Authors Electric

When I was a child, I wrote lists. Huge, long lists. I would have been about ten or so and I was the kid who handed in ten pages of story at school, when everybody else had written one or two. I liked writing, even back then. I'd even ask for extra homework if it was story-writing. But those lists. They were names. Made-up girls’ names – class registers for imaginary schools, and I’d painstakingly create all these little girls and then put the list in alphabetical order, miss one out and have to start all over again. I went through a lot of writing paper back then. I don’t know why I did it and I can’t even claim these were story characters as I never did anything else with them other than sort them into lists. But I was obsessed with them. I'd be teacher, reading the class register aloud. My parents used to take my brother and I around stately homes and castles when we were children. Now this did fire my imagination as I could be living there, coming down that staircase, eatin...

 As writers we get inspired by all manner of things, an unfair incident we just need to write about to get it off our chest, a funny often self-deprecating story that is worth retelling to make our friends laugh or maybe a character we meet by chance and we decide to make up their backstory. Then there are the throw away lines, words uttered in conversation that ignite a spark and start our minds whirring. I’ve had two such instances this month that inspired some poetry. The first was “third row back with chocolate” you can read about that on my own blog here. The second was a conversation with friends I’ve known since sixth form. We were reminiscing about people we knew and one person wondered “whatever happened to Nigel?” We don’t know. As far as I’m aware he’s not on Facebook so how can we find out? Hiring a private investigator seems a little excessive. We can only ponder and take a guess and write a poem. But I admit I still never came up with a proper answer! ...