Pity the poor paedophile? If he were real, the narrator of my flash Betrayed, would be wishing he’d been tried as leniently as Neil Wilson, last week awarded a suspended sentence for child sexual abuse because the thirteen-year-old victim was said to be predatory. No wonder I’ve been feeling uneasy about this little story, when we live in a society where misogyny runs so deep some readers could miss the point and side with my nasty protagonist.

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The bright elusive butterfly of...inspiration. We seek it here, we seek it there.
Sometimes we just need to STOP.

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Creative writing classes - yes, we have HOMEWORK. I'm catapulted back to my schooldays - except in my schooldays, inspiration didn't seem so recalcitrant...

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We all know it's important to draw on all five senses to bring our fictional settings alive. But while our writing might buzz and sparkle with auditory and visual images, it can be a challenge to do the same for smell. This might have something to do with the way our brains function:

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In Zen in the Art of Writing Ray Bradbury says this:

An athlete may run ten thousand miles in order to prepare for one hundred yards. Quantity gives experience. From experience alone can quality come.

What I really like about this is that it runs counter to the idea which is implicit - or explicit - in so many people's ideas about how creative work happens, perhaps because it's implicit in so much of the modern, capitalist West, at least: that the better and cleverer you are, the more quickly and efficiently you should be able to reach your goal. Bradbury says it more elegantly than I did when I was talking about wonky ducks, but it's essentially the same idea. You gain experience just by the sheer practice of your craft, and get better, as a baby's mind and body learn to walk without falling down, just by wanting and trying to walk in as many different places and for as many different purposes as possible.

Creativity is mistakes, says Grayson Perry, which means that creativity is also just doing it again and again and again, letting the mistakes happen so you can go beyond them. It's wasteful. So be it. Waste not, write not, as I said a while ago.

A while back, I had some revisions to do to a novel, and it also needed cutting.

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Positivity

Do you know why I dread summer? Because it mocks the darkness I feel inside. The brightness, that golden fucking glow. The smiles, oh! Those oily, burnt, blistered smiles. Reeking of chip fat and Superdrug, lust and crisis.

Dawn sees me scowling at a pristine, celestial sky. A predatory azure across my view spinning its optimistic rot through the streets. Dour bin men cavort in a sickening mime of happiness and I hate them for it and despise people for their slutty exuberance in the presence of the sun.

I dread the heat and the universal bi polar mood swing to euphoric and long for a Polar influence, murderous tar black skies and the silence that winter brings. The cease of chatter and instead a murmur of voices. Housebound and respectful.

Then my world comes to life with a glacial, introverted joy.
My rigours and steaming breath are testament to my excelsior.

Need coffee, need chocolate, need a glass of wine... Why is it, when I'm writing, that my cravings don't include spinach, chickpeas and live natural yogurt?

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I call it high-class procrastination...

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To bravely ignite the furore about split infinitives. Now I'm changing my identity to avoid unpleasant reprisals.

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Congratulations to Sophie Jonas-Hill for this delightful post, which won third prize in the This Itch of Writing 500th Postiversary Competition. Sophie wins a two-night writers' retreat at Retreats for You in Sheepwash, North Devon, where full board and friendly writerly company come as standard, and total silence and lunch-on-a-tray are offered with equal generosity.

What I loved about this post is that it takes a classic question which we're all very familiar with, and finds a way to express it freshly, and practically. And I always love connections between different kinds of creativity: so often they illuminate each other.

Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?

In my earlier life I made jewellery and wedding dresses, and in the quest for sales would take over-priced stands at exhibitions. Whatever the theme – weddings, jewellery, knitting (yes, knitting) – without fail every tenth person would ask:

‘Where d’you get your ideas from?’

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