From the wild place

“What do you want?”

Four uncomplicated words, framing a simple question with an answer that is anything but.

My first answer: I don’t know, many things.

I want to start work on the illustrations for our next book. I want to crochet another rainbow jellyfish, needlefelt some tiny dogs, decorate more little wooden mushrooms, and create more tiny hand-made notebooks to fill with my favourite quotes. I want to make a shell mobile and knit some socks and paint with watercolour and draw with charcoal and sculpt a wire fairy.

I want to finish Archive of Stone and write a poem about the silver birch outside my window and I want to finish all the half written essays accumulating in my drafts.

I wanted to do Kit de Waal’s 6-month writing course, but it wasn’t to be (this time, at least).

Then I read this:

Own it.

I always tell my students to be honest about what they want… There is nothing wrong with aiming high, nothing wrong with ambition and the self-belief that comes from many hours of study, learning the craft, taking your writing seriously. The journey… might be long and might never happen but if [it’s] what you want, say it, own it and go for it.

Kit de Waal

Kit wanted to see her book on the 3 for 2 table in Waterstones.

Eleanor Anstruther wants to win the Booker Prize.

So, what do I want?

What do I really want?

I want many things, but there’s something else.

Something that I want that I have barely admitted even to myself. It is the reason I wanted to do Kit’s writing course.

And it started with a girl.

I drew Esmerelda in January 2023 without fully understanding who she was.

In September 2023, I drew Eirlys, and in the act of writing about her, she revealed her meaning to me — and with it, the beginnings of a shared world.

On 11 February 2024, standing beneath the Ukrainian Ironbelly at the Warner Bros. Studio Tour in London, the shape of what I wanted began to surface — to create a world and a story with that same richness, coherence, and imaginative depth.

A world and story I could love, as I have loved Harry Potter.

We flew to Spain on holiday the next day. Each night, as I lay waiting for sleep, the world of Esmerelda and Eirlys grew brighter and more defined.

On our final morning, I looked down from the balcony and watched a little girl dancing along the curved walkway above the water, lost in her imagination.

And from that wild place, the story began to unfold.

There is a magic in this world. But it is not the magic of wizards and wands, of spells and sorcery.

It is wild and powerful. Without it there would be no stories, no art or music. We would not dance or sing or make things.

It is a magic created in the space where pencil lines transform into art, where air vibrates into music, where movement becomes dance, where words gather into stories.

This is what I want.

With wishes for endless inspiration,