Letter from the Highlands, October 2001
by Anne Perry

This is not really a letter from the Highlands of Scotland at all. Actually as I write I am sitting on a Continental flight from Salt Lake City to Houston, and I hope to finish it on the flight from Houston to Newark, ready to fly to London tomorrow, and home to Scotland the day after. That is five days later than I had intended, but there cannot be anyone unaware of the reasons for delays all over the world, but most especially in America. I am blessed that all I experienced was the need to alter four flights and two hotel reservations, and ask my family and friends to continue looking after everything at home a few days longer.

There are an untold number of people who have suffered death, injury, loss and abiding grief, and all those I have seen have borne it with dignity and courage, and intense compassion for others. I have seen loyalty and resolve, but hardly any hatred to answer the hatred that gave birth to the horror which has occurred.

Please God may it always remain so. Righteous anger is to be expected. Injustice must be answered. We have not only a right but an obligation to protect ourselves and others. But to descend to hatred is to become equal with those who have committed such atrocities - and who in earth or heaven would wish to be equal to those who are consumed with the passion to destroy, regardless of whatever loss or injustice such desperation springs out of.

I have been moved profoundly by the beauty and the generosity of heart I have seen in response to horror and grief. It has shown the best in people of every kind. The world has expressed its unity in honour and in resolve. I pray that we neither forget, nor weaken in the courage it will require to fight against evil without ever picking up its weapons to strike back. If we do so, then they have truly won.

My journey began before Sept. 11^th. By then I had attended the Utah Writers' Conference which was very well organized and full of the kind of warmth and openness I have come to expect in Utah. There were only just over a hundred people, which is an excellent number, sufficient for interest and for exchange of ideas, but not so many that one loses the intimacy and sense of friendship. There were all kinds of writers, those who kept excellent journals or wrote wonderful letters to friends, writers of books to help in times of trouble or change in life, technical books, newspapers, periodicals and magazines, and of course novelists. I don't actually recall speaking with anyone else who wrote mysteries!

I was a little taken aback to learn that I had two hours in which to talk! In the event, I found I was happy to have so long. I never speak from notes, but I had given the matter a great deal of thought and prayer. I wished above all to say something that would be of help and encouragement to as many people as possible, and not to make anyone at all feel excluded or discouraged.

I planned to speak of writing as having three main aims, in ascending order of importance: to sell well, to be of high quality, to express the writer's beliefs with passion and integrity. If anything has to be sacrificed then it should be the first. But I believe it is possible to work and re-work, balance one element against another so that nothing need to be given up.

It is important to sell as well as possible because if you have anything worth while to say, it is good to say it to many people. More urgent than that, we all need to have a certain amount of money in order to pay our bills, mortgage or rent, eat, be clothed etc. The more money you earn from writing the less time you have to spend in doing something else to earn it! Yet more important than that, if you sell below a certain amount you will, in the course of the economics of publishing, be censored into silence. That is a terrible thing - but publishers cannot afford to publish something from which they cannot realize a financial return, and that necessarily involves numbers. To set up the print, design covers etc. for less than a certain amount is not economically viable. The greatest single element in selling, I believe, is the ability to tell a story. When your reader is compelled to know 'What happened next?', then he or she will turn the pages.

To write well is a deep subject worthy of much exploration, and some aspects of it must be matters of taste and opinion, others are agreed by most people. A certain ability with the language is necessary, as is strength in plotting, vividness of character, setting a scene, realistic dialogue, and so on. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that the single most important element was honesty, the ability to address from the heart those passions and experiences which are common to the human condition.

What must never be sacrificed is the integrity to your own beliefs. And that is far less easy than may be supposed at a glance. Before you can write what you believe, you must know what that is! It requires a long and deep journey of self-exploration, which is valuable in itself, whether you ever write a word of it or not. It is also at times painful, it needs constant effort, the absolute destruction of all excuses, self-justification, the glossing over of memory where pain has been denied or concealed, the constant re-assessment of experience, the power to forgive others and oneself, courage, honesty and humility.

But how could that be anything but good?

I think you have to balance the elements against each other, but I most profoundly do not believe that you have to sacrifice any of them! Well-written, exciting and honest books still sell.

I think I managed to say all that - in considerably greater detail - and people were extraordinarily generous in their response.

And the hotel was very pleasant also, and the food excellent. No rubber chicken at the banquet dinner - honestly.

I was looked after with great kindness, and on Sunday evening went to spend what I had expected to be four days with one of my dearest friends who lives in Sandy, planning to talk for days about all manner of things, to share music and favourite poetry, perhaps go and visit one of the mountain lakes.

As we all know, the events of Tuesday changed everything. I had to delay my leaving for five more days, but I could not have had a better place, or a better friend with whom to spend the time. She is an excellent driver, and took me to see places that must be unique on the face of the earth. We saw Moab, towers and valleys of fire-coloured rock, cathedrals, spires, serried ranks of giant frozen armies of fantastical shapes. We walked among them, climbed, smelled the aromatic pungency of sage and juniper, felt the heat of the sun without burning.

We spent the night in Moab, then went on to Goblin Valley, the Devil's Garden, south to Bryce, Inspiration Point and both Sunrise and Sunset points. I was so pleased with myself because I found that I could still walk and climb hundreds of feet of pathway at over thousand feet altitude. I would never have imagined my lungs would do that! And enjoy it!

It was beautiful beyond description - but the most ethereal of all was to drive through pine forests, across the silver-coated sage brush valley and then arrive at the northern rim of Grand Canyon at sunset when the whole gulf in the earth was filled with fire and shadows, vast beyond measuring, beautiful and elemental as creation itself, with the sky burning to the west and touching the high pinnacles towering above the shadows of indigo to bathe themselves in crimson like blood.

Standing in the glowing embers of twilight I could imagine how Abraham felt when God took him in spirit to see the formation of worlds. It was to see something of power and glory beyond the ordinary human mind to conceive. Truly it was to be touched for an hour by the majesty of God.

And as if that were not sufficient, there was then a four hour display of lightning, sheet lightning and fork lightning, and not a drop of rain.

We even saw wild deer, wild turkeys - and antelope! Not a thing was missed - could you believe, on the way home also - a great bull buffalo!

Now I return to my own land of beauty, the pale sands and the sea, the golden harvested fields, the mountains purple with heather, the turning colours of British autumn, fresh in the air, woodsmoke, wild sunsets over the sea. And above all to the love of my own family and friends - and animals. And a visit from two of the dearest friends I have in the world.

I am fed in mind and body and spirit, and looking forward to getting back to work with a new story. I feel as if I have more to say, that perhaps I can say it with more passion, more skill, more gratitude for life, for time, and the chance to try harder.

May God be with all of us - in sunlight and in shadow.

Click here to sign up for Meridian's FREE email updates.

Letter from the Highlands Archive