Peter Sellers and the Ugly Ducking: A Residency at Cove Park

You know that sketch – it goes something like this:

Peter Sellers walks into a party, gets a drink, begins to mingle, turns to another guest and introduces himself.

'And what do you do for a living?' he asks.

'I'm writing a novel,' says the guest.

'Neither am I,' replies Sellers.

Boom boom.

There are days when it feels like I am stuck in an endless repeat of that sketch, me being the guest, friends and family standing around, politely averting their eyes to peer in the bottom of their glasses. So I've taken myself off to Cove Park on the coast off Argyll in an attempt to wrench myself out of that loop. I have six clear weeks ahead of me before I need to pick up paid work again and I really want to make the best of them. This is meant to be my flying start – six days of hard graft that should quicken the sagging word count and set me on course til December.

Reached by boat from Gouroch to Kilcreggan, Cove Park is a residential arts centre beautifully situated overlooking Loch Long and near enough to Faslane to induce paranoid fantasies of horned sheep moonlighting as Iranian spies. Clefted by bucolic brooks, this enclave of artistic industry in the midst of MoD real estate is a creative writer's dream. My own little cube, a converted shipping container with its own private dew pond, is likely the most well appointed bedsit it will ever be my good fortune to inhabit. This week I have decided to look my Big Project squarely in the eye without the assistance of workshops or tutorials to cheer me on, but the wonderful poet Polly Clark is available on site to offer mentored retreats if desired. Here is a cosy kind of isolation, swaddled in fog and disconnected from the beguilements of mobile phones and internet connectivity, you give yourself over entirely to your muse – it's just you and your laptop and the Big Blank Page.

Day One goes well. Ish. I immerse myself in all the notes and sketches I had made in the margins of late summer's manic work schedule and bowl through the target word count without too much difficulty. All good. But then Day Two comes along and I spend the morning writing a pile of words resembling the hefty deposits made on the tracks hereabouts by the resident Highland Cows. Not so good. Sitting with the discomfort of that shitty first draft feels even worse than it sounds. If truth be told, I'm tearing my hair out but I still try my best to be stoic: said words are typed up through gritted teeth, hearty soup is had and I set out on reccy of the surrounding area - upon which I learn never to trust a pregnant ceramicist who tells you that a peninsula only has one road: it's impossible to get lost. The rain is pissing down and there is heavy fog.* There are times, I find, which call for drinking stolen red wine from the communal kitchen.

Last night's blowout appears to have had the desired effect and I begin Day Three with a writing session that edges me closer to the voice I'm looking for in my Big Project. By default I work on character too – my lead's description of her sleeping son helps me start to get into her idea of herself as mother, protector, woman. I am heartened some more on venturing up to the centre at the top of the hill to read Jill Dawson on the challenges of getting a novel going: 'A rough start is unavoidable,' she says. 'Weak beginnings are inevitable and essential.' Great! It isn't just me then. Later, I listen to a podcast on historical fiction and realise that my recent choice to write in first person present tense turns out to be a quirk of the genre – who knew? Perhaps after all, I'm doing something right. For today anyway... 

Day Four is a bit slow to get going, but coaxed on with gallons of tea, go it does. It seems there's a barrier that, like with running, once broken through, the writing finds its own comfortable pace. We're not talking sprinting or flying here – think more of a waddle, in circles, a few fledgling attempts to take off, ugly duckling style. Today is for fleshing out detail and working on the troublesome problem of period dialogue. I check out Wolf Hall on a forage through the shelves at the centre and try out my own version of straight-up contemporary narrative. I'm quite taken with the effect. I go back to my original sources and start to feel it might be time to leave them behind and launch entirely off into fiction. None of this is planned – it just seems to be happening.

And ... Action! Day Five is a gift – where the heck did that come from? I send the High Priestess Mantel my thanks – you are a fucking diamond, my dear. Something good has happened in the old brainbox overnight and to my total amazement I bash away at the keyboard all day and all night. One thousand, two thousand, three ... the words just keep coming. I schedule in some time for my Censor:

'It can't be this easy! This must be a total pile of crap!'

'Meh,' says my Subconscious.

'Historical fiction is so uncool,' says my Censor.

Subconscious just does the vees up and gets on with it.

In the piece I've written today, there's not a word of 'period dialogue' to be heard, very few contemporary references. It's just a woman arguing with her bloke, two girls having a chat by the fire. Character gold.

Day Six and it's time to head home. I miss home. It's good to go back to my life and my love and my cat. But dammit, who knows what might happen with another week on my hands!... I spend the morning planning out the next scene, working out what its endpoint will be, what details I need to research to get it right, without bogging myself down in historical mud. Sally Wainwright says writer's block just means not being mentally prepared and ready to hit the page. 'Think through what happens next before you write your next scene.' There's a lot more to that than you might think.

I realise that this has been a week of sorting and sifting, working out what I do have and what now needs to be done. Looking around the room before I pack everything away, I see there is a corner given over to engravings and pictures, another to a set of draft scenes, a chair piled with photocopied essays of writers on writing. I realise that reading all this stuff, gathering it together, taking stock, is an essential part of the work – it's about getting your ducklings lined up and giving yourself space and time for a few test flights. Bags zipped, laptop stashed, I jump in the Cove Park van to make for the boat and wonder what might happen tomorrow.

* with apologies to Dawn, the actually extraordinarily helpful and thoroughly-bloody-nice Cove Park staffer. If only I were more like her... oh, and sorry about the wine: I'll bring some back next time, I promise.