Helen McClory’s Shelf Life

Helen McClory is a writer based in Edinburgh. Some of her books include the collections On the Edges of Vision and Mayhem & Death, Bitterhall, a novel, and a collection of microfictions about Jeff Goldblum called The Goldblum Variations. There is a moor and a cold sea in her heart. 

How and where are you?

I’m sitting at the kitchen table, in a rare quiet house – in-laws are over from America and my husband and wee one have gone out for the day with them, leaving me to write, and mull over my writing life. I’m feeling calm but there’s something on the edge, creeping and retreating. Of exhaustion, of the violent, unfathomable chaos in Palestine, of the confusing messy politics of Scotland, where I live - I’m writing this the day after Humza Yousaf resigned, and I’ve no idea who might make a good job of things right now. I’m in the middle of making a Ras el Hanout chicken and herb salad. The sun is shining. Everything is washing about this table, full of particles I don’t understand.

What are you reading right now?

I’ve just finished the aching I Who Have Never Known Men by Jaqueline Harpman, translated by Roz Schwartz, which a friend lent to me. She said it made her grateful for sunlight and human contact, and I had the same feeling, but I am also grateful for novels that refuse to provide easy answers and instead explore what we can do without them.

I started The Weatherhouse by Nan Shepherd, about the entangled lives of mostly women living in a tiny farming community in North East Scotland, around WW1. It’s sharp and particular.

It’s not exactly reading, but the other day I went to Dawyck Botanical Gardens in the Borders, and in a little display section they had a library of wooden books – books carved out of wood, with the name of the species carved into the front like a title. They were all different sizes and thicknesses, as if each had a longer or shorter story to tell. My small child wanted to open them, but of course, that wasn’t possible. No one can read them, and everyone can. I should like to write a book like that, but with words.

And, of course, watching or listening to?

I recently rewatched half of Penda’s Fen, a 70s play for today set in English fenland (obviously), a landscape I find remote and intriguing – all the more for being set in a time when impassioned town hall meetings happened in person, and milk floats thrummed about. I love its startling imagery, emotional and psychosexual journey, careful handling of nationalist thought, and baggy, rangy style. I dislike how quickly media seems to want to shave off nuance. I think I’m saying this in a few different ways right now.

I’ve been listening mostly to audiobooks, most recently the entire Earthsea series, as something interesting to get me through runs at the gym, which are otherwise very tedious. I like seeing how Le Guin’s voice developed over time, within her chosen setting. It’s evidence of a remarkable stamina, I think, to stay within the same world one has created, finding new things to explore within it.

What did you read as a child?
Everything I could get my hands on. Library books. All the typical things like Roald Dahl, which I’m now beginning to read to my three year old, who loves them. I read Les Miserables at twelve, rather confused but doggedly. My late father was a huge lover of books, and encouraged me to read whatever I liked, which was a great gift. He didn’t come from that sort of home himself.

Which books and/or writers have inspired and influenced you?
I never know how to answer this question, because I know it’s the same as everyone else – whoever I was lucky enough to encounter. Toni Morrison, Virginia Woolf, Anne Carson, Iris Murdoch, Brigit Pegeen Kelly – on and on. I’m reading Louise Gluck’s collected poetry right now, and thinking about how her imagery has seeped in, and settled there since I first read her.

What’s the worst review you’ve ever received?
I dislike reviews generally, because it’s hard to be praised as well as damned with faint praise, and worse to be misread or actively disliked. I still look, but then I try to put them from my mind.

Tell us a little about your creative process.

Lately, it’s find time when my wee one is at nursery, write furiously, stop for two weeks. There’s been a lot of disruption in my family life lately, and I’m finding it really hard to make the time. There are issues with sleep and nursery to contend with. Today, I’ve managed to finish a story that was a commission, which is pleasing. It’s a piece about a contemporary (fictional) literary scoundrel. I’m wondering if it’s controversial enough, or if I should try to make it juicer. All last year, I didn’t write much at all, and had nothing published, so this year has been a nice change of pace with kind editors approaching me to contribute. It’s very easy to think that when you stop writing – or are forced to stop writing – that you’ll never write anything worth reading again. It is hard to hold on to self-belief, and feels indulgent too, but if everyone felt like this, about all the art they make, where would we be? Chewed up even more by the machines of capitalism and authoritarian philistinism. Even a little bit of resistance is important. Don’t grease the wheels if you can.

Tell us about your experience of the publishing industry.

Fragmentary, frustrating, with rare moments of warmth and guidance. I enjoy very much having my work attended to by an insightful editor. But often my experience has been one of helplessly sitting by, watching as financial issues (or in rare cases, personal ones) overcome publishers. I had my last collection of short stories rejected, which made me feel very gloomy last year. Almost all of the rejections were silent, even though my agent submitted the work, even though the stories were widely published and had won some small awards. The non-rejection I find a new and horrible trend. If one cannot even be sent a form rejection from a publisher, it does make one wonder if one should not just throw it all in the sea. My work, I mean. I don’t bear ill will to the overworked publishers who might be reading this.

However I have found from speaking to many writers, those with an excellent track record included – that they have suffered similar fates lately. I still feel my stories are the best of what I can produce, and offer something to readers that they might not get elsewhere, but I have switched to writing a novel, which I hope will teach me new skills and be something publishers feel they can offer to readers. If that doesn’t work, I might switch to making sculptures out of petals, on hillsides in the rain, with no witnesses.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

It remains, in stories, have people touch something – a collar, a button. Often we write without touch, a forgotten sense that pulls us closer to our shared existence.

In life, the best advice I ever received was ‘your loved one is not a mind reader’, which even though I was old enough to know this, needed to be heard.

What are you working on right now?

The novel. The enjoyment of this warm spring day, if I can manage it.