Writing Landscape

by Linda Cracknell

Inhabiting a landscape, walking a landscape, writing a place and time. Linda Cracknell is a writer of place and nature who believes in being alert, observing, and writing from the particulars of each experience. Engaging bodily with her writing, she is someone for whom getting mud on her boots, sleeping high up in the hills, or being slapped by salt water can all be part of her process. She follows Susan Sontag's advice to “Love words, agonize over sentences and pay attention to the world.” In this varied collection of essays, Linda backpacks on a small island that is connected to the mainland at low tide, musing on the nineteenth-century Scottish writer whose character was shipwrecked there. She hikes the wooded mountain trail close to her home in winter snow—a place she is intimately familiar with in all weathers and seasons—and she retraces the steps of a multiday hike made almost seven decades after her parents trod the route together. She explores her inspirations, in nature and from other artists and their work. Reading this collection will open your eyes to the world around you and how you can observe, take note, and later commit those notes and memories to written pieces that will evoke the place and time.

Genres: Writing, Nature, Nonfiction

144 pages, Paperback

First published April 6, 2023

About the author

Linda Cracknell writes short stories, novels, drama for BBC Radio Four, and creative non-fiction. She won the Macallan/Scotland on Sunday short story competition, and was shortlisted for the Scottish First Book Award for her story collection Life Drawing (Neil Wilson Publishing, 2000) and the Robin Jenkins Literary Award for environmental writing. Her second story collection A Searching Glance was published by Salt in 2008. She was the recipient of a Creative Scotland Award in 2007 for a project linking walking and writing. She edited the anthology A Wilder Vein (Two Ravens, 2011) and has contributed wide range of other anthologies and magazines. She lives in Highland Perthshire.

Reviews

[Larada Horner-Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a delightful book about writing, nature & Scotland. I bought it in Ullapool, Scotland & it has been a lovely reminder of some places we visited. Short, yet meaty!

[Luci · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

I grew up in the French Alps, in an eden-like environment between snowy mountain tops and evergreen valleys. Like Linda, I've always derived my strenght and imagination from nature. Like Linda, literature is an artform that I never cease to love.

So this book should be perfect for me, right?

Well it wasn't. And I was as disappointed in this as you can imagine.
Maybe it's because I'm not a huge fan of short stories, maybe it's because I didn't expect to read a very personal work, or because some of the passages were just too long, too full of complicated words that were only here to seem complicated.

(The last few pages with the author's tips for writing in nature are a redeeming trait though, and the description of landscapes were the highlights of the stories).

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful and gentle sojourn through nature, landscapes and lives. Perfect for both readers and writers of landscape literature. Linda Cracknell is the perfect guide on this journey showing how careful listening and engagement of all senses allows you to bring a little landscape magic home. Gorgeous gorgeous writing!

[Rebecca Stonehill · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful little book, as varied as the trails that Linda Cracknell takes to by foot and bike. It is filled with close observation of what inspires her in the natural world around her home in Scotland and further afield, and the wonderful discoveries she makes, made possible only by personal experience.

[Lynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This series of essays about the landscape and writing is wonderfully painted. I could see the Scottish landscape and feel the wind and salt spray. Enjoyed the longer walks that were part of wild camping. My favorite essay was about the Corbenic Poetry Path. I would like to walk that someday.

[Ms6282 Slater · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of short articles related to walking and otber aspects of outdoor life. A good little book I kept in my rucksack to read on shortish train journeys commuting and, especially, travelling to and from days out walking.

[Tina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meditative, reads like a meander through the landscape. Thoughtful, pensive and inspiring.

[Dr. des. Siobhán · Rating 3 out of 5]

A slim book about landscape writing. Sometimes touching, sometimes a bit too removed from the actual areas. I would've enjoyed some more in-depth engagement.