Tackling a drought

Photo "Sand Dunes" by artur84 courtesy of www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net

August is a yellow month.  Not golden, just hot and yellow and barren as the dry dust of the plains of La Mancha.  When the sun beats down on an August day, it blazes in white rage. It scorches where it touches, it sucks the green out of the landscape and leaves it burnt and brown, forsaken.  Even the blue of the sea is bleached to a dull greyish white, appealing only because you know how it can cool you, wash the trails of sweat from your skin.

August is a month which finds me in a state of physical and mental torpor.  It's probably due to the heat, with a large measure of blame to be laid on the fact that the kids have now been off school for several weeks and the novelty of holidays is wearing thin.  Year after year I find myself in a state of suspension in August:  I seem to be unable to find any fertile ground in the wastelands of my imagination, and writing becomes a chore rather than a pleasure, with words waiting to be dredged out of the bone-dry river bed that is my mind.  While others are finding inspiration in long stretches of beaches by sapphire seas, I hesitate, procrastinate and long for the cooler days and new start of September.

Photo, "Ground Broken" by tiverylucky, courtesy of www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So this year, during the grim and ghastly month of August, while I waited in suspended animation for the start of autumn, I decided to have a good go at jump-starting some writing projects.  I set myself up an "inspiration store" in an old notebook, with the following results:

• I found old cuttings from newspapers and magazines I had kept because I thought one day they might inspire me.  I ditched most of them, but I kept some, one particular one about a postman who won an award for saving the life of an elderly lady who had a fall and he noticed her post building up inside her porch.  He reported his concern, and social services managed to rescue the lady who had been lying at the bottom of the stairs for two or three days.  A local hero.

Newspaper clippings in my notebook

• I like visuals.  I take a lot of photos, not because I'm a wannabe photographer, but because I use images for inspiration.  I use Pinterest in a similar way, as a scrapbook of images that will, I hope, one day release the perfect verbal description to slot into a story or poem.  So I pasted my favourite of these from inside magazines and old calendars into the notebook.  

• I had a quick - no more than 15 minutes, timed - browse for online writing competitions.  Sometimes these give you a theme to work from or a challenge to write to a first line, or a last line, or a proverb.  I jotted some of these down.  Sometimes the discipline of half an hour's writing to a set theme is enough to shake the rust of the pen nibs and get the creative juices flowing.

The next step will be to create a digital inspiration album for all those phone photos I snap when out and about, or articles from e-zines.  It's all tantamount to the same thing - creating an endless source of inspiration and ideas.

The final thing I did, and this worked almost immediately.  I looked outside my window.  Now, I know I am spectacularly fortunate and with the support of my family am able to live in an apartment that overlooks the Bay of Gibraltar.  The view from the living room window is breathtaking, night and day, and, while I know many would prefer to see just scenes of nature, I find myself fascinated with the ceaseless activity of the port, and the ever-changing face of the sea.  That, is an inspiration all in itself.

Quick glance out the window...

So as September rolled in, I found myself spoilt for choice in terms of where to go with following an idea.  I continue to find the sea and its blueness alluded to in much of my writing.  But the first idea that flowed out of my pen became the story Stolen Moments.  Here is the opening:

                                               

                                                        Stolen Moments

                                                                             

                                                                  by

                                                                  

                                                        Jackie Anderson

 The kettle screams for attention and belches steam into the dank air of the kitchenette in the corner of his room.  Ian unfolds his arms and steps towards it, keeping meticulous time with the crisp ticking of the ornate wall clock that frowns down on him.  It belonged to his late grandfather and Ian can hear the old man’s disapproving click of the tongue in his teeth with every swing of the pendulum.

Ian sighs with his kettle when he takes it off the stove, and lets out a long breath.  Lately he finds himself so on edge that he stops breathing.  At those moments, he has to blow outwards so that he can breathe in again. When he’s at work he can disguise this as a whistle; everyone expects a postman to whistle.

He puts the kettle down on the draining board and remembers when he used to have an automatic kettle.  It was a year ago.  A year since everything went bottoms up heads down and life turned sour.