Back to the Feature

I've been glancing up at the cardboard folder on the top shelf above the screen for, oh, I don't know how long (well, I do now, but work with me on this). It's the one marked 'clippings' and stems from the time when I was a project manager and gathering ideas for my future outpourings of journalistic gold.

A brief delve into the wad of yellowing newsprint tells me that my interest was piqued by:

- Religious pieces about the real Noah's Ark, the real Mount Sinai, a Muslim husband with a Jewish wife (Oy!) and the Vatican's list of approved angels.

- Green technology, local currencies, ethical shopping, downshifting and investing in woodland.

- The new face of feminism and a female gladiator.

- A woman whose 12hr flight took three and a half days because the airline 'lost track of her'.

- A man who became an artist after a stroke.

- Allergy testing, depression and death.

- Corporate gamesmanship, cyber security and surveillance.

- The EU's (and John Prescott's) regionalisation of England.

- Recommended building societies (hey, it was a few years ago) and planning for a secure retirement (ditto).

- Ebooks and a publishing phenomenon (no, not her this time - someone else).

- The insurance firm that offered everyone a fun-sized Mars bar when it gave them redundancy news individually.

The interesting thing, from my perspective, is that I'd happily write something inspired by any one of those subjects today. Perhaps I see more springboards to fiction now, but even so, the trails are still warm. What surprises me is the earnestness with which I collected them and the recognition that I wrote very little with any direct link.

Green Living, Creative Writing, Human Interest and Politics all remain staple interests of mine. But as I've progressed on my writing journey, I've learned not to write pieces on spec unless I have free time and a burning passion. Far better to organise my ideas and put draft proposals together.

The other thing I discovered in the folder was a collection of headlines that would not seem out of place of BBC Radio 4's News Quiz or BBC1's Have I Got News For You. See image above.

Altogether, it's a little like a 10 year-old time capsule from a millennial me to the 2011 version. I'd like to send a message back: YES, I'M WRITING. THANKS FOR ASKING.

Lost and Found in a photograph

I've spent a little time this week scanning in photographs for blogs-to-come and as memory joggers for Scars & Stripes. Following feedback from Anne, Susie and Monika, I've decided (I think) that S&S works best when it's 1st person and more honest than the first draft appears to be. Warren was definitely right that 3rd person opens the book up, but having recently read Michael Wright's C'est La Folie, I'm thinking about approaching the book from a different angle.

The picture here is almost certainly from West Runton campsite in Norfolk. The car - as most of you will know - is a Morris Traveller and that special hound on the left is Tess. David is the one holding the football. Mum is probably making tea and dad is taking the photo. I'd forgotten this picture existed - there aren't many of Tess.

The photo is a nexus point for so many different streams of thought and recall. The pennants were from the camping club of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - they mainly showed all the places mum and dad camped before we came along. The Morris Traveller was one of a succession of cars, all smelling of vinyl and dog (ours).

I remember car sickness, the way my bare legs would stick to the vinyl in the heat, the handles for the windows and those jumpers that mum knitted for us. I remember the feel of the deckchairs and how they'd topple over at the slightest provocation. I can still hear the sound of the aluminium pots and pans, and the way the table legs used to screw in.

And those trails that lead off into their future and my past. I remember years later, meeting Carl Nunn while climbing the oak tree on the site and the first words I said to him, "Oi, Tarzan, want any nougat (which we pronounced nugget back then)?" He came from Cambridge and had a collie dog and a penknife with a rabbit's foot at the end.

I remember being 11 when Tess died and not knowing how to cope with the grief. And then at 13, we went camping in Somerset and it felt like the end of a chapter of my life.

So many points of reference from one photograph, all of them bathed in emotion and significance. And that's what I'm aiming for now in Scars & Stripes.

Make Believe for Grown Ups

Creative thinking and the use of the imagination are often hailed as two of the secrets to productivity, originality and a whole bunch of other 'alities' (except banality). Most people can remember a time when, as children, we would play as characters from TV, the cinema or books, or even from our own imaginings.

I'm sure I'm not alone (it would be interesting to do a poll) in still remembering some of those characters even now, as an older child in my forties. I may have been a little unusual though in also having subsidiary characters and subplots as well.

One of the highlights of corporate project meetings, for me, was during the Ideas phase when we would brainstorm scenarios (before brainstorming became thought showers and after it had reverted, last I'd heard). Apart from the endless pleasure of calling out the first thing that came into my head - knowing that the scribe was duty bound to record everything, no matter how seemingly nonsensical - there was also the opportunity to try on different viewpoints and approaches. One way of achieving that by playing a part - designer, engineer, user, marketeer, customer, etc.

Of course, however much we may invent a character - whether it's in writing or for a specific function (first date, interview, new identity), there is always an element of us in there somewhere. And that element reveals something about us. In the case of some project meetings, it probably revealed my desire to do something different. Persona non gratis, you might say (unless you had a classical education).

I was thumbing through an old notebook recently and discovered a monologue, written from an invented character's viewpoint. Like the very best of first draft material, it was written at a gallop, with very little filtering going on - just a voice and its ideas rampaging across the page. It never made it to a second draft because I couldn't find a use for it, in anything I was working on at the time. What comes to mind now is a surly patriarch, trying to instil wisdom while his apprentice struggles to grasp what he's really talking about.

The tyranny of time is the tyranny of the mind. Its currency is certainty and inflexibility. Blinded desire is its ally. To be free we must free ourselves, purge our fixed expectations and let go of long held and cherished perspectives. Lose ouselves in the void to emerge cleansed, victorious and liberated.

Peace isn't merely the absence of conflict. It is the conditions in which confict is unable to flourish. Peace, like conflict, is a harvest. The ground must be prepared, tended and nurtured. The seeds must be planted long before the reaping and the crop attended to. And when the harvest has been gathered, what reminds must be ploughed back to resume the cycle.

Creativity requires us to make contact with that inspirational spark and to let its mystical flame engulf us. It is a process of connection and reception, and can be learned.

What we are each here to fulfil is the expression of our own essence. The courage to pur our souls into the cup of experience and drink it back in a banquet of becoming.

Everything you have felt, have known have dreamed - all lies within you. Ready to serve as your guide, your warning and your inspiration.

Lift yourself free from your burdens. Set the baggage of your past and the imagined future to one side. Rest at the roadside and wait. Is it yet too late to change your journey?