I’ve always admired writers who are so dedicated to their art that they’ll give up a comfortable life in suburbia with local shops and off-licences to go and live in desolate leaky Welsh cottages where the electricity supply comes from a sheep on a treadmill. How the dramatic sunsets, windswept peaks and dark valleys must inspire them to ever-increasing heights of florid narrative. I imagine them cross-legged upon the blasted heather, moleskine propped on a granite boulder, ink pen poised like an antenna waiting to pick up the aetheric signals from a distant muse, stylishly long fringe flapping wildly in the breeze.
Me, I write where and when I can. I recently found myself writing a sex scene in the foyer of the Number 2 Cinema at the Barbican Centre. No films were being shown at the time, mark you; it was mid-day, lunchtime at the conference I was attending, and I was waiting for the next session to begin. A man sat silently in the cloakroom gazing at a magazine and a cleaning lady idly pushed a vacuum cleaner here and there, scaring the dust into the corners. Amidst this hive of activity I was observing a scene unravelling in the sultry night alongside a rich man’s swimming pool. With the rich man’s daughter. Upon finding myself thus I momentarily stopped writing and wondered whether my prose would have been any way improved by different surroundings. I can’t imagine it would; it’d have come out as well as (and notice how I avoid the terms ‘as brilliantly as’ or ‘as poorly as’ here) it ever would anywhere else.
Mind you, I wouldn’t write a sex scene anywhere. For example, I wouldn’t write one on the train for fear that someone was observing over my shoulder and categorising me as some new and unique kind of pervert that likes to abuse people by writing lurid fiction at them. Stranger things have no doubt happened on British Rail.
But I have to grab the chance to write when I can. Fortunately I can count the number of sex scenes I’ve written on the fingers of two fingers, so that leaves me free to spew out my normal verbiage just about anytime. It usually turns out to be a few minutes late at night, when all the other jobs of the day have been done. But even a minute or two can be enough to move The Novel a few inches forward, especially if I have been planning the next scene in my head over the washing-up. That’s when I get most of my plot ideas, when doing the washing-up. Perhaps when wielding the foamy scrubber I am sufficiently disengaged to allow the rusty old imagination to grind up to speed. (Perhaps I’m just inspired by greasy pans.) In fact, sometimes I’m so inspired I have to dash off and scribble some barely intelligible notes on a scrap of paper, post-it or shopping receipt. These – complete with suds and damp finger-marks – are folded into my mobile phone and left for later perusal. Why the phone? It simply doubles as a bulldog clip and fits in my pocket without jabbing me painfully in the leg.
I did once get an idea when I was out cycling but it turned out to be a poor one. At least, I haven’t been able to mould it into anything that I’d want to read myself, and that’s the final arbiter of whether to write it or not. Perhaps I should try some other slightly boring activities just to see whether I get some interesting ideas. Screwing the caps onto tubes of toothpaste. Mowing a remarkably large lawn. Picking the grit out of a shire horses’ hoof with a Swiss Army knife that doesn’t have the special attachment for removing things from horses’ hooves.
If you can think of any others, please tell me. I’m willing to give anything a try once.
