Writing my 38 year Camino

[Alison Chandler]

I walked on the Camino to Santiago de Compostela in October 2015 because 38 years ago I was a 19 year old student there and wanted to return the proper way, walking back as a pilgrim . As I dragged along , I was made to think about many near-misses in Spain in my liberated teenage 1970s when I grew up while Spain transitioned from fascism. I was reminded of my love for the poetry, history, language, geography and music of Spain. I was reminded of falling in love in the lamplight of the medieval town in 1977 with a young local banker. Meeting him again this autumn for one evening half way down the track changed my pilgrimage and my onward journey. I don't know of other books from the Camino whose writers were there in the arms of Spain when its regions sang free for the first time in the mid-late 70s. The interactions on Camino forced me to think too about the journeys women travel leading each other, walking beside each other or leaving each other behind. I have woven all of these into 43,000 words of memoire with the voices of poets and others that I thought about as I walked and recovered. There are tales of my escape from the Guardia Civil and many historic steps forward for Spain’s musicians, book-sellers, transvestites and voters who I walked beside in the 1970s. There are Facebook postings along the way and thoughts of home on the North East coast of Scotland. There is useful detail for travellers and poetry from Andalucia, Catalunya, Galicia and Chile. There are excerpts on medieval women’s and modern pilgrimage, on psychology, art and the facts of women’s situation in Spain in the 1970s. I have framed it all in the 6 days of walking through the most poetic of landscapes , climaxing with a change of plan in the middle that sent me reeling, and in the first four days home when my body was surprisingly fine but my mind swirling and I captured the truth of my multi-facetted experience. It is my onward journey and I hope someone will read it before their own Camino, find it useful and stimulating and take it with them slim in their backpack and perhaps leave it under a pillow along the Way. Before that I need to get it published.
Any comments?

 

[lovingkindness]

Hello Alison. Your memoire sounds fascinating. All the best with getting it published.

Lovingkindness

 

[Rebekah Scott]

Heck, I'd read that!
I am currently embroiled in publication of a memoir.
It is not an easy road, but your idea is way different than the usual "My Inspiring Camino Diary" memoir. If this is your first book, you may save yourself a load of heartache and trouble by simply self-publishing it. Get it out there, see how it does, and if it pays for itself, then tackle the Agency/Editor/Publisher gauntlet.

 

[Lmsundaze]

I will read it, Allison.

 

[Alison Chandler]

Heck, I'd read that!
I am currently embroiled in publication of a memoir.
It is not an easy road, but your idea is way different than the usual "My Inspiring Camino Diary" memoir. If this is your first book, you may save yourself a load of heartache and trouble by simply self-publishing it. Get it out there, see how it does, and if it pays for itself, then tackle the Agency/Editor/Publisher gauntlet.

Thank you so much for the encouragement! Yes it is a first book and I do feel it is one that needs to be told. Money would of course be a pleasure but is secondary. I could go the self-publish route but as a literature graduate and from a family of published (specialist) writers, I've always wanted to get the approval for my writing ability which I feel comes with "proper" publication. To sell crap would be awful. I am writing poetry too and am sharing that more freely having got my confidence up on that. But that does not tell the same story.

 

[NualaOC]

Good luck Alison, I really look forward to reading this.

 

[lovingkindness]

...I could go the self-publish route but as a literature graduate and from a family of published (specialist) writers, I've always wanted to get the approval for my writing ability which I feel comes with "proper" publication. To sell crap would be awful...

Hello, Alison
...High achieving ancestors and writers in the family are such a burden....My father is 88 years old. He has self published 13 books and is working on another. All his life he has bowed at the feet of a couple of writing cousins wishing to become just as they -Katherine Mansfeild and Elizabeth von Arnim. Not only that, since babyhood he has challenged all his offspring and their children to write, write, write saying, Perhaps you have inherited the writing gene too...

Well done, Alison on studying literature. I wish I had. For some of us writing anything, even an email or a Forum post is an achievement to be proud of, even if others think it is 'crap'. I say, Well done for trying....

Lovingkindness

 

[Alison Chandler]

Hello, Alison
...High achieving ancestors and writers in ones family are such a burden....My father is 88 years old. He has self published 13 books and is working on another. All his life he has bowed at the feet of a couple of writing cousins wishing to become just as they -Katherine Mansfeild and Elizabeth von Arnim. Not only that, since babyhood he has challenged all his offspring and their children to write, write, write saying, Perhaps you have inherited the writing gene too...

Well done, Alison on studying literature. I wish I had. For some of us writing anything, even an email or a Forum post here is an achievement to be proud of, even if others think it is 'crap'. I say, Well done for trying....

Lovingkindness

Thanks so much. I should not be congratulated for studying literature. I didn't study much and only did it as the only subject I could get into University to do and then only because I was too immature to get a job and lucky enough to be born at a time when it wasn't expensive and living off lentils was seen as cool. I got good with words because I lived in a noisy family and it was the only way to get the salt passed.

 

[KinkyOne]

I'm a real noob regarding IT stuff, kindle etc. but as I imagine it - isn't that way so much easier to "publish" a book. I mean there's no paper and printing costs at least.
???
And maybe then after initial success comes the printed copy and all the rest?

Would love to read your book!

 

[emmanuel]

I walked on the Camino to Santiago de Compostela in October 2015 because 38 years ago I was a 19 year old student there and wanted to return the proper way, walking back as a pilgrim . As I dragged along , I was made to think about many near-misses in Spain in my liberated teenage 1970s when I grew up while Spain transitioned from fascism. I was reminded of my love for the poetry, history, language, geography and music of Spain. I was reminded of falling in love in the lamplight of the medieval town in 1977 with a young local banker. Meeting him again this autumn for one evening half way down the track changed my pilgrimage and my onward journey. I don't know of other books from the Camino whose writers were there in the arms of Spain when its regions sang free for the first time in the mid-late 70s. The interactions on Camino forced me to think too about the journeys women travel leading each other, walking beside each other or leaving each other behind. I have woven all of these into 43,000 words of memoire with the voices of poets and others that I thought about as I walked and recovered. There are tales of my escape from the Guardia Civil and many historic steps forward for Spain’s musicians, book-sellers, transvestites and voters who I walked beside in the 1970s. There are Facebook postings along the way and thoughts of home on the North East coast of Scotland. There is useful detail for travellers and poetry from Andalucia, Catalunya, Galicia and Chile. There are excerpts on medieval women’s and modern pilgrimage, on psychology, art and the facts of women’s situation in Spain in the 1970s. I have framed it all in the 6 days of walking through the most poetic of landscapes , climaxing with a change of plan in the middle that sent me reeling, and in the first four days home when my body was surprisingly fine but my mind swirling and I captured the truth of my multi-facetted experience. It is my onward journey and I hope someone will read it before their own Camino, find it useful and stimulating and take it with them slim in their backpack and perhaps leave it under a pillow along the Way. Before that I need to get it published.
Any comments?

I love your writing already, and the story sounds enticing. How can I get my eager hands on it?

 

[Tincatinker]

Alison has not visited the Forum since April 2016.

A Kindle edition of her book is available here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07TNRJ99Q/?tag=casaivar-21

 

[emmanuel]

Alison has not visited the Forum since April 2016.

A Kindle edition of her book is available here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Walking-Backwards-Up-Apostles-Nose-ebook/dp/B07TNRJ99Q/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22UGYW8ZP98KX&keywords=alison+chandler&qid=1642614271&sprefix=alison+chandler,aps,87&sr=8-1

Thank you, Tincan, I failed to notice the date!