Fear Of The Last Pages

Notes from the 4am Writing Club - Neverland Edition

May 01, 2025

March 7th: Here’s a postcard from Neverland. Just a few more days here and then I will be able to share a long post, oh loves, since I last wrote to you, my days have been filled with adventure and creativity, touching vivid green mossy grass and collecting sea shells, talking to ancient giant fir and pine trees, writing and reading, teaching and learning, laughing and crying, sharing poetry and stories, abseiling and paddling, boats and books, tea and martinis, long walks and big talks, roaring fires and delicious lazy dinners, red squirrels and seals and deer, big starry skies and planets aligned and crazy vivid dreams, my nails are black and coal dust, my heart is all full up, I can see the whole sky, I am beckoning spring in, spring is springing, with love from Neverland Xx

It is 4am — I am away from home, alone in a timber cottage surrounded by a green and ancient moss, a forest of wonder. I am in Neverland. I am on a remote island off the West Coast of Scotland. I write this and watch and wait for first light. I love to see the sun rise, and it is particularly beautiful this time of year, up here it is a little lighter, a little earlier every day … maybe this is where Hope lives.

This magical isle is Eilean Shona. Notably JM Barry used to come here and write — we paddled in the bay where the mermaids live in Peter Pan, the Mermaids Lagoon. This is a wild place, unspoilt, home to rare red squirrels, wild deer, pine-martens, seals, butterflies. Someone told me that this island is one of the most haunted places in the UK. I wish they hadn't said that, I have to push that thought to the back of my mind. It feels alive, especially when I walk alone in the forest at night, I feel it all vibrating.

Now I wait for first light, write this, and drink mint tea.

I feel a bit edgy this evening, and then I must ask myself — What am I really afraid of? What is the danger? Why am I in a state of alert? Is it this endless dark? Is it the shadows? Is it a fear of ancient spirits and ghosts and the dead? Is it the fizzing vibration of nature?

I’m alone, deep in the trees, the forest is breathing, I’m in the lungs of it.

Let’s try to answer honestly: What are you so scared of? What can you hear? What was that scratchy noise? What is it knocking on the walls of this little house in the forest? Are we mostly scared of imaginary and unseen and unknown things? Are we afraid of monsters? Wild animals? Maybe zombies, werewolves, devils and demons? Or are we scared of actual threats like axe murderers and serial killers? Or let’s be honest here, are we scared of this alone time with our manuscript and the fact we have no excuses right now but to finish the work and write, write, write, and push ourselves from night, towards day, towards the light and the last pages.

It is of course, mostly, the latter, and so instead of working on the book … I think I see a flicker in the night. Then I tell myself a wild horror story and scare myself rigid. I write this Substack post, it is all about fear and how I wish to boil the bones of this feeling down to get to the sticky glue.

What gives us this uneasy feeling. What are we afraid of at 4am in a tiny cottage in a dark wood on a remote island? Are we afraid of silence? Are we scared of facing what is inside? Or what is outside? Afraid of what is happening in real time in the big bad world, in politics and forever wars, and the genocidal maniacs and their wilful destruction of life and planet. Yes. I must admit I am totally scared and angry about all of these things, and what is happening now, in my hormones and racing mind and tired body and this time of change. This fear I hold onto right now, I examine in candle light. Wait! What was that noise? Nothing, just the wind being the wind, the forest being the forest, the night being the night…

The final draft stares at me, she is naked, she is vulnerable. She is messy-haired with holes in her socks and spinach in her teeth. Her mistakes and flaws so glaring and obvious to me. She needs a polish, she needs to go to the hairdressers. I get deep into it, the nitty gritty. I think they call this the ‘kill your darlings’ stage, and now I will kill my darlings. I’m so deliriously exhausted, putting my all into this last push, push, push … I must conjure magic with all of this fear in my blood.

I was invited here — I have been teaching a writing retreat. And now the classes are done, I have time to be here to write and focus on my own books. I feel so happy here. I loved how the classes went. I feel lucky to be asked to come here. I feel grateful and I met so many lovely new faces. It has been such a gorgeous, glorious, busy time with a wonderful mixed group of curious minds, inspirational souls, interesting writers. Lots of big heart conversations, laughter, plenty of exploring and hiking and long walks in dark green mossy forests; dappled spring sunshine through the giant fir trees; heart-stopping dips in the icy loch; sharing lots of wine, poetry and stories and delicious dinners around open fires.

There is something about this vibe, my mood and headspace, that is reminding me of me of when I was finishing Mrs Death Misses Death on the coast of Cushendall in Ireland. I believe as the crow flies, Ireland is just over there, I think? Diagonally across the water, past those islands, across the sea, opposite here, if I were to swim from Scotland to Ireland, I think I’d land on the beaches of Cushendall. So in theory I could walk down into the dark right now, and slip into the icy waters, and swim all the way back to a 2017 version of me doing this exact same thing. Sitting at 4am and writing, waiting for first light, and scrambling about in the final draft and last pages in exactly the same way. Yes. True. Exactly the same anxiety, the same hyper focus, the same hands, filthy nails, black with coal, the same sound of a crackling fire in the background as I type. Exactly the same, the smell of smoke, the wind in the chimney. It was the same time of year, early spring, the same, the same, the same, as when I stayed in The Curfew Tower and finished Mrs Death Misses Death in spring 2017, now here I find myself on Shona working on the final pages of The Life Of Life in 2025. See how I repeat myself, I copy myself, I am in a loop.

Suddenly, this is a comfort to me. I realise I’m just doing what I did last time. I’m feeling the fear, and those words, I have been here before, soothe the edges. I remember it hurt, just like this before, but I did finish it, I can do this, it will be done, and then I will miss this alone-part of the process again. One day I will miss when the work is my secret, when the story is only known by me, and my characters are all mine, and my book is my book, my own pages of wonder.

I laugh at myself — You should see me, just now, I was at the kettle waiting for it to boil and thinking about this piece about fear, and I looked up and jumped seeing at my own reflection in the window. It felt like another person was looking in, I didn’t recognise my scruffy reflection.

I talk to myself, I talk to fire, I speak fluent flame. I whisper to shells and stones and moss. I am alone in it, in all of these feelings, just like last time, it always hurts, and the last push hurts the most. If I was writing about a soft and easy and light thing it would be so … soft and easy and light.

I don’t have to do this — isolate myself — go and sit alone in a haunted or remote or unfamiliar place to write. I don’t have to take myself to a prison tower in Ireland, or be in an ancient forest in Scotland in 2025, to finish these big books. But isolation is the habit. I think I love to push myself, to test myself, to dig deeply in all that fear and truth and solitude.

As Mrs Death sings: Here are all your fears…

I face my last pages, face myself, face all of these fears, fear of the blank page, fear of the first page, fear of the last page, fear of the final full stop. Fear of the big bad world outside and the big bad world inside.

One day I will look back and miss this. One day in the future I will hold the finished novel in my hot hands and speak on a stage and on a radio and on podcasts and talk about ‘the process’ and tell audiences how it was. I will laugh at how scared I get, how mad I am, how I hate the dark, how weird I get when I write big books. It is a shade of insanity. One day I will look back and love this memory of this one dark night, I will acknowledge the strength found, all of that fear will be a faded memory.

I am here and now, waiting for sunrise. As soon as I see the first light, I will stop feeling frightened. I know it will only get lighter, it will get easier, every day a little brighter, and then it will be another day, and then suddenly, it will be summer, and then it will be done, and then it will be time to let it fly…

Today I felt like sharing these notes. They were written on my beautiful residential writers retreat in Scotland, March 2025, images taken by me and friends from the class of Eilean Shona 2025. Thank you, Biglove xx

I beat the deadline and submitted the new draft of the work last week to my agent and publishers. The second novel set in the Mrs Death Misses Death universe, The Life Of Life will be published by Canongate in 2026.

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