I've arrived!

I'm here! At the Anam Cara retreat in West Cork, Ireland, a writers' heaven. This is the view from my bedroom/workroom window, over the front of the house. Luckily, I am facing this way, because the view from the other side of the house, of rolling green hills down to the sea, is far too distracting. I arrived an hour ago, we had lunch, and I've just set myself up.



This is my third visit here and each has been momentous: on the first visit, in 1999, I wrote my first short story. At the beginning of my second visit, in the delightful company of James and Vanessa, I received the email from Salt, the one offering me a book deal for The White Road and Other Stories. Suffice it to say that I hardly got any writing done that week, just stared out of the window, this dazed grin on my face! I have no idea what this week might hold, but as you can see, it has a lot to live up to!

It is wonderful to keep returning to a place where you have been before and measure your progress. When I first came, I felt so young, I didn't call myself a writer, I had no idea what I was doing, how I might do it, if I wanted to. The second visit, in 2007, I had given up journalism to be a full time writer six months' before, but had no real idea of how things might proceed. Well, "things" seem to have gone rather well, since I am here, with several copies of my book, feeling very much a writer, an author, confident enough to feel that I can write whatever I want, the world is open to me. It's both exciting and daunting!!

Part of coming here is definitely about Sue, who runs the retreat and is far more than that, she is a great friend to writers and artists, and about the other people who are here, of whom I am sure I will write more later. On the subject of community, I read a great article in the Observer yesterday about four communities of artists and writers around the world, not official communities but friends who happen to all be in the same field. The section on the four female Hollywood screenwriters really touched me:

Deep in a canyon in the Hollywood Hills live four female screenwriters, each in their own home, with a dog. They meet up practically daily for a meal or a work session with their laptops. At night, they hit the town, turning heads as they party hop, sometimes on a red carpet. The glamorous posse even have a name. They call themselves the Fempire. It sounds like fun and games - the boozy, all-woman answer to those close-knit gangs of Hollywood boy-men captured on screen in television shows such as Entourage and in reality by Apatown, Judd Apatow's clique.

But these women are serious and usually quite sober. They can command up to seven figures to write a movie that makes it to the big screen, with big stars and box-office clout - even during the economic crisis.

Perhaps even more extraordinary, they actively support each other in a cut-throat, male-dominated industry without a shred of jealousy.

This is what I want, this is what I am searching for, this is an enormous part of the reason why we have decided to move from Israel to England. Yes, writers write alone, but without a community, it is a very lonely life indeed. As I said in an earlier blog post, I feel as though, after 15 years in Jerusalem striving to be as Israeli as I could, when I took the decision to write fiction full time I re-Britishized. Being in England, surrounded by English speakers, I feel English again. I look forward to finding my writing "buddies" - many of whom I have online already and am very grateful for - and building that community.

Alright, enough blogging. Time to write.

Immigrant Writer's Identity Crisis

I went to see the film Defiance last night, which is excellent, I found it very moving. I find most Holocaust-themed works moving, very personal. It's most definitely worth seeing. But before that I sat in the cinema's cafe, having something to eat, and was struck by a kind of revelation which is both quite upsetting and also makes so much sense. I will try and describe it:

I emigrated to Israel from England in 1994. I was 24, had just finished university (including two graduate degrees). I wasn't someone who had grown up in a Jewish family that was very attached to Israel; we were secular, not that interested. But I came here during the summer of 1993 and knew when I touched down that I wanted to move here. It felt like a kind of calling, a gut feeling.

Why? I couldn't have told you at the time, couldn't have explained it. But looking back, I was searching for something, a sense of community, a belonging that I didn't feel in London. And I found it here. For years I was thrilled every morning waking up in Jerusalem. I learned the language quickly, I found work as a science and technology journalist, and I loved my job. I went around the country and interviewed entrepreneurs who had set up little technology start-ups, amazing technologies, excited interviewees who were delighted to speak to me. It was fun! And I was good at it, I loved being freelance, I learned how to make contacts, to get my articles in magazines around the world.

But. But. After a few years that little nagging voice in my head: what about short stories? what about fiction? And slowly I started getting back to it, including a nine-month stint in England to do an MA in Creative Writing which turned me from wannabe writer into pretty-serious-about-this writer. For a long time I tried to do both: journalism and short stories. But then, a week-long Arvon short story course in England with one of my favourite writers, and she says what you always hope an idol will say: You can do this. You're a writer. Give up journalism and do this full time.

Scary. I was terrified. Stepping off into the abyss. It took a year, and then I did it. A few months later (very very quickly!) Salt offered to publish The White Road and Other Stories, and things have never been the same since.

What I realised yesterday was that when I stopped being a journalist, I started withdrawing from the society around me. There was no more reason professionally for me to be "out there", no-one to meet in order to write fiction. It is just me, in my little room. And as I withdrew from society, as this major shift occurred, my "absorption", the word Israelis use for the process a new immigrant goes through, has been slowly reversing. Until the point where I am sitting in a cafe, 15 years later, and I am unsure of my Hebrew. I was fluent. I was totally happy in the language. I felt Israeli. Now I sit here, surrounded by Hebrew-speakers and I feel different. I feel other. I don't feel like I fit in anymore.

I feel like I have re-Britishized myself. After years of trying desperately to be as Israeli as I could - I'm English again. All that effort: gone. And this is a condition particular to someone in a situation like mine: writing in English in a non-English speaking country, without a community of fellow English-speaking authors around me. Hence: immigrant writer's identity crisis.

No wonder I have been anxious. When they say "crisis", it really can be a crisis. Realising what was happening makes me terribly sad. I so wanted to be here, to be part of this society. But something stronger was at work. And I can't write in Hebrew. That's not who I am.

I don't believe that this is the writer's lot wherever she or he is. If I was in an English-speaking country, I would be "out" as a writer as well as "in". I would be out at readings, out teaching fiction, out meeting other writers, others doing what I do.

How ironic that coming here in a search for community has led me, 15 years later, almost right back to where I started, culturally-speaking. I am certainly not going backwards, I am in an entirely different place personally, professionally, in all respects. But I feel as though I have passed through something and have come out the other end and I am not where I expected to be.