For several years pre-pandemic, August and the months leading up to it meant only one thing: Edinburgh Fringe.

When I was director of For Books’ Sake, my co-director Paul and our partners-in-crime Bridget and Jo took our spoken word show to Fringe for several years in a row, starting in a shambolic room above a tiki bar with falling-down plywood walls and doors that on one memorable occasion were literally ripped off their duct-taped hinges by over-eager would-be audience members, and ultimately bringing our brand of defiant queer joyful chaos to the far more civilised setting of the Scottish Poetry Library.

Before that, I went with my queer writing group, doing a surreal mixture of group and solo performances while also seeing as much live theatre, drag, comedy, music and performance art as we possibly could and sleeping barely at all. (I wrote more about that in my essay in the Dear Damsels collection, So Long As You Write).

​I’ve been to Edinburgh Fringe in a haze of grief, days after losing a close friend to suicide. I’ve been to Fringe while grossly ill (thank you Paul for dosing me up with Lemsips in our Musselburgh caravan and making us have a Scooby Doo duvet day). I’ve been to Fringe and been absolutely dazzled by being part of a community of so many amazing, talented, innovative and hard-grafting artists.

I’ve drunk too much snakebite and black in the Banshee Labyrinth while clumsily cracking on to poets who’ve totally stolen my heart, and I’ve done a lot of silently weeping at incredible performances in the back rows of dark rooms (usually also in the Banshee thanks to the true spellbinding beauty of Other Voices).

In 2020, 2021 and 2022, I didn’t go at all. And in all honesty, until I started seeing friends’ posts about this year’s Fringe, I’d somehow completely forgotten it was even a thing. I’d forgotten how the calendar used to revolve around those weeks in Edinburgh, about how much work went into fundraising and producing, about the budgets and the spreadsheets and the brain-melting euphoria and exhaustion that an Edinburgh Fringe run involves. It’s strange to think that something so massive can pass me by and not be missed. How easily things can fall out of our regular repertoire and without us even realising that they’ve slipped away.

​All of which to say: I haven’t been performing. Pre-pandemic, I was hosting a monthly spoken word show, performing at that alongside other gigs. Then everything stopped. I did one outdoor gig last summer, but other than that I haven’t done live in-person performing since before everything changed, and in all honesty, I haven’t missed it anywhere as much as I thought I might. Until last weekend, when I got back onstage for the first time in over a year.

It’s so common for creatives feel so many ‘shoulds’ around their creativity. A pressure or internalised expectation to constantly be doing more. That’s where I was with performing, before. And I still feel some of that. I want to develop as a performer: do it more regularly, in different places, do new material, experiment with new approaches, make more of an impact on an audience. But I want to be more thoughtful about it. I want to do choose when and why and what and how I perform with more intention and integrity.

I believe totally in the power of making yourself heard, of using your voice to tell stories, weave worlds, cast spells and confessions. And I want to develop what I do, and acknowledge that that’s hard to make space for when chasing gigs or permanently burnt out from over-committing to travelling and performing on top of everything else.

I’d love to go back to Edinburgh Fringe one day: every time I’ve been has been intense, but I have so many fond memories from those experiences, and I get so much pleasure and creative energy from seeing other people share their work. I don’t know when I’ll be back, and I expect I’ll return as a punter rather than a performer. But I’m grateful for the times I’ve had at Edinburgh Fringe, and I hope that they’re not over.

Originally shared as part of my newsletter in August 2022