Helen MacDonald

I am sure this happens to everyone who’s tried to write anything, and particularly writers like me, who tend not to plan pieces but work on them organically (it’s inefficient, but I don’t seem to be able to do it any other way). It took me a long time to understand that sometimes, when I thought I was writing about ibises, I was really writing about homesickness, or when I thought I was writing about homesickness, what I was really writing about was ibises. Homes, not spiders; loneliness, not riparian forest. I learned to listen very carefully to what was going on between the lines, to always pay attention to what the words in front of you are really saying. It’s never too late to stop and start again (unless you’re on deadline).

HELEN MACDONALD