Feeling better, for me at least, means my thoughts turn to writing. I managed to get to the lovely Shepherd’s Dene writing retreat on Sunday, organised by Rachel Cochrane and although I was still somewhat under the weather I wrote 3,000 plus new words! (Highly recommended)
And so I am back in the White River in Arkansas in 1930s with my young protagonist Alice– still wondering how I got here and how or why I discovered her voice in my short story Eating Words (which you can read here at the Manchester Prize site – just click the link to download )
What makes us write a story, where does the inspiration come from, is it even an idea in the first place? Probably not I think. I am with Ursula le Guin when it comes to the writer and the ‘so-called’ idea:
‘The more I think about the word “idea,” the less idea I have what it means. … I think this is a kind of shorthand use of “idea” to stand for the complicated, obscure, un-understood process of the conception and formation of what is going to be a story when it gets written down. The process may not involve ideas in the sense of intelligible thoughts; it may well not even involve words. It may be a matter of mood, resonances, mental glimpses, voices, emotions, visions, dreams, anything. It is different in every writer, and in many of us it is different every time. It is extremely difficult to talk about, because we have very little terminology for such processes.’ Ursula le Guin
Stories often begin for me with a mood and a feeling. I think that’s why place is such an important inspiration for me. I often find myself fascinated by a place and I know that I want to find out more about it, spend time there, write about it. As I begin to immerse myself in the place I listen for its voices, there may be words that float out of the ether, there may be a name.
Then again there may be none of these – there may not be a place, there may be a thought, a glimpse, something remembered, something dark, an image, a person spotted on the tube….something that connects with what already preoccupies my thoughts, that springs up out of who I am and what I have experienced.
Above all there has to be the feeling that this is something that speaks to me, something I want to explore, spend time with, nurture and grow. This is the magic of the story and who knows exactly where it comes from or where it might lead? Certainly not the writer.
Shepherd’s Dene
The ‘idea’ for me is a subconscious mystery. In the days when I composed instrumental music, it was a matter of sitting at a piano, fingers moving over the eleven different notes is short phrases, until, one of them I saw with new eyes, or more accurately, heard with new ears. There are infinitely more words than sonic tones, and so it is for me more of a mystery not necessarily the words we chose, but the many thousand just as good we exclude. Is it not the same with falling in love in a monogamous society? Myriad options, but then, we see a singular person with new eyes, and begin the process of excluding and re-affirming the exclusion of all otherness. In writing, music and love, the ‘idea’ can bring in to being both magnificent and catastrophic co-creations!
So interesting to explore as you do the links between composing and writing and of course love too – what we don’t choose – the mystery and the magic. A