WHERE DO STORIES COME FROM?

As some of you may know, I am rewriting my NaNoWriMo novel that I initially wrote in 2014. Since then, it has been bubbling away in the background, gaining pace and crying out for me to add a backstory.

The subconscious is an amazing thing. While you’re asleep it gets to work digging around in your memories, and making sense of what you can’t fathom in your waking hours. The plot is being fully fleshed out thanks to my subconscious. Two mornings lately I have woken up with connections to the past and the present in the novel and answers to the questions I have been asking. This is exciting! I also have a very different ending to the one I had intended back in 2014, one that makes everything more complex and adds to the mystery of the story.

When I started writing the novel I had no outline, no plan and just wrote by the seat of my pants to see where the story took me. NaNoWriMo does not allow for much planning because you have to write 1,677 words a day to keep up the momentum in order to reach 50,000 words during the month of November. I managed to do this and felt very pleased with myself. Having completed the book in the allotted time there were certain offers given by some of the publishing companies. One of these was a hardback book of the novel as it stood, without editing. I ordered a copy and was surprised at how professional it looked without much intervention from me! But of course, I didn’t let anyone read it as it wasn’t properly formed.

Now I am into researching life in the 1940s in London’s West End and in Cornwall. ‘Write what you know’ was my mantra whilst embarking on nano but now my subconscious is tapping into what it was like for my parents during that time. My father was a commercial artist in the West End at a place called Phoenix Studios. He was a lettering artist while others he worked with drew the illustrations for the products to be advertised in magazines and newspapers. Names like Wall’s Ice Cream, Cutex Cosmetics and B.O.A.C airlines. I remember my mother taking me to see him at work when I was  four years old. There were about eight artists working at their drawing boards and the room was filled with cigarette smoke. These memories are all part of life’s rich tapestry, gifts indeed for any writer.

As my characters have their honeymoon in Cornwall I am researching the public transport in the 1940s. Luckily I have a very good friend in Cornwall who’s husband is a railway enthusiast and is proving invaluable where the railways journeys are concerned. I will have to rely on my imagination for what a Cornish guest house was like in the post-war years but there again, I was brought up in that environment so I have used some of the rooms in my childhood home.

Mystery and imagination are at the root of the novel and I’m enjoying the way it’s shaping up.