Stories, and the Unexpected Garden Path

By Juliet Greenwood

The book I’m working on at the moment is based around a garden. That’s not surprising, as most of my stories involve gardens in one way or another – after all, my first published novel is called Eden’s Garden, and you can’t get more garden than that! 

Until this year, I wasn’t aware just how much these gardens, however grand, linked to my own beloved garden, a wild, rambling, overgrown (I prefer ‘wildlife friendly’) riot of flowers and weeds on a Welsh mountainside, with stone walls on three sides and a long line of huge Leylandii trees on the other. I’ve always loved it as a private, shut away place. My own secret garden, perfect for a writer to retreat from the world and become immersed in her work. 

Over the last year, however, I’ve had to make choices. The long path from the road to my house, which gives me my privacy, was made of slabs of local slate and was becoming increasingly perilous, however much I tried to keep it safe. So, finally recognising that I need to face that I’m getting older, and a broken hip would spell disaster, my choice was to either to find a flat or a bungalow so I could live at home until I drop, or bite the bullet and change my path. 

I changed my path. 

After all my doubts and hesitations, the workers were brilliant. They totally fulfilled the brief of allowing me to get from my front door to the bus stop in my Motability scooter when I’m ninety-five. Even more scary was the ruthless culling of the leylandii, which were becoming out of control and dangerous. In a few hours, my garden went from a secret writing garden in the middle of a forest, to a cottage garden set just off a village street, with roofs and houses nearby and just a fence for privacy. 

For the first day, I hated it. What had I done? My writing retreat was gone forever! But then I began to look around and see what was there. I like my neighbours; we are a good little community. I found I enjoy actually seeing that they are there. Then I began to notice the increased light, the sunsets, my amazing view of the stars at night. Most of all, I don’t need to go to the end of my path to see the views; wherever I sit in my garden, I’m surrounded by the mountains of Snowdonia on three sides, with the island of Anglesey laid out on the other. My garden has new joys and a potential I never imagined before – not least that, for the first time, I can grow clematis, and my roses are loving the sunshine! 

And the writing? Well, now the chaos of the upheaval is healing, and my old garden is coming back amidst the new, I’m finding that an inspiration to carry on with the book. You see, I’ve been wrestling with this one. It might centre on a garden again, but I’m trying something slightly different, which is always scary. Not much of a departure (it is a garden, after all), but more ambitious and so out of my comfort zone. Funnily enough, that feels more frightening now that when I began writing. More exposing. When I started I had nothing to lose and nothing to prove. I couldn’t disappoint myself, or anyone else, because I hadn’t delighted anyone (including myself) either. Now I have The Last Train from Paris as a top 100 Kindle bestseller in both the UK and the US, and it feels that it would surely be safer to just keep on doing more of the same. 

Maybe this new book will, after all, end up as more of the same. But writing, like life (and gardens!), never stands still. I would kick myself if I didn’t at least try to do more, and reflect my experiences in the thirteen years since Eden’s Garden was published, to see if it might lead me to unexpected places. After all, nothing with a book is ever set in stone until the very last minute, after all the rounds of editing and proofreading and checking, when the publisher finally hits the button and it’s up there on Amazon. By which time I can never, ever imagine getting so involved with a story and its characters again, let alone going back and starting right at the beginning of the process, to do the entire thing all over! But we writers always do. 

The one thing I do know is that the book I’m working on will definitely reflect the unexpected lessons of taking a deep breath, shutting my eyes, and stripping away my secret garden of over twenty years, to start all over again. And of course, what I have also understood is that it isn’t really starting from the beginning. The lessons learnt over decades are still there as the bedrock of wherever my writing takes me. Just as I’m finding the Welsh poppies, the forget-me-nots and my favourite aquilegia that I’d been resigned to losing are springing up again, along with new wild flowers (definitely not weeds!) I never knew were there. And instead of dark trees shutting out the light, I have climbing roses and clematis growing up my fence to frame the views that I’ve suddenly discovered I’ve been missing all these years. 

So a deep breath it is, then shutting out the fear, opening the laptop, and getting back down to finishing this book, and welcoming the unexpected places it might take me. Watch this space!

—

Juliet Greenwood is the author of eight historical novels, published by Orion and Storm Publishing. Her first book was a finalist for The People’s Book Prize, and her previous book with Storm Publishing, The Last Train from Paris, reached #26 in US kindle chart and #19 in the UK. She has long been inspired by the histories of the women in her family, and in particular with how strong-minded and independent women have overcome the limitations imposed on them by the constraints of their time, and the way generations of women hold families and communities together in times of crisis, including during WW2. 

Juliet lives in a traditional quarryman’s cottage in Snowdonia, North Wales, set between the mountains and the sea, with an overgrown garden (good for insects!) and a surprisingly successful grapevine. She can be found dog walking in all weathers working on the plot for her next novel, camera to hand. 

Media links:

The Last Train from Paris: https://geni.us/290-al-aut-am

The Secret Daughter of Venice: https://geni.us/338-al-aut-am

The Shakespeare Sisters: https://geni.us/50-Storm

Storm: https://stormpublishing.co/

Website: http://www.julietgreenwood.co.uk/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/juliet.greenwood

Twitter: https://twitter.com/julietgreenwood

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julietgreenwood/

BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/julietgreenwood.bsky.social

The Secret Daughter of Venice

The Secret Daughter of Venice is the second of The Shakespeare Sisters, although it can also be read as a standalone. 

Set during WW2 in both Venice and Cornwall, it focuses on Kate, the adopted sister, who is seeking to find out the secrets of her past, prompted by childhood memories of a villa in Italy, and being torn from her mother’s arms. Kate’s journey takes her to a hidden artist’s cottage in Cornwall, the summit of Vesuvius and finally to Venice itself. But what Kate uncovers brings her enemies as well as friends, and the discovery of her true identity brings dangers for her adoptive family, and a secret that has the potential to destroy them all … 

BUY HERE

 

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing