Jane Wharam on......

An Exercise In Creativity

The writing group I belong to sets itself homework every month (we're nothing if not committed!) and last month's was 'show not tell'.  We had to write a passage of around 300 words showing that someone had lost something without telling the reader what that thing was and ideally also indicate a time of year, era and general background story.  It was much harder to do than I thought it would be but I eventually came up with the following piece.

I'd be fascinated to know what you think the back story is.  Wonderful thing, imagination...

'She suddenly remembered being made to read Proust, when she had longed to be outside watching the young men, all long hair and velvet loons, parading around the campus like peacocks.

 Finally she understood what he had meant in his description of remembering things passed.  As Jeremy left the room, all that was left of him was the smell and her memories.

 She had bought that leather jacket for him during the holiday in Milan, had loved the look of the tanned material against the white of his tee shirt and had just watched him in the days that followed; Jeremy on their balcony, silhouetted against the deep blue of the sky; Jeremy threading his way through the market, tall and blond against the shorter locals with their dark, lustrous locks.

 But now, mixed with the earthy, rich scent of the faded leather were the clean, spicy notes of the cologne he had taken to wearing.  He had just bent down to kiss her cheek, enveloping her in memories of Italian nights, lemons in clean, fresh air and his own, more subtle scent – that unique smell, which she could pick out in a room full of men.

 She had caught his arm, her hand registering the warmth of the leather, fingers feeling every small crack and flaw before sliding down to his hand, strangely cold and almost clammy in the heat of the room.

 The room was always kept warm for her and she hated it; hated the feel of the rug across her knees, cashmere, of course, the money had paid for that. At times, she would throw it off, like a child impatient with a toy, hoping that Jeremy would come in and hold her hand and reassure her, as he used to do, bringing their past with him.'

 

 

 

Ideas Net

I wish I could invent one.  The ones that come to me when I'm still half asleep are fairly easy to catch; I can grab them by the tail as I scramble for the pad by my bedside and then tether them to the page in vaguely legible handwriting - which gets less legible by the day, I'm sad to say.  No, it's the ones that creep up on me when I'm walking, usually through the park, and which I'm sure I'll remember because they're so beautiful and often fully-formed.   The problem is that they too have remarkable powers of evasion and have slipped out of sight, never to be recaptured intact, by the time I get to the tube and can fish out notebook and pen.

Why do ideas creep up on us when we're least expecting them?  One minute I'm enjoying watching the children and dogs playing on the grass and the next minute, wham, a scene from a screenplay or the opening line of a short story flits right across my line of vision.  It's always slow enough to register but too fast for me to ask it any questions, like 'where did you come from?' or 'how the hell did I get from the bloke tryng to give me the boot camp leaflet to being in a Greek villa in 1979?'

If I do manage to invent one, I'll let you know but in the meantime, maybe I should start carrying a dictaphone with me - or can I record on my mobile?  Or maybe I should just spend the rest of my life poised over a blank page, pen in hand.  But maybe not.  The thing about ideas is that they can't be forced and they love to play hard to get.  And the thrill of the chase and then the capture of the few that don't run fast enough are worth the ones that get away.