Last week I bought a word.
I did … a three letter word.
I paid for it, received a receipt, and the word was wrapped in tissue and placed in a brown paper bag.
It was a curious feeling. As though I alone now had ownership of the word. But of course that is definitely not the case. In fact, I think the word might just have ownership of me.
Many years ago, my mum used to subscribe to a homely mag called English Womens’ Weekly.
Often, when I was visiting from ‘faraway’ and had nothing to read, I would lie in bed reading serial after serial and it was actually how I first discovered Rosamunde Pilcher. But toward the back of the mag, there was a rather nice regular page called Looking at Life with the Man Who Sees.
For a little while recently, I had observed increasing fascination with Pinterest but had never bothered to look at it myself. My writer’s life is full of research, writing in longhand, transcribing, editing, my blog, Facebook-Writer, Facebook-Private, Twitter and a writer’s office business. I felt introducing any more online bit and bobs into my life would cause my writing to suffer.
Inspiration is, to an artist, the air we breathe. It sustains us, suffusing us with ideas. I’ve talked before about the things that inspire me to write a story . . . a piece of stitching, a paperweight, a length of cloth, a pocket globe. Once in the distant past it was a tiny brass ball I found in my grandfather’s tool shed (which I’ve since lost, but imagine the quidditch snitch and you can see what I mean). Heavens’ knows what Pa’s little brass ball was. Whatever it was, more than anything it was inspiration.
Some days aren’t meant to be writing days, or if they are, the inspiration is so low that one seeks diversion. Time away from quill skill. So the dogs and I go to the beach. They do their obligatory sniff and so do I, although mine is just to breathe in the scent of waves, salt and seaweed with my nose twitching in the air, whilst theirs is at ground level. I look along the beach: 2 kilometres of white sand. And we do it, the dogs and I.
