The Quixotic Nature of Inspiration by Ruth Leigh

 

As writers, we’re all different, and thank heavens for that. Some of us are planners, with notebooks full of plot development, story arcs and carefully researched facts, distilling each precious drop into our literary efforts. Others (and I include myself in this category, at least most of the time) are pantsers, seizing at random facts (Colchester’s Dutch Quarter is so-called because the inhabitants called anyone foreign “Dutch”, even Flemish refugees fleeing Catholic persecution). 

So, let’s start with the Dutch Quarter, or at least what it represents. I’m fortunate enough to be paid for using both sides of my writer’s brain, factual and creative, spending much of my week writing for freelance clients, and the rest of it marketing my first novel and writing my second. 

One of my clients is an exclusive estate agent, covering East Anglia and a little further beyond. They came up with the rather splendid wheeze of hiring a team of freelance writers (me included) to interview their clients and write up lifestyle pieces on their properties. Honestly, it is the most fun. One day I’ll be struggling to find something interesting to say about a new build (rambling on about the surrounding countryside is often a good way to go), another delving into the fascinating, chequered history of a Grade II listed Georgian townhouse. 

I’m an Essex girl, and I’ve been to Colchester a few times. I never knew it had a Dutch Quarter, nor that Flemish Protestant refugees set up home there in the sixteenth century. Writing up that property was loads of fun and in my mind, I could hear the rustle of silk dresses, the clip clop of horses’ hooves on cobblestones and the shouts of market traders. Who knows where those thoughts will end up?

 Often, I find myself sitting at my desk gazing at a floor plan and a slide show of a property and racking my brains for new adjectives. “Delightful”, “charming”, “beautiful”, “immaculate” and “full of potential” are words I find myself typing again and again. From time to time, I’m thrown a curveball. A chocolate box cottage with a steeply pitched roof, in which sit two bedrooms with severely restricted head height? I got round that one by describing them as “fairy-tale sleeping spaces.” Which they were. For pixies. Or perhaps children.

 Occasionally, the vendor is a person of few words and I must employ my special, patient voice to elicit – well, anything at all. This is the time where a firm grasp of local history and the ability to write at least one paragraph about the surrounding area will pad out a difficult assignment. I’m an expert on Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Suffolk and Essex rivers, peninsulas, castles and churches. And while this benefits me in my freelance writing, it also spills over into my creative work.

 I started writing my first novel, The Diary of Isabella M Smugge, in May last year, at exactly the same time I got the job with the estate agent. Gazing at delightful interiors, finding out what those bits of wood stuck in the wall over fireplaces in old houses are called (bressumer beams) and soaking up new and exciting knowledge about the world of house selling informed my book, which fortunately was about a pretentious lifestyle blogger moving into a vast Georgian pile in Suffolk. 

When I found that I needed a name for an annoying, posh property blogger, naturally, I called her Bressumer Beams (real name, Portia Waldegrave). I found myself able to write believable descriptions of interiors thanks to my new knowledge. I don’t live in a large, posh house, but I certainly spend a lot of time looking at properties which are simply awash with period features and delightfully expensive fixtures and fittings. What a joy that is for a writer. 

So far, no-one has asked me The Big Question. “Where do you get your ideas from?” But when they do, I’ll give my standard answer, “Life is copy” (because it is), adding that you just never know when inspiration will strike and from what quarter. Dutch or otherwise.

Images from Pixabay

Ruth is a novelist and freelance writer. She is married with three children, one husband, three budgies, six quail, eight chickens and a kitten. Her first novel, “The Diary of Isabella M Smugge”, came out in February this year and she is writing the sequel, “The Trials of Isabella M Smugge.” She writes for a number of small businesses and charities and blogs at ruthleighwrites.co.uk. She has abnormally narrow sinuses and a morbid fear of raw tomatoes, but has decided not to let this get in the way of a meaningful life. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter at ruthleighwrites.