 An occasional series looking at the genesis of a story, from the initial spark of inspiration, through conceptual development, the writing process, and what happens next. You’ll find writing tips at the end, based on what I’ve learned along the way. In this blog, I’ll be looking at Little Feet, my Christmas-themed ghost story that appears in the newly released anthology It Calls From The Veil. One of the stories I like to share with classes or mentoring clients, when discouragement seems to loom, is how long it took me to go from a completed first draft to a published novel with Edge of Heaven, my debut. (Twenty-two years, if you’re interested.) Little Feet beats that record by a country mile. Never give up [1].
That said, I’m not 100% sure when I first wrote Little Feet. I have a draft on my laptop that dates from 2001, but it’s not the earliest version; the earliest version is almost certainly on some floppy disk somewhere – it’s that old. Some time in the mid-90s is my best guess, and it wasn’t called Little Feet in those days. Back then, it laboured under the deeply unimaginative title of The Doll, and it was substantially different in several key ways.
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An occasional series looking at the genesis of a story, from the initial spark of inspiration, through conceptual development, the writing process, and what happens next, with tips based on what I’ve learned along the way. In this blog, I’ll be looking at On the Brink, the sequel to my Arthur C Clarke Award-shortlisted debut novel Edge of Heaven. In spring 2003, I was at something of a crossroads in my life. Circumstances had conspired to make it necessary to leave a job that I adored, and I’d been doing temporary admin work to pay the bills. I’d decided to go back to college in the autumn to study for a qualification in journalism, because I was still trying to find a way to write for a living and I’d had the grand total of one short story published in the entire history of ever, so fiction didn't seem like a viable career option just yet. But September was months away, and I had a whole summer to fill before that. And then I found an advert for temporary factory workers in the Netherlands, and I knew immediately that this was what I'd been looking for.
An occasional series looking at the genesis of a story, from the initial spark of inspiration, through conceptual development, the writing process, and what happens next. You'll find related writing tips at the end. In this blog, I’ll be looking at Blumelena, my Bridport Prize-shortlisted short story. One of the questions you never quite manage to answer to anyone’s satisfaction, in my experience, is the question of where the ideas come from. Generally speaking, mine just turn up when they turn up, generally prompted by nothing at all, and the onus is on me to find something to scribble on before they disappear [1]. Blumelena was no different.
In my free ebook short story collection, To The End of the World and Back, I talk about how the concept announced itself, more or less fully-formed, as I was walking to work one morning. It was a decent stretch - around half an hour from home - and there’s definitely something about walking, for me, that connects with the creative part of my brain. If I’m stuck with a piece of writing, I will tend to go for a walk and let the rhythm of my feet work out the narrative knots as I go. In this case, though, I wasn’t looking for inspiration, but inspiration found me just the same. |
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