This is a strange place
This one’s for all the writers out there. Where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever done any writing? I don’t mean where in the world, like outer Mongolia for instance. What I mean is, where’s the most unusual place you’ve suddenly got the urge to write? Opening your notebook or laptop and writing a few lines for that magnum opus you are working on. For me it has to be a car park in central London at ten to two on a Sunday morning. Why you might ask? I wish I could give you an answer.
For those of you who have read my bio, you’ll know that I work in the television industry as a day job, and as I’ve stated before, it’s a lot less interesting than it sounds. Case in point - sitting in a car park before even the crack of dawn, waiting to start work. So why oh why, does inspiration strike now. All I want to do is stumble over to the studio security gate, make my way inside and put the kettle on. But no, suddenly through red-rimmed eyes I’ve got to write. An idea has leaped into my consciousness and demands to be explored. I learnt a while back that the idea of putting off writing just doesn’t work. You think to yourself, ‘I’ll write that bit down later after I’ve made a cup of tea,’ or ‘I’ll do that bit tomorrow, it’s such a good idea, I won’t forget it.’ I’ve learnt from my pain that such things are a lie. I always forget and I never remember. So many ideas and characters have dissolved in my brain as I wait for the kettle to boil or the sandwich to be made. Sleep is the worst. Sleep seems to wipe the mind clean, removing all traces of ideas or concepts. Sleep kills stories.
So here I am, writing out a plot outline and several character ideas in my car on a very rainy, very early Sunday morning. With the added pain of suddenly realising that I should write a blog piece about this. So ten minutes of frantically scribbling ideas down, turns into thirty or forty minutes typing out this blog as well.
It seems writing and my version of a nine-to-five are incompatible bed-fellows - Just my luck.