A little spurt of thought

The National Novel Writing month is approaching, and I’ve committed to it but I’m contemplating November 1st somewhat gloomily as my writing has been more than a bit sluggish recently. I’m not sure what was flittering across my stodgy brain but suddenly I had a little spurt of thought. The challenge has altered somewhat over the years, and although the aim is to get those fifty thousand words written, it is more flexible in terms of what can be written.

Over the last few days I’ve been looking through old things I had written, and like many people I have several half-finished novels lurking. For example there is the story of poor lonely Gus, who wander across the water-meadows either here in our little village of Uphill, or in my imagined landscape which can accommodate any time of geographical feature I need for the story.  There is the story of Jaz I started here who unfortunately came across a brutally murdered woman in the village where she lives – a village somewhat similar to Uphill (she hasn’t come across Gus yet, he’s still wandering the salt-marshes) There’s an autobiography which I keep pondering about writing. There’s something which only has a title ‘Birds Flying at Night’, and then there’s another story I started writing here, inspired by a friend’s photos on Instagram.

The photo-inspired story might be called “The house and the Woods” – another WordPress story of several chapters. My little spurt of thought was on this idea, and suddenly I thought that this might be the hook I needed to get me going again! I would only count the new words I wrote but at least I would have a springboard of four or five chapters to set me off!

The nameless (at present ) narrator and her partner Lol have inherited a nice sum of money, and have bougth an old house in the country to do up – taking a year out of their normal working lives to make it into the place they hope will be home for their future family. All goes happily well to begin with, the woman working mainly in the house,  stripping walls and doors, while plumbers and electricians do the tricky bits. Lol however, who is easily bored, spends more and more time out in their huge rambling garden, mostly trying to clear the weeds, brambles and ivy off an old building which might be a folly. Needless to say, his partner becomes more and more fed up with doing most of the actual work on the house. One afternoon she stomps grumpily down to the old ruin to look for Lol:

After weeks of pleasant weather, this afternoon it seemed chilly. I picked up the loppers, shears, secateurs and saw, a single gardening glove with a weird bright green stain across the palm and put them in a pile by a gnarled tree. I’d no idea what sort it was, not a chestnut I would have recognised that, nor a beech.
I stood and looked at the folly. The mound of brambles which had been like the outer wall of a hill fort was mostly gone; Lol had said it looked like a savarin it was so rounded in shape. I’d laughed at him, I remembered, we’d both laughed at him, we hadn’t laughed much recently.
The lump of the building was covered in ivy and honeysuckle, now in bloom, wild roses and more brambles, plus a creeper with big flappy leaves. I could see now that in fact the building was made of wood – I’d wondered if it might be stone, but this made me think it was more likely to have been a summer house rather than an outbuilding of some sort. Lol had done well to clear so much, but gee, there was a lot more to do. I could make out part of a glazed window, the pane staring blankly at me.
There was no way I could get nearer, Lol must have climbed over the remains of the brambly mound to get near enough to work. Maybe I would come down with him tomorrow and rake up the strewn cuttings into a pile. We could make a bonfire once they were dry enough.
I walked right round, it was difficult somehow to grasp its dimensions. It didn’t look that big but seemed to take a while to circumnavigate.  I must say I didn’t like it very much, couldn’t see what Lol saw, but maybe when we had cleared it all, painted it, maybe white and green, maybe get some climbing roses, maybe…
I picked up the tools, and carried them awkwardly back to the house.

What will happen next? Who knows! I will begin to find out on November 1st and will bring news of my progress to you here!