11 March 2000

I see on my daily walk that The Heights Hotel, which has been closed all winter, has the VACANCIES board hanging outside it today, and a couple of strange cars in the car park. It must be Spring. Trees in bud and birds twittering. Down on the path by Derwentwater a robin stood on a fence-post and warbled at me for several minutes as if I were another robin.

I try to walk at least an hour every day here, it helps me to sort out things in my mind as well as getting my body moving. With the warm March wind in my face I was mulling over how to approach this journal-business. How personal should I be? How self-conscious about being in the goldfish bowl? This is the time; and this is the record of the time. (Laurie Anderson, Big Science, I have songs running in my head constantly)

So I'm back now to the view from my window, only this is a snapshot from earlier in the winter, what do you think? That's Keswick in the foreground, smoke rising from a single chimney, and the snowy fells beyond. That's the new Steely Dan album playing in the background. This is the third winter I've rented a place in the Lakes, trying to make the space to write novels. Successfully: now comes the easy part: selling them to a publisher :)

What do I want to achieve at trAce? That was the other question I was asking myself on today's walk:

• enjoy myself while doing my best to help other writers
• develop some good collaborative writing projects
• work slowly and steadily, Sheer plod makes plough down sillion shine as G M Hopkins put it, I think: can't check the exact phrase here lacking most of my books which are back in Leeds, my permanent home (actually I could try and find it on the Web)
[yes and here it is, found thirty seconds later, at netpoets, but then I had to look round their site for rather a long time, as you do, did you know you can send a poem to a friend through them? isn't the web brilliant?]