Autumn Writing Update The Woman Who Carried an Elephant and Recent Reads
The first cold mornings have arrived, and with them that unmistakable turn in the year. After the long, fierce heat of summer, autumn feels like a hand gently closing the garden gate. The trees are dressing themselves in golds and reds, the light has softened, and the animals are already busy preparing for the spare months ahead.
There is something deeply comforting about this change. The world outside begins to slow, and we are invited to do the same. We draw the curtains earlier. We reach for warmer clothes. We bring our activity indoors. For me, that also means a welcome return to longer stretches of writing, reading, and reflection.
This season feels especially right to concentrate on my new non-fiction book, The Woman Who Carried an Elephant, as well as a few thoughts on the books that have kept me company recently.
Autumn is a natural season for turning inward
Autumn has always felt to me like a season of reckoning. Spring asks us to begin. Summer asks us to expand. Autumn asks us to gather, sort, and make ready for the winter months.
That is perhaps why the writing feels so alive at the moment. There is less distraction in autumn, or at least a different sort of distraction. The garden no longer demands the same rush of energy. The heat no longer makes us idle. The early evenings create a boundary between us and the outside world.
Writing a book is rarely a smooth line from first idea to finished manuscript. It is more like walking through a wood in changing light. Some paths are clear at once. Others disappear under leaves. Occasionally, a sentence opens a gate to flow.
The Woman Who Carried an Elephant is taking shape
My new non-fiction book explores the patterns we often confuse with our real identity. Many of these patterns form early in life. They are shaped by circumstance, family, culture, fear, need, praise, rejection, and the deep human desire to belong.
A child learns very quickly what wins approval and what causes trouble. One learns to be quiet. Another learns to perform. One becomes responsible far too soon. Another hides behind charm, intellect, obedience, humour, achievement, or defiance. At first, these responses are not false. They are intelligent. They help us manage the world as we understand it.
The difficulty comes later, when a survival pattern hardens into identity.
A person may say, “This is just who I am,” when in truth they are describing a role they had to adopt. That role may have helped them feel safe, loved, useful, or acceptable. Over time, it may also have narrowed their sense of self.
The Woman Who Carried an Elephant looks at this tension. It asks how a pattern forms, why we cling to it, and what happens when it no longer serves us.
The title image of carrying an elephant speaks to the emotional weight of these old patterns. An elephant is not a small burden. It is huge, powerful, memorable, and impossible to ignore. Yet many people grow so used to carrying their inner burdens that they barely notice the strain. They simply continue.
Creatures, archetypes, and the patterns we live by
The framework of the book is influenced by Carl Jung’s ideas about archetypes, though it moves into a new structure of its own. I am using creatures as a way to explore recurring inner patterns, because creatures carry an immediate emotional and imaginative charge.
We understand something through animal and creature imagery. A creature may be watchful, burdened, hidden, armoured, restless, loyal, predatory, timid, or magnificent. These qualities allow us to approach inner life without reducing it to labels.
The book asks readers to consider the creature-like pattern they may have developed in response to their earliest circumstances as a doorway into understanding themselves.
Each pattern in the book explores several questions.
What conditions helped this pattern form?
What did it protect?
What strengths came with it?
What did it cost?
What happens when the person can no longer live freely inside it?
This last question matters. A pattern can be both wise and limiting. It can be a shelter in childhood and a cage in adulthood. The point is not to condemn the pattern, but to understand it. The work of awareness is not to tear away the old self. It is to see clearly, perhaps for the first time, what we have mistaken for the whole of who we are.
Autumn seems an apt time to think about our inner world. The trees let go of what they no longer need. They do not apologise for the falling leaves.
Recent reads that have stayed with me
Reading has been another source of way of growing as a writer. The books have been varied, from nostalgic family memory to painful social reality, from historical fiction to a spare American classic. Each has left its own impression.
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake was a wonderful, nostalgic look at a seemingly forgotten past. The novel centres on Lara as she recalls her youthful love and early acting life, while her daughters listen with fascination.
What I enjoyed most was the way the past is not presented as a simple golden age. Memory in this book has warmth, but also distance. Youthful love is seen through older eyes, and that gives the story depth. The family’s excitement about Lara’s history adds another layer, especially in the contrast between what children imagine about a parent’s past and what the parent knows to be true.
A Walk Across the Sun by Corban Addison
A Walk Across the Sun by Corban Addison was a much more disturbing read. It offers a portrait of human trafficking that moves from India to America, following a story shaped by exploitation, vulnerability, and the systems that allow such cruelty to continue.
This is not a light book. The subject matter is painful. The novel asks the reader to remain with experiences that are often hidden or ignored. Fiction can sometimes carry us towards truths we might otherwise avoid. This book did that.
The Women in the Shadows by Harriet Fox
The Women in the Shadows by Harriet Fox offered a lighter reading experience, though it is set against a serious historical period. It had the pace and feel of a romp in places, which made it enjoyable and easy to move through. I appreciated the energy of it, and the way it used its historical setting to create tension and intrigue but the ending disappointed me. Endings do not have to be neat but they need to be plausible. For me, this one did not quite satisfy the promise of the story.
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Our book club choice was John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, and returning to it was a reminder of what literary mastery can look like.
It is short, but nothing about it feels slight. Steinbeck wastes very little. The setting, the dialogue, the loneliness, the impossible dreams, and the growing sense of dread are all handled with extraordinary precision.
The relationship between George and Lennie remains deeply affecting. The book holds tenderness and brutality side by side, and it does so without excess explanation. Reading it again made me think about restraint in writing. A masterpiece does not always announce itself through size or complexity. Sometimes it does so through clarity, discipline, and emotional truth.
Writing, reading, and the season ahead
There is a rhythm in moving between writing and reading. Writing asks me to make choices, to shape thought, to bring the unseen into language. Reading reminds me how many ways there are to do this well.
Each of the books I have read recently has offered something different.
Tom Lake reminded me of the emotional power of memory.
A Walk Across the Sun reminded me that fiction can bear witness to suffering.
The Women in the Shadows reminded me how much an ending matters.
Of Mice and Men reminded me that brevity can hold enormous force.
All of these lessons return me to my own work with renewed energy. I find myself thinking about structure, honesty, pacing, and the responsibility of following an idea to its proper depth.
For The Woman Who Carried an Elephant, that means continuing to refine the creature framework, sharpening the descriptions of each pattern, and making sure the writing remains both thoughtful and accessible. I want a reader to feel recognition in the words and hopefully some ideas about themselves and their future.
Come and say hello at Fladbury Christmas Fayre
As the month moves on, there is also something festive to look forward to. I will be at Fladbury Christmas Fayre, where I will be selling and signing my books. November 21st 11am-2pm at Fladbury Village Hall.
If you are nearby, do come and say hello.
For now, I am grateful for the turn of the season. The heat has passed. The trees are alive with colour. The evenings are closing in. There is tea to be made, pages to be read, and sentences waiting patiently to be written.
I wish you a warm and enjoyable autumn, with good books close by and enough quiet to hear your own thoughts.
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