If you’ve been following my writing journey, you’ll know that I’ve recently been awarded a DYCP grant from the Arts Council England, which means that I’ve got 12 months to set apart to work on one or two big writing projects. The biggest of these is a novella in flash. It’s a huge project because it initially had 13 different narrators, split across six different locations. I’ve now whittled it down to ‘just’ eight different narrators and five different locations.
It’s a huge undertaking to wrap my head around this, but I’ve found that, strangely, my most productive time on the days I set aside to write is the afternoon school run! Obviously I’m not tapping away on my laptop, or even on my phone, while I’m pounding the pavement up the hill to school (why do they always put schools on the top of steep hills?) but I’ve found that in my mind, as I walk, the fragments of my project start to fit together, and it is these moments, away from my screen, that I often have the lightbulb moments.
I wrote a bit about this a year ago on this blog post, but I hadn’t realised quite how universal that experience is, and something I just read helped me to see why this is. I’ve been reading Michael Loveday’s book Unlocking the Novella in Flash (AdHoc Fiction – you can find it here. Not sponsored, but a great book!) and on pp26-27 he says this, “Great leaps can occur when the raw, ongoing material of our life chimes with the fictional world we are developing, or suddenly illuminates it. In this respect, it helps if we step back from our manuscript, widen our vision and remain open to experience. If we become alert witnesses to what is happening in ourselves and in the world around us, our manuscripts are enriched.”
After spending five or six hours with my head in a fictional world I often feel a bit dazed as I march up the hill to school, but I think the familiarity of the route helps my thoughts to Tetris themselves into a reasonable order. Then, when I reach the chaos of school and collect my kids and their questions and their answers, and the snatches of conversations I have with other parents, or that I overhear, all worm their way into my mind and mix with the characters I’ve been writing, something magical happens. I understand why fictional so-and-so walks with a certain gait, or how Mrs X Character would say a particular turn of phrase.
When my stories and my real world collide, they mix together and my subconscious sifts them so that nuggets that will really work in my project come out when I need them.
Have you had this experience too? I would love to hear about it. Drop me a comment, or find me on Twitter @KatieLHWrites
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