Books + classified ads + Playstation = my inspirations

My writing course finished recently and I haven’t really put pen to paper since.

There’s a lot of factors causing this hiatus. It has been school holidays in our part of Scotland since the end of June and I’ve also been working on the launch of the summer art exhibition at our gallery.

But I’ve been thinking about projects and stories and planning to launch myself at competitions and submission slots. My tardiness means that I missed the Mslexia ones again (groan) but I guess there’s nothing stopping me practising using their prompts.

Influences

One of the final sessions of the Strathclyde course was about influences.

We were asked to think about the different creative works that have inspired us, as well as the things- ‘beyond culture’, like events or politics.

I found this quite hard, particularly the latter question. I tried to list the artworks that I think about a lot, those that have stayed with me beyond reading or looking, places that I find ideas for my writing.

They were:

• Tales of the Unexpected by Roald Dahl
• Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
• The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham
• Newspapers – the news and the ads
• Private Eye
• Ambulances by Phillip Larkin, particularly the line ‘Closed like confessionals’
• The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
• Computer games – Sim City and Red Dead Redemption

For beyond culture:

• Small towns in Scotland
• Escape from small towns in Scotland
• What happens in liminal spaces
• Relationships, family and motherhood
• The process of journalism

I think there are links between the two lists – you find so much of small towns in their newspapers (though perhaps arguably more of it ends up on the local Facebook page these days). The Lottery is one of the most famous short stories and centres around an event in one small town, showing how an idyllic outward appearance can often hide something uglier.

I grew up in a village and always wanted to escape to a city. I did for a time – the Napier University years – but now I live in a small town and realise that I would probably feel overwhelmed in a city. (It doesn’t stop me wondering. A recent break in Fife saw us staying in a hotel with a view directly to Edinburgh and I felt the pull of that skyline).

Newspapers and new stories will always have a fascination for me. I really love looking at the ads and classifieds in the back. I think there are loads of stories hidden in there. The first story I found, for my first year news writing portfolio, was from an advert from a man selling his collection of painted metal armies. I saw the ad and contacted the man for a chat. I ended up visiting (with my roommate for safety. Looking back, it was a slightly mad move for two 18-year-old girls). He kept them in his loft and there were hundreds of tiny figures – all armed, some on horseback. He even gave me one as a souvenir.

It’s an lesson that stayed with me in my journalistic career. Some of the most intriguing tales are in the adverts.

Other people’s influences

As part of the influences week, we had to look at the lists of the other students, choose one of the ‘beyond’ list that we had never tackled and write a 300 word piece.

I found my fellow students were quite highbrow in their cultural influences – lots of historical texts I had never heard of. In the end, I chose ‘success v self-doubt’. If I’m honest, I think I may expressed some of these sentiments in a story before but hey ho… I didn’t fancy the miners strike or sibling rivalry.

I tried to do a bit more description than I usually do. It slowed the piece down a great deal. I quite like the atmosphere I managed to create.

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Her eye had thread-like lines in its iris, yellow rather than gold. She had never noticed that before. They tangled with the blue and green tones, providing depth to the colour. They weren’t web-like, more like lightning strikes, random in the way they forked across the iris.

She stared at the eye until it appeared blurred and blotchy, no longer in true focus. Was it hers? She put her hand out to the mirror, half expecting to make contact with skin. But her fingers collided with the glass, leaving a smudge on the surface.

It softened her reflection at her cheek. Like wiping away her face, making it better, she thought. More acceptable.

She reached out again, running her fingers across her nose, creating more streaks. The mirror was so dirty, she realised, probably covered in the grease of a thousand people’s fingers. Perhaps that’s how the doubt passed, from one person to another, like a baton. Now she had added her own special brand to the frenzy.

The bell rang somewhere outside, a half hour warning to all that the clock was ticking until curtain up.