When Inspiration Strikes...

You can never tell when an idea may hit.  Or when one might seep in unannounced and take you by surprise.  A little nudge in the right direction is always welcome and today I had just that from the lovely Helen Murphy, an old school friend of mine.

 

Of course, when I say ‘old’ I mean from when we were at school together, not drawing her pension or leaving her teeth in a glass on the bedside table overnight...  Saying that, I’m not sure of the pensionable age in Australia, where she lives now...

 

Anywho-be-do.  I received an email from Helen earlier today in which she told me of the writing prompts from a group she attends.  Helen also sent me the poem she’d written triggered by said prompts.  It was excellent, as is all her poetry and I couldn’t help but reciprocate with something of my own.  I have to admit that it was off the top of my head and is ‘as it comes’, but I quite enjoyed the little creative interlude to my day so I thought I’d share it with you and give my thanks to Helen – young Helen that is.

 

Summer Loving

By Shaun Allan

 

The garden was overgrown now

A fire of wilderness

Where no man dare step

'Cross the breach

Lest they burn with

Heart's confess

 

'I told him not to come back'

She cried

Though was more of a

Hesitant whisper

But he was there yet

Or his body was

She'd buried him with her sister

 

The summer sun shone

Coating the world

In a sheen of shimmering heat

But its reach didn't reach

Into her shell

As her soul lay in shreds at her feet

 

At the jetty she'd seen

Her sibling and love

With a heat as hot as the sun

A deadly embrace wrapped in

Natures own clothes

Placed in her hand

A gun

 

Now her sister lies cold

And her lover so bold

Rots beside his lies

 

And as the sun sets

And the moon takes her hand

She looks on the garden

And cries

 

-

 

Oh, the writing prompts were as follows.  Maybe you’d like to see what you come up with?

 

Use one of these lines as a basis for a poem, story or true story.

 

1   The garden was overgrown now.

 

2   ‘I told him not to come back!’

 

3    He/She was there.

 

4    Use these three words in a poem, story or true story:  summer, shell and jetty.

Helen's poem was a wonderful piece about rekindled romance. I did think about following her lead but, well, you probably know me too well for that by now...

 

 

My Own Field of Dreams...

Field of Dreams, starring Kevin Costner, is an odd film.  It's gentle and unassuming.  It doesn't have car chases or explosions and no-one is abducted by aliens.  Of course there's many films that fit this criteria.  The thing with Field of Dreams, however, is it also has a bizarre plot.

 

With a Close Encounters-style determination, Costner throws his all into building his baseball diamond to the exasperation and derision of those around him.  Of course, it all magically works out in the end.  He built it, and they came.

 

I'm a huge fan of this film.  It's not tense, nor hugely dramatic, but it does touch and move.  And it has James Earl Jones.

 

But what is the relevance of this?  Well.  My wife bought me a journal for our wedding anniversary.  Normally, I don't use a notepad.  I'd either not have it with me when the lightning bolt of an idea strikes or actually owning one would seal up the vault of inspiration tighter than a duck's derriere.  Having a notepad would almost be trying to force the ideas to come rather than letting them flow.  It's sometimes easier to have an idea and forget it than to not have any because I'm trying to have one.

 

But this journal is different.  I first saw one when we were in Windsor after going to Legoland.  There was a small shop by the castle filled with such leather bound, intricately designed notebooks.  The covers burst with trees, bindings, figures and more.  At the time, I didn't buy one.  They're not cheap and they can't be refilled so I talked myself out of the deal.

 

Every year, Cleethorpes, the seaside town adjoining my own town of Grimsby, has a parade.  Floats, majorettes and dancing troupes take the journey through the streets filled with flag waving, smiling people.  Near the leisure centre, which sits by the beach a fair way along the route, there's a small market.  Stalls from Europe and closer to home sell everything from food to little trinkets.

 

This year, I saw one selling these particular books.  I couldn't put them down.  They seemed to cry out for me to fill them with my words.  Surely, something like this would invite ideas and would lay them lovingly down so they'd rush to adorn the pages?

 

Still.  I walked away.

 

Then, last month, my first wedding anniversary arrived.  Now, I have to admit my wife knows me.  Over the ten years or so we've known each other, we've gone from customer (she was - and still is - my hairdresser) to best friends to lovers to man and wife, and it's been a (sometimes hellish) rollercoaster.  So she knows me.  It's whilst being in a relationship with her that I finished Sin and went on to complete Dark Places, Zits'n'Bits and Rudolph Saves Christmas.  She took me to Luxor in Egypt, because I'd wanted to go since being a child, and I wrote 15,000 words of Sin there.

 

So, I was delighted to open my gift and see one of these books.  She knew how much I wanted one, even though I'd kept walking away.  She felt that, even though it can't be refilled, it will still be a magical place full of my thoughts and ideas.  And, she spent a great deal of time finding the perfect one.

 

If you look at the photo of the journal, and if you know the covers to Sin and Dark Places, you'll see why she hit the mark spot on dead centre.

So.  Field of Dreams?  Kevin Costner was told 'If you build it, they will come', and they did.

 

With my new journal, I was hoping if I wrote it, they, the ideas, would come.  Last night my wife, my ten year old daughter and I were discussing story ideas.  My daughter wanted me to write the story of Little Dead Riding Hood, so I was asking her to come up with other variations on fairytales.  It was fun, in a weird kind of way (SINderella?  Snow White and the HEADLESS Dwarves?).

 

I opened my journal, pen in hand, and started to write the titles down.  I'd come back to the ideas later.  Then, a thought struck me.  An idea.  Quickly I wrote it down on another page, expecting it to be just a single sentence to start me off when I got chance to expand on it.

 

Then I wrote a bit more.  What might happen next.  Then next.  Then the fight.  Then the cave.  Then the darkness and voices.

 

I wrote it, and they came.  My journal seems to be my own field of dreams.  I can feel it calling out to me from my bedside table.

 

"Open me."

 

"Write in me."

 

"If you write it, they will come."

 

I have a feeling it's not wrong.

Enter a Dark Place...

My latest book is Dark Places, a collection of thirteen short stories and thirteen poems, all with a dark theme. I’m not sure why I like to write this type of story, to be honest. I’m generally an upbeat, happy sort of person – too laid back to let things get to me. I’m always making jokes and having a laugh. Perhaps it’s because I write such things? The darkness is vented in my work so there’s only light left?

I doubt it, but it’s a thought. I’m normally a very positive person. I call Sin my ‘Dark Half’, so maybe he’s writing them!

The poems contained therein were, actually, written during a time where I wasn’t so positive. Things weren’t going well in my life and various things prompted various poems. The memory of how I was treated by my natural father. Loves lost. I’m sure everyone has these twilight periods to battle through. I didn’t exactly find solace in the words, but I couldn’t seem to write anything else at the time. The stories are different. I can be at my happiest (as I am now) and still produce a piece with shadows and death. I find poetry to be much more personal and so it reflects how I feel at that moment. With a story, I follow the path of the characters, and they have their own moods unencumbered by my own.

As I’m meant to be working on the sequel to Sin, my Muse thinks it mighty hilarious to put all sorts of other ideas into my head and I need to give them form to clear the mist for Sin to continue with his adventure. Hence, I wrote I Am Death. Like a lot of my work, it grew from just the first sentence. I don’t necessarily have any idea what the story will be as I’m writing. It turns out however it turns out. This happened with Sin and with the majority of his blog posts (he has his own diary at http://singularityspoint.blogspot.com).

I Am Death began with, simply, ‘I think...’ and the result was a tale of Death contemplating life as he prepares to take his next soul. My wife saw a writing competition in one of her magazines and said I should enter. The Last Dance was written for this. It didn’t win, but, when my wife read it, it brought a tear to her eye. A friend of mine told me that, when she was 9, her cousin said the sink overflow was where the dragons went in. I used her exact words for the beginning of ‘There Be Dragons’ without any idea of how it would go.

So, it can take very little to inspire me. I go with the flow, caught up by the current of something I’m not entirely in control of.

The idea of the collection came from a fellow writer. She asked me to look at something she’d written ‘while in a dark place’. I suddenly HAD to write using that title, and the collection came together soon after, with the addition of stories that I couldn’t stop writing. I had the bit between my teeth and was being led along at a real pace. The themes of darkness becoming real, of reality and surreality being intertwined, of the helplessness of being pushed to events you can’t control, were almost a whirlwind of words that were finding an outlet through my fingers.

If you know what I mean...

A friend at work created an original watercolour inspired by the stories, and this is featured in the book. It’s between the contents and the first poem and acts as a doorway to the darkness within.

I had started to write a prequel to Sin, intending it to be nothing but a short. I wanted to include it in Dark Places but was asked ‘what about Joy?’ I was halfway through what was to become Prelude, then, and stopped. They were right. What about Joy? Joy is Sin’s sister, and appears in the book as a ghost – either to help or hinder him. She disappears just when he seems to need her most and is unable to give him real information, so has to resort to guidance that frustrates and angers her brother. Suffering a mirror image of Sin’s ‘talent’, Joy has committed suicide. But what of her origins? I wrote Joy to give her that voice, that chance to tell it from her side.

Fittingly, I think, Joy became the final piece in the collection, a place she deserves.

The reaction to Dark Places has been wonderful, with comments such as: “The descriptive passages create fabulous imagery,” and “The author's portrayal of death could lead you to believe he'd actually experienced it.” I’m hoping it has the same success that Sin has enjoyed but, either way, I sincerely enjoyed creating it.

Dark Places can be found on Amazon at:
US: http://amzn.to/DarkPlacesUSEB
UK: http://amzn.to/DarkPlacesUKEB
And at Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/ShaunAllanSW
And in paperback form at: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/shaunallan

The ebook and signed copies are available from the bookstore on my website: http://www.shaunallan.co.uk/bookstore.php