MEMORIES

Hi all, I hope we’re all feeling well this new week.

I’m going through a period of change at the moment after being made redundant from my ‘day job’ so there’s been a fair amount of reorganising and sorting of my home office while I get into the head space I need to really get back rolling and on the job hunt.

I’ve got a notice board put up, a white board, my computer work station arranged and I’ve been rooting through drawers to make sure I have everything I need to work fully from home at the same time as having as comfortable and well appointed a writing nook as possible.

Now I’m sure that we’ve all done it at some point in our lives. We’ve been carrying out a big tidy or you’re moving house, and you stumble across things from back in the day and then we marvel at what was.

You find an old childhood toy that you may have loved in your younger years but may then not have seen in an absolute age and all of a sudden, you’re back with the younger mindset. The idea of ever being without this item and using it every day is a clear example of heresy. How can you ever be without it? Why did you stop using it?

Now I haven’t discovered any old toys as I’ve gone about my actions but one thing that has popped up is an old notebook where I’ve written down possible ideas for future books and it’s blown my mind.

There are threads in there going back to 2014 and I’d forgotten all about them. I’ve been reacquainted with some interesting ideas and most importantly, have been reminded just how creative my mind can be. There are ideas dealing with science fiction, with fantasy, and with horror, which could all become full novels if I put my mind to it and that collection of ideas takes me back to a time when my fire for writing was at it’s brightest.

When we hold up something from the past, we get the chance to reminisce to those days when we were younger and it’s great to just get a view of a time when we saw things being simpler.

But we can also rediscover something which we may not have known was diminished or missing. Suddenly we’re in a position to just hold up a lens from a different time to view todays situation and can sometimes give us the chance to remind ourselves of a time where we may have felt very differently. We can get a boost or an idea just from the colouring applied thanks to that old lens and our mind gets a kick start.

We’ve all felt it in some way, even if it’s just the warm fuzzy feeling, but being given the chance to examine things in a different way means we could see something important we’ve missed before. Characters in books have had the same experiences because we do and it can feel very much that it can become just a ploy to advance the story but it’s not always the case.

Remember, each and every one of us has a deeply coloured history and we’ve thought and felt different things at different times. Maybe something from back then could give you just what you need today.

Stay safe all.

THE BOOK

I’m an author.

I write stories.

It all started out with a single idea which grew to become The Circle of Fire but when I started work on that, I very quickly began coming up with new ideas as well.

Over time, I had enough ideas building up to pave the road I’m currently travelling down for the series of dragon books, but there were a great many more besides.

In fact, many of the ideas became short stories themselves and found their way into first, Tall Tales for Dark Nights and later, Answers from the Darkness, but still, those ideas just kept on coming.

Now I can’t be trusted to just hold all of those ideas in my head for years on end now could I?

I have a notebook just for that purpose.

My notebook is nothing more than a notebook, but it allows me to pour any and all ideas which may cross my mind into a single place to keep them all safe. It becomes even more important because I tend to dream so many scenarios and holding onto them when I wake up isn’t always gaurenteed.

Now it’s been a while since I added anything new to the book. Not because I’d smashed into a wall of writers block but rather that I’d been working on a new book idea and what with a bonkers busy work schedule, a house move, and the small matter of the global pandemic, I’ve had a few other things on my mind but this past weekend, for the first time in ages, I needed to pour a new idea in.

But the book wasn’t there.

I’d put the thing in a computer bag ages ago when we moved to the new house but that bag was oddly absent from the office. I checked all the drawers, the cupboards in the office and in the bedrooms, still nothing. I checked in the loft, still no sign.

It was then that I had a bolt of inspiration.

My author convention box is in the shed and I think that the bag will have found it’s way in there so off I went and moved stuff around to get into the box. The bag wasn’t there either. Had I put it in my other computer bag? Checked, and still no.

I was stuck until my wife suggested looking in the drawers again, saying that she thought she’d seen the thing in one.

I checked, being the dutiful husband but had already looked through there so wasn’t holding out much hope.

But there it was.

My notebook was sat there looking relaxed and rested and I was beyond relived to find it. My wife laughed at me for not finding it the first time I’d gone through the drawers and I deserved it, but I think I know why I’d missed it.

I’d been looking for the bag which had the book in it, I hadn’t been looking for the book.

I’d been looking for specific features on the object of the hunt and those features weren’t that of the notebook, so I’d looked directly at the thing I was after but because I’d placed an assumption into my thought process of where the answers were I just blazed past it. I was looking everywhere for something which looked a certain way but the thing didn’t look like that. I was never going to find the book until I realised that my starting point of how I was building my search was wrong.

I found that the bag I was aiming for was empty and that made me re-evaluate my search parameters but I didn’t return to the start of my search process and kick off again. I’d already looked in the drawer before and nothing I was after was there so I again assumed.

We all do it.

We make judgements all the time about the world around us and our assumptions of what is could very well build a world view that’s stilted against reality. We start thinking a certain way and then build on that idea so we can start ourselves off on a very weird path.

As an author, assumptions are a great thing because we can use them to steer the reader away from the real facts and create a huge twist with the reveal. If we play on the assumptions of the reader well, that reveal is the stuff of Sixth Sense, so it’s something that authors are all looking exploit.

Just remember everyone, that assumptions happen to all of us but in the real world, that reveal could have a much greater resonance than simply misplacing a notebook.

Stay Safe all.