A peek inside the (tiny) house that words built

On allowing ourselves to have our dreams

Still can’t quite believe the Blackdown team engraved my own words onto the steps of my new wrting hut…

						gazing at the moon
						face reflected in the glass
						a blank page awaits

							- by me 

There is a common thread woven through my favourite poems and passages from long ago Japan. They were written by people who actively sought out solitude and silence on the road or in quiet mountain huts, like poet and Zen Master Ryōkan who lived alone on Mount Kugami two centuries ago. In one beautiful untitled poem he wrote of playing a lute with no string, with a silent melody that entered wind and cloud, mingled with a stream, filled out the dark valley, blew through the vast forest then disappeared. Peering into the heart of the human condition he asked, “Other than those who hear emptiness, / Who will capture this rare sound?”^⁠¹

Finding space and quiet to ponder life in this way is neither easy nor practical for many of us in the modern world. We have jobs to go to, bills to pay, families to care for, not to mention our media addiction. But those are just logistics to deal with, not reasons not to write.

Solitude is fertile. We need to find ways to step away from the noise and enter a sacred writing space. We need a hermitage of our own - a humble, empty room with a crack in the roof where the moon shines through. In this hermitage we can write without distraction, and reach through what is in front of us to discover what lies beyond.

After years of squeezing writing in whenever I can I know for sure that I am a better, more awake version of myself for having written. I feel recharged, and I have more patience, compassion, and enthusiasm for everything and everyone else once I have written. Realising that writing can be good for me and for my family has really helped deal with guilt and get to the page.

Doing this day after day for over ten years has led to all kinds of blessings, like six books out in the world and a real sense of belonging within this incredible community. This week it led to a blessing so special I still can’t quite believe it - I took delivery of a shepherd’s hut, and not just any shepherd’s hut but a tiny home for my words, which I helped ideate based on a decade of writing and solo retreating, with the intention of creating the perfect space to write.

I wanted to share this moment with you, firstly because I know how much so many of you share my love of writing, and of tiny things, but also because I think it’s really important that we allow ourselves to have our dreams - especially those we have worked so very hard for.

image courtesy of Blackdown Shepherd Huts

Working with the team of craftspeople at Blackdown Shepherd Huts on this project has been a career highlight.

It’s 4am and the rain is pouring down. The fire is crackling, a candle is flickering, and I am here in my cosy slippers, notebook in my lap, searching for the moon through the stargazing window in the roof. As writing spaces go, this one is more perfect than I could have imagined.

I have named her Feathers. Of course I have. Those of you who have known me for a long time will know that birds have had deep meaning for me throughout my writing life, and this feels at once like a nest, and a writing instrument, and a symbol of freedom.

Every penny I paid towards this hut was earned by the words I have written into notebooks just like this, often by candlelight just like this, in quiet pockets of time I have managed to carve out within a busy life. I take a moment to think about that, and speak aloud my gratitude to all those who have inspired me and supported me on this journey, and to the Blackdown carpenters who have crafted this tiny home for my words with such love, care and attention. This past week Blackdown was named by The Times as one of the Best British Makers, and I am not surprised. The details in this place are exquisite. And when I say tiny, I mean perfectly formed. Everything you need and nothing that you don’t.

I look over to the woodburner, radiating light and warmth, and glance down at the fire surround where a craftsman has so carefully engraved the words ‘WE GET TO HAVE THIS DAY’. Some of you might recognise those words from my book Kokoro: Japanese wisdom for a life well lived – my mother spoke them to me at the hospice each morning when she woke up, looked out to the garden and realised she was still alive. They are some of the most precious words I carry and are a daily reminder to stay present and grateful for each day we have.

Those aren’t the only words engraved on this hut. The windowsill above the desk is perfectly scorched with my words ‘BREATHE. WRITE. REPEAT.’ as a gentle reminder of what to focus on, when the world seems chaotic, or things seem overwhelming and my mind needs a way to still itself.

And the steps leading up to the hut carry my mantra – the words I tell everyone, and tell myself anytime self-doubt strikes:

THE WORLD NEEDS YOUR MEDICINE.

Some time soon I’ll give you a proper tour of the hut if you’d like that? (Let me know in the comments!) But for today I just wanted to share how being in it, with the rain pouring down and just flame and page as companions, I feel utterly content.

I am reminded of that mysterious midnight email I sent myself a couple of years ago – the one that contained just three words: Joy. Boats. Time, and I realise that this hut is the physical manifestation of those three words. The whole place is so beautifully crafted it is a joy to behold, and to be in. With the doors closed and the fire on and a near storm outside, it feels like being contained in the safety of a boat with the hatches battened down against the wild world. And time? Well that just stops when you are inside it.

Just last week an old friend Holly Bobbins sent me this photo. She had been sorting through some things and found these poems we wrote in primary school. (It says Class 8, but I left the school we attended together at the end of year five, so I’m guessing we were about ten when we wrote them).

image courtesy of @hollybobbins

‘Some of your first writings…’ she said on the Whatsapp message. What treasure! It reminded me how much I have always loved words, and if I think back to my eight year old self, making magazines with my friend Kirsty on her dad’s fancy computer, writing scrapbooks every holiday, keeping a diary, turning my bookshelves into a library with lending tickets and so on, I realise that to have a space like this to create in is a dream I have been quietly carrying for more than four decades.

I am reminded that we never know where our words will lead us, and that it is OK to have our dreams. It has taken me a very long time to realise that last part, so engrained is the idea that we have to struggle in a creative life, that everything is hard, and if we aren’t feeling stressed about things we aren’t doing it right, or working hard enough. Then there’s the one about us not deserving to have beauty in our lives. Where does that even come from?

In recent years I have been working to unravel these kinds of stories and tell myself a new one, and here we are today, candle lit, fire burning, ready to write.

Quite by chance, the timing couldn’t be more perfect. This week is significant in my writing life in three separate ways, each five years apart.

→ Fifteen years ago today I started my company Do What You Love, which has allowed me to spend a huge part of my life in the company of all of you fine people, working together to find ways to do what we love and make the most of this precious life, even if those ways are sometimes unorthodox or at odds with what what we have been conditioned to think is possible for us, or what society wants us to do. When my husband called me ‘a rebel with a dictionary’, he was not wrong! (By the way, earlier this week I shared the 38 surprising lessons I have learned in those fifteen years here, in case you are interested)

→ Ten years ago this month I submitted my first ever book proposal, for Freedom Seeker, my debut non-fiction book that was published by Hay House a month before my fortieth birthday. Six books, sixty book deals and nearly thirty languages later, I still can’t quite believe I get to do this and call it work. There is no joy quite like the specific joy of writing a book.

→ And then five years ago this month the audiobook version of Wabi Sabi was released in America and named by Apple as a ‘Must Listen’ on iTunes USA – something that had never happened to me before and paved the way for me narrating all my own audiobooks which I absolutely love.

This week’s delivery of this special writing hut feels no less significant than any of those things, because right now I can’t even imagine what might be possible with my own dedicated space to write, and think, and dream in. It has taken me fifteen years to allow myself this dream. It may seem like a real luxury – and for sure it is very luxurious – but I am finally ready to accept that a space conducive to writing is as justifiable as a professional writer as a plumber’s van full of tools is to that plumber. It took me a while to take this need for time and space quite so seriously, and I have always been curious about why that is. Something to do with conditioning relating to worth, perhaps, or feelings of guilt, but I earned this space, and I am proud of that, as well as grateful to every single person who has ever read, shared or recommended one of my books or other writing. THANK YOU!

Here’s to many more years, and many more books, and many more ways of us growing together in this beautiful community.

I should add that is not essential to have a dedicated space to write – we can learn to write from anywhere (as I have proved to myself over the past decade and teach in my classes) - but I can’t think of a much better way to invest the proceeds of writing than on a space that will make it so much easier for me to write even more, in service of you all.

I wish I could invite you all round for a mug of hot tea by the fire, but in lieu of that I will be inviting you over in different ways in the coming months, firstly as part of my upcoming Winter Writing Sanctuary (which is free to all, so do register here. It runs from December 29-January 4 online and I will be sending it out from Feathers this year). I do hope you’ll join.

For now, I’ll leave you with this…

						Watching the moon
						at midnight,
						solitary, mid-sky,
						I knew myself completely,
						no part left out.

							- by Izumi Shikibu 
							 (trans. Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani)
							which can be found in The Ink Dark Moon

The work of the fearless writer is done step by step, day by day. Every time you show up in your sacred writing space, whatever that looks like, every time you pay attention to your life, every time you write a word, a sentence, a page, you move in the direction of a fearless writing life. I keep telling myself this, and I keep on writing, and becoming a little more fearless with every passing day.

Tell me, where is your favourite place to write? I’d love to know. Feel free to share in the comments!

Beth Xx

PS If you’d like to join my virtual sacred writing space SoulCircle, be sure to join tomorrow’s Late Autumn Live Writing Circle at 7pm UK time. This is free to all members of SoulCircle (my paid subscription on Substack) and it’s a gorgeous 75-minutes of writing together alongside fellow writers from across the world. If you aren’t yet a member you can updated to paid below or go to bethkempton.substack.com/subscribe and choose ‘Monthly’ to try it out or ‘Annual’ to get a lovely discount.

Gingerbread shepherd hut by Kate Trenchard (@kate.trenchard on Instagram)

PPS As a thank you to the Blackdown team for their incredible work on my writing hut, I wanted to do something special so I commissioned super talented baker Kate Trenchard to make a gingerbread shepherd’s hut for them, complete with fairy lights and everything. Isn’t this the most adorable baked treat you have ever seen?

1. Sky Above, Great Wind: The Life and Poetry of Zen Master Ryokan by Kazuaki Tanahashi (Boulder: Shambhala, 2012), p.140