Lucy Caldwell: The Story So Far...

I'm writing this from Cathaoir Synge - Synge's Chair - a rocky cliff-top spot on the island of Inis Meáin, off the west coast of Ireland, where the great writer came 100 years ago to live among the people and study their speech and stories, and where he found much of his inspiration. A couple of hundred metres below me, the Atlantic is seething, hurling itself in crashing waves against the base of the island, sending plumes and billows of spray almost as high as where I'm sitting.

It's a raw, whippy-winded day, and occasional streams of bright light are breaking through the tattered remnants of storm clouds above. It feels a suitably dramatic setting in which to be composing this week's column. Life lately has been a giddy whirl, even more helter-skelter than normal, and I've come to the Aran Islands for much-needed solitude, to clear my head and write.

Inis Meáin feels an auspicious place to be. My earliest attempt at playwriting was inspired by J M Synge's Deirdre of the Sorrows. And Druid, the Galway-based theatre company producing my first play, Leaves, in a fortnight or so's time, recently staged the full cycle of Synge's plays - all six of them back to back; it was utterly incredible; the best thing I've ever seen.

I am lucky to have a friend who has offered me the use of his family's summer cottage here. It's a thatched, whitewashed dwelling only a short distance from the cottage where Synge himself stayed: the view is of the vastness of the ocean, and the relentless rolling waves. The island is beautiful; but it must be one of the bleakest, most desolate places on Earth. Less than 200 people live here; and when night falls, the silence, and the blackness, are complete.

Huddled beside a turf fire last night, rain lashing down outside, I had a flash of insight into the strange world of Synge's plays: the prospect of strangers knocking on doors late at night, of corpses who only pretend to be dead, of High Kings and massacres and fortresses in flames suddenly seemed all too real.

When you're alone, especially in a place like this, time does strange things. I might have been sitting here, thinking and writing, for an hour, or two, or more; I have no watch, and so no way of checking. But the pages of my notebook are soft and damp; my mitten-less fingers so cold they won't hold a pen for much longer, so I'll have to leave Synge's shelter and trek back along the cliff to my cottage, to work on my next play.

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