Thread 14: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

The Observer's original exposé: The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...

The 13 Observer items currently available on their online 'The real Salt Path' page: The real Salt Path | The Observer

3 more from The Observer:

‘Hope is extinguished’: CBD patients respond to Salt Path...

The real Salt Path | The Observer (The Slow Newscast)

‘We thought: it can’t be the Salt Path couple – they’d ha...

Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement: Raynor Winn

Thread One ^www.mumsnet.com/talk/amibeingunreasonable/5368194-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?^

Threads 2-11: Links all in the OP of Thread 12

Thread 12: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5384574-thread-12-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Thread 13: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5386458-thread-13-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

New posters joining us in the genuine spirit of our civil discourse welcome. It would be helpful to read at least some of the Observer items above before posting. There are currently 16 interesting items on The Observer website and linked to above.

To all - Please be extremely cautious when it comes to naming or implicating people and addresses not in the public eye or with no direct connection to the story, and around the understandable health speculations, especially where details are unclear or still emerging. Please do not engage with visitors who seem to have their own agenda and seek to derail. Avoid @'ing and quoting them as - from experience - this will only encourage them back to the threads. We have done amazingly well together for thirteen very interesting, very serious and very silly threads so far. I can't be here as much as I'd like so all help with keeping our discussion walking along in our usual reasonable and respectful fashion is very welcome.

Are we all becoming Hyperglycaemic from all the fudge?
Have shares in Cadbury's gone up?
Can we remain cheerful in the face of such shameless glumwashing?
Will I need to fill up with much petrol this thread for the drive-by scoldings?
Will our Chloe H get exclusive interviews with the disgruntled peregrine, tortoise and Hollywood rabbits?
What has our Simon A got to say about this, preferably in verse?

Keep to the path. No saltiness. May the fudge be with you.

Ego, possibly, made it irresistible.
Or thinking that the NDA she'd signed with Hemmings meant the truth would never come out.. especially after so long.

Last I remember reading, the film had done well but was still waiting on a release in two key markets. One was the USA - it's still not out there, and there must be doubts about it getting a release now - and the other was Germany - it's now showing there. The screenshot below is of its blurb on a German cinema site: interest to note it says they have 'no hiking experience'! I wonder if there are threads somewhere on a German chat site where people who've read the book are trying to work out all the contradictions..

Interesting piece on the film's success here - may have got this from an earlier thread here!
https://www.screendaily.com/features/selling-the-salt-path-how-international-distributors-are-turning-the-uk-film-into-a-box-office-hit/5206233.article

Usually it's just a one-off payment to the writer of the book a film is adapting, though, so it won't make much difference how much money the film makes -- some writers do have 'back end' contracts that get them a percentage of box office, but that's relatively unusual.

Thanks. Someone said they’ve likely got 6 figures from film (?) Sounds realistic & 2-4 million in instalments all told.

Dave. Julie. We're here. Ready when you are.

@HeroicFailure sorry, the ‘sounds realistic’ a question.

Also there's that possibility that she began to believe in her own myth. Read enough reviews telling you that you are the next (fill in details of some author that you believe to be the greatest ever) and you can start to believe it. So perhaps SW actually began to think that she was better than she was, and that she deserved all the kudos she was getting; that her writing really was amazing.

@DisappointedReader I'm now imagining you as someone who bought two rabbits, supposedly both boys, and now keeps looking into her rabbit run in the mornings and losing count, somewhere between amusement and horror.

If I was her I’d be worried about teaching nature writing on the course & think not in position to or frankly, good enough. It’s not brilliant writing, is it?

Are you asking me whether that sounds realistic?

Honestly, with the film I genuinely don't know -- SW could have negotiated for a smaller up-front fee and a back end deal getting her a percentage of profits.

(It's an old story now, but Joanne Harris took a risk, sold the film rights to Chocolat for £5000 but got £100,000 from profits.)

Film fees vary so wildly -- big studios can pay ludicrous sums. The Fifty Shades of Shite writer got $5 million for the film rights. But small UK producers on a small budget won't have that kind of money upfront.

I'd say the money made from the books alone is at the lower end of that sum.

It's not wonderful nature writing, but I've seen worse. And to teach writing you don't have to be able to write brilliantly, you have to be able to inspire your students to see the world differently. I know plenty of people who teach writing whose books I would not recommend to anyone with a vocabulary, but they are still good teachers.

Although most of them think they are better writers than they are, of course.

I do think there's a little in all authors of seeking validation - it's not perhaps the sole motivation for wanting to be published but it is part of it. I guess you could say that about any of the arts though.

The different promotion strategies in different territories thing is interesting. That in Australia and NZ “We intentionally highlighted themes of later-life adventure, romance, and authentic living, rather than focusing on the more serious aspects of the story”

It might mean that box office is less harmed in territories where they've sold it in this way? The Aus/NZ distributors also say that the book is less well-known in the market there, so presumably far fewer viewers seeing it with preconceptions.

Though they also say “Our strategy involved building on this grassroots audience and engaging mature nature and lifestyle influencers who valued authenticity.” It depends, I suppose, on what they mean by 'authenticity' here -- influencers will usually have a strong grasp on just how 'curated' many forms of online authenticity often are.

Thanks for the laugh @HeroicFailure . I need it today! I need it most days!

Perfect analogy, except it is even worse than that! I am the sort of person to be exceptionally careful not to buy any rabbits at all, let alone 'two male' ones!

Yet here we are. Thread mugshot below!

I agree. Isn’t there an art/methodology to teaching any kind of writing, you can’t just rock up and teach creative/nature writing to a class? It feels arrogant just arrive with presumably no teaching experience?

Speaking, fireside chat style, about your own inspiration, sure I’d be comfortable. Teaching others ‘how’ to write, not so much.

I'm actually secretly of the opinion that you can't really 'teach' writing at all, all you can do is help people to make the best of their own writing abilities (I teach writing too, you can tell can't you?) But to teach nature writing would be easier in a lot of ways than teaching 'how to write a novel' classes, because you can take people outside and get them to feel nature, to look at it in a new and surprising way (you only have to guide them, you don't have to come up with the new and surprising descriptions yourself). Often the people being taught are so impressed to be meeting and listening to a multi published author that they will take anything you say as gospel.

And anyway, writing is SO subjective, that while someone might think you have written the next nature book ever, someone else will think it's a pile of poo, so you really just hope to strike them dumb with your sales figures. And SW can do that. So if challenged, she just has to say 'well, my last book sold xxxx million, and that gives me the authority to teach.'

Some Arvon courses are brief, online ones, 10am -to 4 pm, with a lunchbreak.

This is one on nature writing that RW did in March of this year.

-----
Raynor Winn is the prize-winning author of three Sunday Times bestsellers: The Salt Path, The Wild Silence and Landlines. Spend a day with Raynor, moving from observation to connection, and embrace the natural world.

Some of the most engaging written views of the natural world come when an author allows us to feel part of the nature they describe, rather than, say, showing us a picture of a hill they put us on the mountainside. John Muir wrote of his time in the wilderness, not as being out, but as going in. When we think of writing about nature, it’s easy to become so focused on what’s ‘out there’ that we forget the greatest understanding can come from being ‘in there’.

If you’re drawn to writing about the natural world, then together we’ll find ways not only to explain the life of a tree, but to feel its energy from root to leaf, to see a bird in the air and show your readers not just how it flies, but the feeling of its flight.

We’ll look at stepping away from the idea of observing the natural world as something outside of ourselves and find ways to express a world of which we are all part, to which we’re all connected, even if we’re not conscious of the bonds. Let’s spend a day ‘going in’.

@PullTheBricksDown
Last I remember reading, the film had done well but was still waiting on a release in two key markets. One was the USA - it's still not out there, and there must be doubts about it getting a release now - and the other was Germany - it's now showing there.
The film is definitely showing in Germany - starting July 17th and still going.
https://www.kinoprogramm.com/kino/muenchen/film/der-salzpfad-399694

Writing is certainly subjective. I can't read Matt Haig ( but I know he is a lovely man and others love his books madly hence the hundreds of thousands of great reviews on Amazon). SW's writing vs Thoreau/ John Muir etc .... hmm.

Sorry to barge in and post something that’s got nothing to do with the current conversation ( again), and it may have been brought up before, but I seem to remember in TSP that SW got ill and Moth found a hotel/ b&b to stay in for a couple of days where they bumped into Dave and Julie. I don’t remember there being an explanation about how they suddenly found the money to pay for this when they’d been counting the pennys to see if they could afford to buy some noodles. I may be wrong, just remember being puzzled at the time. Did I miss something? Did they beg money from Dave and Julie? Or did they do a runner? 😱I need to know.

Didn't mean to pick on Matt Haig necessarily- it was just an example of a massively popular author thar popped into my mind!

I don't think she's really a nature writer any more than she's really a travel writer, but it's that rather clichéd, Romantic 'I am a child of nature, not at ease between walls' thing in conjunction with a deeply ordinary 'Could be in an unedited travel blog' humdrumness of prose, that seems to hit a sweet spot for many people. Who can't imagine cycling to India by themselves or walking from the Netherlands to Istanbul, but can seemingly place themselves in SW's slightly scatty, professional underdog hiking boots.

So in a way it's the fact that her writing isn't very good that has contributed to the book's success. She's a kind of Everywoman, pitched out into the world in difficult circumstances.

I also have a vague theory that another part of the appeal for some readers is that so many people the Walkers meet in TSP are presented as unpleasant, dismissive, hostile to the homeless, unappreciative of the natural world, taking the wrong kind of holiday etc etc, that it becomes a kind of fantasy to insert yourself into the book as the one person who looks them straight in the eye and gets them, and stands up for them ('You can't charge homeless people for camping on your campsite, you pseudo-hippy jobsworth!' or 'No, these fine people are not tramps grovelling drunk on the street, but brave souls fallen on hard times!'

I'm catching up after a couple of weeks off! I noticed in this article https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/we-thought-it-cant-be-the-salt-path-couple-theyd-have-told-us-they-were-homeless

Winn wrote back a few days later to clarify the discrepancy in the dates. She said she and Moth had walked the coast path in 2013, as she claimed in The Salt Path, but walked part of the coast again in 2015. “That’s when we met you,” she says in her email to Joanne. Winn then admitted she had presented the meeting as having happened in 2013. “We didn’t explain any of that [in the book], as it all just seemed too complicated,” she said. Winn also apologised for misremembering the details about the tent.

I remembered that we had speculated - a few threads ago now - that the writing had been a joint venture. Remember how we were talking about the way Tim is presented with the young women massaging him etc? And that it seemed like an inclusion that a man would write?

“We didn’t explain any of that [in the book], as it all just seemed too complicated,” - the WE seems out of place, unless they were both writing it.

Personally I think they sat down and cooked up a sob story that followed an arc that is proven to do well, and did their research as well (thinking of the driftwood structure on the beach), used bits and pieces and people and a rough story - and she pitched it because the angle of devoted wife watching her beloved husband's degenerative condition was gold dust, given how many women buy books and love women's stories. Not saying he hasn't got an illness - how could we know? we can only suspect it's not as presented in the book.

Presenting it as fact, truth, was spectacularly stupid. I bet they are kicking themselves now. I would love to know who tipped off the journalists to delve into the story of the embezzlement, too. To think that all of it could have been avoided if people didn't already know them to be liars.

In Weymouth? It's never said, but I agree it's a little mysterious. I don't think they can have done a runner, as they eat breakfast in the dining room and don't seem to be in any hurry to be off, and when SW says, while she's still retching on a bench, 'We can't afford this', TW says 'It's done, it's all paid for', suggesting he'd already paid before he brings her there.

Mind you, the previous time she's ill at Tintagel, they do camp for two nights in a campsite, and do a runner, walking confidently past the reception.

I think the "we" is in the context of when they were talking in the cafe. I read it as meaning: "We didn't explain in the cafe about how we'd already done the path in 2013 [which is in the book] as it seemed too complicated."

[ETA Though your reading is valid too, so it's rather ambiguous.]