Beth Jordan Interview Published on: 14, Feb 2024

I was born in Bangalore, South India, and currently living in the Highlands of Scotland, amongst the wildlife, lochs, hills and valleys, which I roam around constantly, all throughout the year. 

That's a big bit.

I started my career wanting to be an SRN nurse, specialising in tropical medicine with the intention of returning to India to work. But for whatever reason, that did not happen and I switched to teaching, specialising in primary education. I loved it but decided to quit after my first child  was born in the early years of my marriage, his life taking prioity. I needed to think about how best I could work and be with him so a friend suggested I look at the world of antiques, an area I knew very little about. 

I set out to find what part of the antique world I loved the best and it turned out to be textiles – umh, I wonder where that came from.  My Grandmother and Aunts were courtier dressmakers, and I inherited their talent, so from making my own clothes, to converting antique textiles and laces to garments to sell to Neiman Marcus in New York, to setting up a business in fashion and textiles, seemed to be the way my life's path was taking me.  

I continued in this area of business, designing, manufacturing out of China and India, selling under my own brand and white label to the UK and European market.

This lasted a long time. It was exciting being in fashion but nerve racking, distracting, competitive, highly charged, damaging on family life and on my own, so during the pandemic, (turned out to be a good time for me) as I sold mainly to the retail trade, my business naturally took a back step. I too took a back step and reconsidered what I wanted to do as a future career.  With all the knowledge, skills, contacts and wherewithall I had accrued during my business career, I happened to discover a Personal and Professional Coaching course, enrolled on it for one year, and once again, taking my former business experience together with my Coaching Diploma, set up my new Business Coaching and Mentoring service.

During all my travels I kept diaries of all the places I visited with some vague notion that one day I would like to become a travel writer.  I knew for example that travelling to China in the early 1980s was a very special time for China, as it had begun to open up to the West again and I could see change all around me, in the cities and countryside.  So I began to take numerous photos, logging my journies. . (In fact, I wish I had kept even more detailed diaries of my previous journies) but as my travelling continued I took more detailed notes.

As I said above, I felt the need to record the countries I was visiting.  I had also studied anthropology at Birbeck College in London, and this helped me to see cultures from several perspectives.  I have always had a great respect for the cultures that I visited, being mindful of their beliefs and differences.  Further, coming from a country such as India and part of my inheritance is rooted there, it was natural for me to want to keep in touch and become more intensely familiar with all new environments. The easiest way for me to record through diary keeping and photography.

Back in the early 2000s, I again happened to stumble upon an email sent to me about creative writing with Jonathan Lorie and Travellers Tales, in London.  I became excited by the very title and remembered my diary keeping and thought it would be interesting to find out if I could write.  I know that travel writing is different to memoir writing but the two, of course, can be combined, which comes through in my first novel.

I spent six months learning about what travel writing meant, how to write up ones travels, how to describe places, faces, spaces, smells, sounds, how to engage your reader.  Diary entries are one thing, putting flesh on them to make them interesting is an art form.  Through the various exercises we had to do I was surprised at how one could evoke powerful images through the written work; more surprised by the hunger and need awakened in me.

What did I learn?  The releasing of my unborn writer.

It was the pandemic again, that gave me the opportunity to consider seriously turning my diaries into a possible novel.  Once again, I stumbled upon an email from a writing group in Brighton, South England, who were offering a creative writing course in Memoir writing.  So, remembering my time with Jonathan Lorie, I decided to pick up my pen again and continue my writing journey. 

Dorothy Max Prior is a well-known author, editor and once a upon a time punk muse, post-punk drummer and exotic dancer.  I love her breath of life. She was my tutor on the memoir creative writing course.  She took us through the whole structure of how to write memoir, the building blocks, how to show not tell.  We researched other famous memoir writers; we had to do a lot of writing based on themes, learning how to explore, express and engage the reader.  Each piece of writing we submitted was analysed and critiqued by Max, which helped me to slowly begin to understand how to create a story. It was a very thorough and in- depth writing course.  Maybe I should now do a creative writing degree. 

I'm quite a naturally disciplined person, so while writing my first novel, I set myself a realistic goal of two years.  I often found myself thinking about the story, words to use and how to express them and would write at least five times a week, when I knew that I would not be disturbed. I would sometimes write 1000 words, sometimes six thousand words.  During Max's course we were set a task of writing ‘x' thousand of words per week. This was a helpful way to discover how long 'x' thousand words would take, bearing in mind the thought process in writing, finding one’s style, and how to create the flow to the writing. 

It's been easy.  Easy because when I made the decision to stop my business it was during the pandemic.  This then gave me a new sense of freedom to change direction and rewrite the time flow of my life.  So now I have learned a new discipline of creating modules of time for whatever it is I need to do and how best to prioritise my time. 

The book’s inception began during my writing course with Max.   The very first writing excercise we had to write was a theme called - 'A sense of place'.  Unbeknown to me, lurking in my subconscious was the last major and impactful place I had visited, which was Cuba.  I took up my pen and just wrote the opening lines to sitting on an old stone bench in Jose Marti Plaza in Havana.  I wrote 1500 words and submitted it to Max, who gave me her nod of approval. From there I just couldn't stop writing.

I guess that as I have started with the genre of memoir, which is based on true events in one’s life, my stories are steeped in real life events, recharged with parts that require it to be based on fiction so as to create another dimension of wholeness. Each part of fact/fiction enhances the whole story creating a mystery and magic which all stories require. 

I would like people to journey with me through my words to places they have not visited and visualise themselves in those unknown areas of the world, to broaden their understanding of new cultures and differences. If they have, hopefully they can relive their memories and relate to what I have written.

Having travelled to certain parts of the world which many people may never visit but have views and opinions that are not accurate, through lack of travel knowledge, I aim to show them new cultures (ok through my eyes) but eyes that genuinely want them to understand these cultures and to see how similar we all really are.

Writing about the people I met, I had to remember all the small facts and looks about them, their smile, the way they spoke, stood, how I related to them and they to me.   I also had to reflect upon the society in which they had grown up, ie cuban society and try to understand their behaviour and the impact on their character when I wrote about them through the story. I also had to work out how genuine they were towards me, a woman from the west apparently having so much more than them.  I hoped I had had enough life experience to understand them, but in this cuban story, I did get their character traits wrong sometimes.  But that is what made the story.

When I think I know so much, and I realise how little I know.

Oh Yes.  I'm juggling to decide which to write first as both are in diary form. A story entitled 'Don't Shout I can hear You',  of my mother's decline through Alzheimers, its impact, of her life in India, her very being, her memories, and what are memories.  I kept a diary of my mother's decline for almost two years till her death.  I find it hard even now to pick up the diary without crying, so I have to find a way of not doing that while I recreate the diary into a memoir. The other option is to write a memoir called 'The Vodka Women' of six women who go on a horse riding trip to Mongolia, to raise money for their favoured charities. Lots of vodka drinking, freezing nights, and wonderful riding through the Ghenti mountains.

With the current book, I am getting involved with an organisation in Havana who supports orphanages, raising funds to send a great deal of necessities.

I will continue to develop my creative writing process.  There is a long way to go with that.  To learn more about the writing craft and how to engage the reader even more.

Further to get to understand how to market self published books.
An Agent may help

In general to learn to balance the joy of writing with the difficulties of marketing ones work