Snow and More Snow but Inspiration Too...

It's rather cold and snowy in my part of Nottingham.

Where's that come from?

Where does the road start?

Usually we escape or just get a light fall that melts the moment it stops, but yesterday evening it started snowing and didn't stop; today hasn't been much better as the cold wind keeps blowing the snow everywhere...

Sadly the bad weather meant the writers' club had to cancel the regular meeting yesterday evening (Wednesday) and tomorrow (Friday) I'm not going to attempt the journey to Leicester for the RNA chapter.

I always take pictures of the snow (when we do get it) as it can be very useful to refer back to when I'm writing a story set in winter. It can help with description and recalling the thoughts and maybe memories that go with the moment- at least that's how it works for me!

Not sure how helpful these pictures will be this time!

Wednesday evenings (when I'm not at the writers' club) I'm usually on Twitter for #writingchat between 8-9 pm (GMT), so for a few minutes before and after the session I catch up on the tweets and images. There were quite a few snow pictures of course.

That was when I had one of those YES moments, when I saw a particular image, an empty snow strewn street in Stamford.

The best way to describe it is a sensation, as if an invisible pebble has dropped inside me somewhere and the resulting ripples are the possibilities. I've learnt that for me it's a visual trigger and somewhere in my subconscious cogs are turning. It won't necessarily be used straight away, but could be months or even years to come, but it will be used.

Some of those moments will immediately create a scene which will be the starting point for a story to develop from, others find their way in later as with my current WIP.

I was researching the history of Goose Fair in the local studies library for a story project- it was a long time ago and my writing has improved a lot since then- and I came across a book of newspaper cuttings and there was a recollection of an unusual weather event. I noted it down, although I lost the piece of paper with the details on, the event stayed in my memory.

Very many years later one snowy winter travelling up the motorway a local news report mentioned a rider who had been thrown off their horse and injured, of course the horse had gone back to its stable, and the rider located, but sadly it had not ended well.

These two separate events though years apart clicked and the synergy produced an image. (It's actually part of the back story of my WIP but I only discovered that much later.)

You can still read that very early story from the Goose Fair research- I did say I've learnt a lot about writing since then, didn't I?

Sadly the ' and " " symbols have turned to little squares, as it was loaded onto the site in 2003, and clearly doesn't format well with modern systems. You have been warned, it's here.

Hope wherever you are the bad weather hasn't given you too many problems. Stay safe...

Competitions and Romance Writing...

I'm catching up and getting back into a routine- slowly.

Last week was very busy, as I was 50% of a talk given at Nottingham Writers' Club (on Valentines Day) about Competitions:Do's and Don'ts, along with the club's magazine co-editor Jill Walmsley.

Ready to talk about
entering
competitions

While Jill covered the technical side of getting a competition entry ready, I did the "business" side as Jill described it.

The where to find competitions handout with bullet points filled an A4 page ; also rights ( I substituted the term, 'earning potential') in terms and conditions/rules, so they could see how specific terms were worded and what it could mean (in some cases) for reusing their entry elsewhere; free entry versus pay to enter was definitely a thorny issue.

All the topics created lively discussion...

*   *   *

Three days later, it was Saturday afternoon writing Romance with local author Clare Harvey. Her books are WW2 Drama.

Clare Harvey & her
 books...

There was a mix of discussion, writing prompts and reading extracts from Clare's books for each topic.

I found the 'first scene' writing exercise really useful, and it's given me a few possible new openings for my WIP. I've not been totally happy with it as it stands, but it wasn't totally hopeless, I just needed a slightly different starting point, bringing my hero into the scene much sooner.

Getting characters together was a bit of a struggle. It's definitely easier in a contemporary novel, but writing with an historical setting you need to work harder to manipulate the possibilities against the the social behaviour of the time and situation.

Writing sex scenes are about more than part A slots into part B... We all agreed using the 5 senses was important, but between us all we came up with enough to fill the flip-pad.

What everyone came
up with...

Clare had read out a couple of extracts from books by other writers to show how different sex scenes could be and the impression each gives...

There was a phrase used in the sex scene in Clare's book, The Night Raid, that only a couple of the writers attending had ever heard of before.

It was "don't go all the way to Blackpool!"  (One of those bits of research that the writer discovered along the way...)

All the writing prompts for the afternoon were simple, but effective, just keep the pen moving for 5 minutes, write and don't stop to think.

I will try that again, perhaps with a short story.

It was a fun afternoon, and I know I wasn't the only one who went away inspired and with a buzzing brain.

If you ever get the opportunity to go along to an event with Clare, you will enjoy it...