short story from the salmon rivers of Idaho, accompanied by artist Cedra Wood's portrait of a fishbone beast from the drying Salton Sea of Southern California…

Read more

2 months ago · 20 likes · 2 comments · The Dark Mountain Project

And if you haven’t listened to it yet, here I am being interviewed by on his podcast. He puts so much work into these, and the conversations are always interesting, so go subscribe:

Teacher by Trade; Mentor by Mistake

The Long Publishing Journey

Writing can a tough old slog and writers are often told that getting published requires persistence. And lots of it…

Listen now

3 months ago · 23 likes · 9 comments · Daniel Puzzo

In other writing news:

• Edited a short story, so that’s one more ready to go.

• Started going through my two files of research material for Ruth’s story. By the time this goes out, I’m hoping to have finished one of them, the biggest one.

• ❤A warm welcome to my new paying subscribers. There are twelve of you now and it’s really making a difference, allowing me that all-important time to produce more stories.❤

• Received the year’s royalties for The Shape of Guilt.

• Started a six week course in oral storytelling, and the story I’ve chosen to work with is Bluebeard.

• Thanks to the weekly Friday afternoon picture book hour that I introduced on my birthday in March, I now have one completed picture book manuscript, and the bones of one more.

• Received my annual payout from ALCS, thank you for the £128.89!

• Met with my fantastical fiction group, which always leaves me energised and inspired.

If you have read this far you’ve already made a difference to This Writing Life of mine. But should you wish to, here are a few other options of how to support me:

Subscribing to this from now on roughly fortnightly missive will remain free for everyone, but I do aim to deliver a well-thought-through observation, hopefully with a positive spin, a lesson learned, knowledge shared. This takes time, which is why, if you enjoy reading and have the means, there’s an option here to upgrade to a paid subscription. As paying subscribers you’ll get access to monthly video diaries in which I tell you what I’ve been working on for the past month (basically what your contribution has funded) and any news to hold myself accountable to you, and from now on I’m also starting to add monthly historical essays as yet another perk. Your contributions make it possible for me to continue writing stories.

Subscribe now

Or if you’re unable to commit to a subscription, a coffee to fuel my writing would be most welcome.

☕Coffee for Lisa coming right up!☕

My novel The Shape of Guilt is available to buy with free delivery from Blackwell’s in the UK or from Barnes & Noble in the States, and if you’re a Swedish speaker you can find out more about where to buy my Swedish children’s books here. Or you can leave a review of The Shape of Guilt here. And finally, here’s a tip jar:

Tip jar

In this series I’m posting a monthly video diary in which I talk about what I’ve been up to during the past month, about This Writing Life of mine as well as give tips and inspiration on how to keep going in the face of the sort of adversity that all but a handful of writers and artists are faced with in what seems to be an ever narrowing and risk-averse industry.

Basically, this is my way of letting you know you’re not alone.

The weekly newsletter has changed to being fortnightly rather than weekly (but still free) newsletter to allow for time to write monthly historical essays as a perk for paying subscribers. These essays deal with topics and historical figures relating to my work-in-progress. If you’re an existing subscriber who’d like access to these essays as well as these monthly video diaries you can upgrade to a paid subscription below.

This Writing Life is a reader supported publication and the paid subscriptions are an important part of my income. So if you like the stories I write, in Swedish or in English, please do consider becoming a paid subscriber as it will enable me to keep writing them.

But if you, like me, are needing to pinch the pennies and can’t afford a paid for subscription, then a click on the like button would be much appreciated. It will make the algorithm sit up and take notice, and in turn make my posts on Substack more visible and reach even more readers.

Much love to you all. 🥰

Read more

Or that’s how I choose to frame the tableau I’m being presented with in that particular moment. Equally, if one of them were to look up and see me walk past under the light of the streetlights, they might wonder where I’m going in the middle of November and presume that I must be leading an enviable life to be seemingly free of responsibilities and have reason to be out on such a dark night.

Once, when my two eldest children were baby and toddler, I was pushing a double buggy up a steep hill. Right in the middle of the incline there was a window into an office. I looked up and met the eyes of a woman my own age sitting in front of a large computer screen. She saw me pushing that double buggy with two tiny children up a nightmare hill. I saw her sitting in that soul-less office with identical desks stretching into infinity and as I read her mind she also read mine: “Poor woman!”

A window then, is a two-way tableau where the frame is provided by the observer and everything they carry within them, meaning that windows are also stories to which we bring our past, ideas, experiences, emotions, morals. Stories which change depending on who’s looking through them, and in which direction.

I expect this is the reason why I’ve aways been fascinated by windows, how the framing they provide allow us to focus on one particular view, and sometimes also tell us their own story. And what is a story if not a window into a life or an experience or a culture or a situation we will never ourselves live, but that still resonates with us because we all share this one and same human condition?

I often take photos of windows, perhaps as a way to provide a frame of my frame of experience, which may also be what underpins my compulsion to write stories – as a way of communicating something that isn’t otherwise easily defined or conveyed.

My written stories are only a search away should you wish to read them, and below you’ll find a selection of window stories all framed through the lens by me. With a window being that two-way tableau where the frame is provided by the observer and everything they carry within them, they are best viewed with as little explanation as possible. But as these windows came to me in a context of place, weather, smell, history, culture and atmosphere, you’ll find a line or two of narration below each one.

Now that I finally have a more regular schedule again “My substack read of the week” is back, and this week it was Interview: How Naomi Huffman and Julia Ringo Run Hagfish by because I loved everything about it:

Counter Craft

Interview: How Naomi Huffman and Julia Ringo Run Hagfish

Quick reminder: I’m running a subscription incentive (free book) for the month of March. More info here…

Read more

3 months ago · 53 likes · 7 comments · Lincoln Michel

In other writing news:

• Sometimes rejections are a good thing, the relief I felt at not having been accepted onto the Dorothy and Lewis B Cullman Fellowship! Because now I won’t have to leave my husband and youngest child and Ella-cat for nine months and can relax into my year and make plans for autumn. At the time of applying, I was really excited about the prospect of potentially being accepted, but as March crept closer I got more and more panicked over the thought of the upheaval it would bring. I can still go to New York, but on my own terms.

• Legend of Maderwerth made a small splash with an editor at The London Bookfair who favourably compared it to the bestseller Gorse. What does it, and what will it, mean? Well, it’s validation. But beyond that it means maybe something, and maybe nothing.

• I received the PDF file with the illustrations for my next Swedish picture book Taxen på hjul and I LOVE THEM! It’s so very satisfying to see text and illustrations come together.

• Also wrote the blurb for Taxen på hjul

• Without having planned to, I returned to the short story project, tidied up my spreadsheet to see where I was, and I submitted short story number two to Gutter Magazine.

• Then the day after, I received a rejection for short story number two from Grain Magazine, almost a year after submitting. Honestly!

• Submitted short story number four to Cincinnati Review. This story has also been waiting on someone else’s desk since October last year, but I’m bored of waiting. I’ll start working with my own timeline.

• Submitted short story number nine to Tears in the Fence.

• I found three more publishers to submit a Swedish picture book manuscript to, one that I thought I’d run out of publishers for, and one has replied saying they’re reading.

• And weirdly, just as I was looking into submitting, I received a rejection for that same Swedish picture book manuscript, having submitted it about three whole yonks ago.

• Made excellent headway with typing up research notes, probably spent eight hours on it.

• Wrote the skeleton of a Swedish picture book manuscript during only two sessions of a new thing I began on my birthday called Friday afternoon picture book hour during which I leave home and go and sit in a cafe with a notebook.

• Thank you for leaving a review of The Shape of Guilt on both Amazon and Goodreads. It made my day!

• Currently reading A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell, for research, but it is a page turner.

If you have read this far you’ve already made a difference to This Writing Life of mine. But should you wish to, here are a few other options of how to support me:

Subscribing to this from now on roughly fortnightly missive will remain free for everyone, but I do aim to deliver a well-thought-through observation, hopefully with a positive spin, a lesson learned, knowledge shared. This takes time, which is why, if you enjoy reading and have the means, there’s an option here to upgrade to a paid subscription. As paying subscribers you’ll get access to monthly video diaries in which I tell you what I’ve been working on for the past month (basically what your contribution has funded) and any news to hold myself accountable to you, and from now on I’m also starting to add monthly historical essays as yet another perk. Your contributions make it possible for me to continue writing stories.

Subscribe now

Or if you’re unable to commit to a subscription, a coffee to fuel my writing would be most welcome.

☕Coffee for Lisa coming right up!☕

My novel The Shape of Guilt is available to buy with free delivery from Blackwell’s in the UK or from Barnes & Noble in the States, and if you’re a Swedish speaker you can find out more about where to buy my Swedish children’s books here. Or you can leave a review of The Shape of Guilt here. And finally, here’s a tip jar:

Tip jar

Read more

I have written before about my relationship to the Cornish landscape, particularly with regards to my second novel, The Legend of Maderwerth, (currently out on submission). In case yo…

Read more

Basically, this is my way of letting you know you’re not alone.

The weekly newsletter has changed to being fortnightly rather than weekly (but still free) newsletter to allow for time to write monthly historical essays as a perk for paying subscribers. These essays deal with topics and historical figures relating to my work-in-progress. If you’re an existing subscriber who’d like access to these essays as well as these monthly video diaries you can upgrade to a paid subscription below.

This Writing Life is a reader supported publication and the paid subscriptions are an important part of my income. So if you like the stories I write, in Swedish or in English, please do consider becoming a paid subscriber as it will enable me to keep writing them.

But if you, like me, are needing to pinch the pennies and can’t afford a paid for subscription, then a click on the like button would be much appreciated. It will make the algorithm sit up and take notice, and in turn make my posts on Substack more visible and reach even more readers.

Much love to you all. 🥰

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Basically, this is my way of letting you know you’re not alone.

The weekly newsletter has changed to being fortnightly rather than weekly (but still free) newsletter to allow for time to write monthly historical essays as a perk for paying subscribers. These essays deal with topics and historical figures relating to my work-in-progress. If you’re an existing subscriber who’d like access to these essays as well as these monthly video diaries you can upgrade to a paid subscription below.

This Writing Life is a reader supported publication and the paid subscriptions are an important part of my income. So if you like the stories I write, in Swedish or in English, please do consider becoming a paid subscriber as it will enable me to keep writing them.

But if you, like me, are needing to pinch the pennies and can’t afford a paid for subscription, then a click on the like button would be much appreciated. It will make the algorithm sit up and take notice, and in turn make my posts on Substack more visible and reach even more readers.

Much love to you all. 🥰

Read more

I knew I had to write a post about rejection, on how to stare them full in the face, as soon as tagged me in a note where he said that a rejection stopped him from looking at a manuscript for fifteen years. I wish I could say that this is uncommon, but I have strong reasons to believe that it isn’t. Therefore my aim with this post is to make those of you who need it sit up that bit taller, to make you proud of you work, and to make you feel fierce for daring to submit.

And who am I then to claim to be an authority on rejection? Well, I’m not going to open my spreadsheet and count all the different tabs (tabs for short stories, poems, a tab for each Swedish picture book, for each Swedish middle grade, and for each English picture book, The Shape of Guilt and The Legend of Maderwerth) but a quick guesstimate tells me that over the years I must have received over a thousand rejections. So yeah, I’d say I know this stuff.

Within the world of writing, we encounter many different kinds of rejections, and each kind, if you take them too much to heart has the power to stop you from writing. Or rather, if you let them, has the ability to take the power of writing away from you. You don’t want that to happen. In fact, you must not let that happen. And, as I will show you, there’s no reason whatsoever for you to let this happen.

Let’s begin with the minefield that is creative writing tutors and workshopping. Creative writing tutors should be the people who lift you, who improve your confidence and who help you make your story the best it can be. But they can also be the very people who crush you, through misguided feedback, or by imposing their own tastes on your writing. I have experienced both the lifting kind and the less understanding kind, although to be fair, when it comes to creative writing tutors I am uncrushable.

Although in life I’m quite a timid person, when it comes to writing, for reasons I don’t understand, I am a warrior. I know what my story wants to be, I have a clear vision, even if I’m unable to articulate it. It’s a feeling, an atmosphere, a sense of a world, and all I have to do to get there is to write whatever serves the story. When one particular creative writing tutor told me that what I was writing at the time was “a dangerous thing to do”, I looked at him and said “Oh good!”. This was the story that turned into The Shape of Guilt.

I feel no resentment, because I knew he was wrong, but my heart does bleed for the writers who fell by the wayside along their writing journeys due to insensitive, or sometimes just ill-considered, comments, or because of trying to adapt their story in ways that did not serve it based on the feedback they’d received from peers during the latest workshop.

Yes, let’s talk workshopping. If you don’t know it, this is when a group of writers take turns submitting texts and then workshopping them. Like a roundtable session with feedback on your story. It’s a great way to learn what works and what doesn’t work, both in your own and other writers’ stories. You learn to pick out the flaws and the strokes of genius. It hones your skills, your eye, your sense for how story can be sculpted. But I believe that:

a) writers who lack confidence or know that they are vulnerable should never attend these workshops, and

b) they have a best-by-date.

The trick with workshopping is to know who to trust, because there’ll be people in the group who won’t get your story and who’ll spout nonsense such as “What if there was a murder?” for your romance, or “When will they kiss?” for your dystopian urban vampire fantasy. But if you do learn who to trust then the feedback is invaluable and you can ignore the rest. Watching the writers who felt insecure in their craft trying to take all the feedback on board, or trying to adapt their story to a one-size-fits-all, away from whatever it was that had made their story unique broke my heart.

The best-by-date for workshopping comes when you realise your work-in-progress is not ready for feedback, because you know what you need to do to fix it, and for as long as you know how to fix it there’s no point in workshopping it, then before you know it you have a finished manuscript in hand and what you really need now is some professional help, from your agent, or your editor.

By all means, attend creative writing courses and engage in workshopping, but while you do, don’t join the legion of writers who have turned away from the craft because someone has torn their story to shreds. Instead, before the workshop, tuck your story somewhere safe inside you where it can remain unaffected by any comments unless you suddenly think “Now, what she said, that’s helpful!” The rest is just noise, it doesn’t matter.

If you manage to avoid being flattened by your peers and tutors perhaps you end up with a finished story that you want to submit. This is the time to realise, to really understand, that rejection is the norm. Let me say it one more time, REJECTION IS THE NORM! And here’s another nugget for you, before you submit the “no” is already there. What I’m saying is that the “no” is automatic, constantly in existence. It’s only when you hit submit that the possibility of turning the “no” into a “yes” becomes a reality. That moment is the pivotal point when an acceptance becomes possible, and I think that’s rather wonderful, because it means that the rejection that you’ll inevitably receive is confirmation that you are trying.

The self-rejection is the saddest kind of rejection, when you ask yourself why you should bother submitting when it’s only going to be a “no” anyway. Whereas hitting that submit button is a self-affirmative action that says “I believe in myself and my work”. And whatever happens next doesn’t really matter, because after you’ve submitted you have momentarily relinquished control of your piece and the only sensible thing to do now is to get back to work, to write another piece.

But let’s talk about what does happen next. You may be submitting to agents, to publishers who accept direct submissions, to literary magazines (print or online) or to competitions. I have done enough of all of these to know what the most common form of responses are. I’m going to mention some of these here so that you’ll know what to expect:

COMPETITIONS: I frequently tell people that I’ve stopped submitting to competitions. This is generally true, although on occasion I’ll find myself seduced by one. The reason why I’ve given up on competitions is that:

a) competitions have become expensive to enter, and

b) it’s essentially a lottery.

To elaborate on the second point, last year I entered both the Bridport Prize and the MsLexia Short Story Competition. These are big competitions, and I only submitted because I knew my stories were strong. Still they didn’t place (and the wait for results is long). The message I received from both competitions after the results were announced sang to the same tune, of how high the standards were, how incredibly difficult it was for the judges to make a decision, and out of the fifty short-listed stories, on a different day, a different story would have won. To me, that says entering competitions is a waste of both your time and your money.

AGENTS: After you’ve submitted your work to an agent, the most common response is silence. Agents truly excel at ghosting. When I was submitting to agents, I’d spend hours on each submission, making sure I followed each agent’s specifications to the T, and still I’d hear nothing. I’d go to agent talks, and agent meets, and they’d say “Yes, please. Do submit” Still there was only silence. Very occasionally, I’d get a positive rejection or the golden ticket: a request for the full manuscript. Whenever that happened I’d squeal and jump around the house, then I’d submit, and what would follow would be another echoingly empty silence. In the end I had enough and told myself firmly that any agent I was going to sign with would have to come to me, which is essentially what happened.

LITERARY MAGAZINES: Literary Magazines are the lifeblood of the literary world. In particular the smaller ones. The people who run them do so out of love. It takes all of their time, and these magazines are generally not financially viable. I have learned to avoid the big ones, they have long waiting times and operate in the same way as competitions. There may be a fee, and it may be a lottery. But the smaller ones are the ones who allow us the opportunity to become published and to gradually build a portfolio. The competition is still fierce, rejection is still the norm, but at least there’s hope,. The trick is to read carefully what each magazine publishes and to send only stories, essays, flashes, poems that match the specifications. If you’re successful, this is your chance to start building a relationship with someone who gets your work and who might publish you again. The relationship building is key, because if you go to events or conferences or join online communities, you’ll bump into the same people again and again, and you’ll be able to share experiences and information which often leads to more opportunities.

THE BIG FIVE: Forget about it. Unless you have an agent, unless you write commercial fiction, unless you have extremely tough skin. My agent did submit my second novel to suitable imprints of the big five, and we did get some lovely feedback, and I’m happy with that. If one of them takes me on one day, I’d be delighted, but generally they’re not on my radar. To aim for them would be to misdirect my energy.

INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS: Independent publishers carry the publishing industry on their backs through risk-taking, fostering new talent, through communicating (such a rarity in this industry), through being out and about at events and book fairs ready to talk to readers and authors face to face. Once you start looking into independent publishers though, you’ll find that many are closed for submissions. What you need to do is keep a spreadsheet of publishers, sign up to their newsletters and make a point of checking in every so often to see if they open for submission. And please bear in mind, rejection is still the norm, and you may still get ghosted, but these are not reasons for giving up. One thing that will help you enormously with independents is to buy their books and read them. Not only does it support the ecosystem that you are hoping to become a part of, but it’ll tell you what they publish and if your book might be right for them, and you’ll be able to say in your query letter that you have done your research.

Finally, let’s talk about you. You submit your work, your friend reads your work, you go to a workshopping, your creative writing tutor reads your work and goes “Hmm…”, you get “no thank yous”, strange comments, and discouraging feedback, and you are crushed. And that’s fine. For a day or two, that’s fine. We have to let ourselves feel emotions. But then, brush yourself off, brush the manuscript off and take the feedback you’ve received and use it to make you and your story stronger, and then resubmit.

Because all this is is a cycle: write, submit, repeat. And you as a person don’t factor in this cycle, only your work, and as personal as it might feel, your work is not you. When you receive a rejection, all that’s happened is that a person read your submission and didn’t think it was a fit for them. Now your job is to try again, and again, and again, because for authors, this cycle never ends. All you can do is remember that it’s not you, it’s them.

In other writing news:

• Gosh, where we? After the madness of the 127,000 word translation I have gently found my way back into writing, and in terms of research I have downloaded twenty articles and typed up an hours worth of research notes.

• I also edited a short story for submitting to my fantastical fiction group for feedback. It’s one that has had two positive rejections, never quite making it all the way.

• I got together a list of another potential five publishers, for my agent to submit The Legend of Maderwerth to.

• I reached out to one particular publisher myself. I know the person who runs it and they like my writing, but they were closed for submissions. Very kindly he made an exception for The Legend of Maderwerth as he thought the story sounded intriguing.

• Received a rejection for a grant application. Oh well…

• I got my royalty statement from one of my Swedish publisher and during 2025 they sold 25 copies of Strandglas, and for me, that is actually a huge amount.

• Currently reading Yogic Impressions by Jim Tarran, because I will be holding a Q&A with him during the launch of this book on 7th February.

If you have read this far you’ve already made a difference to This Writing Life of mine. But should you wish to, here are a few other options of how to support me:

Subscribing to this from now on roughly fortnightly missive from me will remain free for everyone, but I do aim to deliver a well-thought-through observation, hopefully with a positive spin, a lesson learned, knowledge shared. This takes time, which is why, if you enjoy reading and have the means, there’s an option here to upgrade to a paid subscription. As paying subscribers you’ll get access to monthly video diaries in which I tell you what I’ve been working on for the past month (basically what your contribution has funded) and any news to hold myself accountable to you, and from now on I’m also starting to add monthly historical essays as yet another perk. Your contributions make such a difference, not only are you enabling me to continue writing stories, but you make me feel as though what I’m doing is worthwhile.

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My novel The Shape of Guilt is available to buy with free delivery from Blackwell’s in the UK or from Barnes & Noble in the States, and if you’re a Swedish speaker you can find out more about where to buy my Swedish children’s books here. Or you can leave a review of The Shape of Guilt here. And finally, here’s a tip jar:

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Today, the fifteenth, is the day of the month that I committed to post a historical essay on. But sometimes life has other plans.

Two things are going on:

1. I’m working ten hour days to make hay for what might be the last ever sunny spell in my professional life as a translator.

2. I’m fighting a cold which is making me nap every five minute b…

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Basically, this is my way of letting you know you’re not alone.

The weekly newsletter has changed to being fortnightly rather than weekly (but still free) newsletter to allow for time to write monthly historical essays as a perk for paying subscribers. These essays deal with topics and historical figures relating to my work-in-progress. If you’re an existing subscriber who’d like access to these essays as well as these monthly video diaries you can upgrade to a paid subscription below.

This Writing Life is a reader supported publication and the paid subscriptions are an important part of my income. So if you like the stories I write, in Swedish or in English, please do consider becoming a paid subscriber as it will enable me to keep writing them.

But if you, like me, are needing to pinch the pennies and can’t afford a paid for subscription, then a click on the like button would be much appreciated. It will make the algorithm sit up and take notice, and in turn make my posts on Substack more visible and reach even more readers.

Much love to you all. 🥰

Subscribe now

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2025 was when I paired my writing right back …

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