In the store cupboard

With my creative writing group we talk about all sorts of things apart from the particular topic we’re thinking about, although because we only have two hours together, I do try and bring people back on course!

Someone asked me where I get my inspiration from, and the answer is, almost anywhere! I see things, I hear things, I observe things, I think about things. making notes doesn’t work for me. When I come to read them I can’t remember mostly why I wrote it, or why I thought it significant, and sometimes I can’t even read my writing. I do sometimes start a piece of writing which may take years to become something: I don’t mean I take an old piece and carry on with it, but sometimes an idea within it, or an image it conjures sets me off on a new trail.

Inspiration isn’t just for the theme, but incidents, scenes, conversation, characters. When I saw an actor in the Danish drama ‘The Killing’ I just knew I had to use an expression on his face somewhere sometime, and he lurked about in my head until he became Thomas in my novel, Radwinter.

I don’t take notes, but I do take photos; the picture I’ve used as my featured image is of the gate to an abandoned graveyard at a former convent. When I saw it I just knew that sooner or later the image of the locked graveyard gates with the warning stuck on them would have to be in a story sooner or later… Maybe it will be in my new novel, Magick!