Image: Pendleton Sinking Ship Richard C. Kelsey, via Wikimedia Commons 

I find writing to be something of a hillocky process. One minute I’m on a peak, ideas flowing out of me in a torrent (a sometimes nonsensical torrent). The next, I’m stuck in a valley of frustration with potential story concepts and threads lurking about in the shadows, not quite willing to reveal themselves.

Over time, I’ve discovered that my better pieces of writing – or at least the pieces I, personally, deem to be my better ones – have something in common: they all started with a very specific inspirational emotion, object or element that I then went on to build the text around. Perhaps wrongly, I almost never start by etching out/detailing characters. Rather, the concept that’s kicked off the creative process and determines the mood and the emotion of the story I’m going to write subsequently influences the personas and behaviours of those who appear in it.

Frostbite? Inspired by a rural footpath I often walk along. All Girls Love Ponies? Riding whips. Table Manners? A beautifully set table. Dark (a story that I am holding onto and have not published here on Chintz)? Objectification. Continue reading →