I've just returned from a holiday in Lapland, where, aside from a couple of postcards, I didn't do any writing. I did quite a lot of writerly-fantasising though, i.e. I kept picturing a Lappish version of myself scribbling away by the stove in a house with white window frames and red slatted walls. It's not the first time I've been on holiday and found myself thinking (naively, I know), If I lived here I would just write and write, no problem.There's something beautifully simple about the topography of Lapland, and perhaps that explains the feeling that I could just knuckle down there without perpetual distractions. Long sunrises that morph into sunsets; pine and birch trees like wood-cut prints against the sky; mile upon mile of silent, snowy forest; the clean, bone-aching cold. (Mind you, there's also something beautifully simple about being on holiday. What could be more inspiring than a complete absence of household chores? Not even a long sunrise, I suspect.)
I'm not sure what I'd write about in this new Lappish life of mine. I don't think I could write the sort of things I do at the moment, which are all unconsciously, but decidedly, British in flavour, with plenty of rain and creepy houses and moorland sheep. Fairy tales, perhaps? I don't think Scandi-Noir would ever really be my thing. But would I be able to write well about a landscape that I haven't grown up with, and which isn't in my blood? How long does it take to know a place so well you can do it justice in a novel?
It's an interesting one, but not urgent, as I've no immediate plans to up sticks. It's nice to have a new fantasy-writing-retreat-location to add to the list, though.
