
Toward the end of this year, I had a particularly inspired time as a short story writer. This was due – in very large part – to the change of seasons.
Autumn and winter days are gloomy and brief, the nights long and forbidding as one of the original Grimm fairy tales (before they censored the really nasty bits). The weather here in the UK is by turns warm, wet and windy, and clear, still and crystal bright with frost.
While the summer inspires me to be outside, writing never feels a more attractive prospect than during the colder months, when there are no butterflies to chase and bees to bother.
And so this autumn I found myself entering several writing competitions*. Okay, it helps that Halloween brings a swollen crop of writing challenges and there’s nothing excites me more than dipping my stubby toe in the murky waters of the dark and the creepy.
The idea for one competition sprang from another favourite past time – television.
The Antiques Roadshow was on the box. For those unfamiliar with the programme, the Roadshow is a BBC staple (it first aired in 1979) which encourages people to raid their attics, empty the contents into the grounds of a stately home and stand for hours in the pouring rain/blazing sun waiting for an expert to tell them their treasure is worthless tat or – very occasionally – that it really is treasure.
The fun comes in watching the reactions of the owners as they hear the news, usually falling into two camps,
The ‘Well-I-love-it-anyway-despite-how-obviously-ugly-and-worthless-it-is’ Camp
and
The ‘It’ll-stay-in-the-family-despite-being-terrifically-ugly-and-worth-more-than-my-house’ Camp.
Which if you believe them means no one sells anything that’s been valued – ever.
Anyway, we were watching an episode that featured Victorian mourning jewellery made from human hair. Because the Victorians had very different views on death and thought it perfectly acceptable to pop their dead granny down to the photographic studio to have her portrait taken for the album before lopping off her hair and having it woven into a brooch, a watch chain, a ring or even a framed family tree – if there were enough dead relatives to make a tree of course.
Watching this fascinating piece, my writer’s mind wandered …
Along the back streets of Victorian Manchester, to a lace maker down on her luck who one day takes on a rather unusual commission …
I came runner up in the Writing Magazine Dark Tales competition with the resulting story, The Lace Maker. To read the story, the judge’s comments and to see my equally creepy author head shot, see here.
And the moral of this tale?
Don’t let anyone tell you being away from your laptop/typewriter/notepad is a waste of writing time. Watching TV and films, reading books, going for long walks and communing with bumble bees all have their place in the writers’ life and in feeding your inspiration.
Just make sure you get your bum on a seat afterwards so you can carve a story from those sparks of creativity.
***
*Of the other three stories I wrote this autumn, I wasn’t placed in one and haven’t yet heard about the others. Watch this space. Or not, because, let’s face it, I’ll only write a post if I win.