I have been looking back at my blog, going through all that I’ve written over the nearly twelve years I’ve been writing, and it’s been intersting, although there are quite a few errors I’ve made. For example, I’ve had trouble with fonts and some posts are all in block capitals and peculiar bold fonts. Sometimes I seem too have deleted part of or all of something I’ve written, and sometimes there is just an image with no writing at all. I can understand the reasons for some of these peculiarities – mainly I hadn’t a clue what I was doing at first! I had a problem finding my voice, and I definitely didn’t always check for silly typos and other mistakes (I still have that problem!)
Because I have written so much, it will take a while to go through them – which I want to do. If don’t want to change what I’ve written – except for the typos, and I will put a note at the top to say that they have been corrected. I’m wondering with some of them whether to put a note explaining context because sometimes I’ve launched into writing, all fired up, and it may not be clear what I actually mean. At one point, for no reason that I know of, images have disappeared – should I reinsert them, I might not still have them!
It’s been an interesting wander through the archive so far – there is a specific reason I’m doing this, which if it works I will explain later. I came across this post about an idea I had for a story – maybe I should actually write it!
WILL THIS ONE RUN?
Something which popped into my head a few days ago, and on this occasion I can’t say what triggered it, only that we were driving along a slip-road to the motorway and I was looking at the colours of the autumn verges, when a scenario came into my mind.
There was someone, a woman, waking up as normal, gradually rising out of sleep to being awake and then not knowing where she was. For a moment she thinks she’s still dreaming but in a flash of realisation she knows she’s not. She sits bolt upright and looks round the unknown room, clean, tidy but drab and cold; she leaps out of bed and flings the thin curtains aside and looks out n a dreary place she doesn’t know, washed with rain.
She sinks back onto the bed shocked and frightened, trying to remember what happened the previous night… but all was normal… she hadn’t been out clubbing or partying, she hadn’t… she hadn’t been drinking, she hadn’t taken anything she hadn’t been with strangers… She can’t rationalise it at all. She jumps up and wrenches open the door to find her husband but in the small, sparsely furnished room there is a stranger sitting at a table reading. He looks up and smiles as if he knows her, and greets her lovingly, familiarly…
And that is it. That was my thought, that was the sudden burst of imagination. I don’t know the woman, I don’t know her name, I don’t know what she looks like, and I don’t know where she is… and I don’t know what has happened or what will happen to her.
I know there have been other novels with a similar premise, science fiction or fantasy stories, mysteries and quests, but I have no idea at all what this might be, even if it grows into anything at all. It might become an abandoned baby, it might be adopted into something else, or it might just lurk in a corner and gradually fade away!
“…I have no idea at all what this might be…” Too right! The abandoned baby by the way, is the story, not a story-line!
Lois Elsden 