Writing from a prompt

As someone who has spent the best part of 60 years daydreaming I have always skipped over writing articles about story prompts. It's never been ideas that I was short of, technical skills, or how to best develop an idea certainly, but the idea itself no. Ideas have a habit of intruding into my thoughts at the inconvenient moments, They creep up and divert your attention from the matter at hand, leaving you blank-eyed and gormless totally in another world.

Last week on my course we had to write from a prompt, it was a revelation, what fun I suddenly realised that the reason for doing it might not be because you don't have ideas already but rather that it adds another element to your writing. Also, it is really enjoyable to do, great if you get stuck on one piece and need a distraction, with the advantage that once you have generated the start of a story you can return to it later and develop it further.

So the challenge was to turn on the radio and write 500 words about the first words you hear. In my case, there was a song playing and the words were

 I am walking far from home.

This is my piece:

I was walking again and felt a long way from home, a long way and a long time. I still called it home even though I no longer lived there. I walked because walking is better than sitting in a shop doorway. Walking has its disadvantages too, it wears out the soles of your shoes and your feet get sore, they are never quite clean and never quite dry. At least if I’m walking I’m not tempted to drink, that’s the odd thing; the respectable working father was the drinker, the down and out homeless man is a sober as a judge. Now I think about it, I have known one or two Judges and they weren’t sober at all.

I didn’t know where I was walking to that day, for three days I’d slept in an old air raid shelter but staying anywhere longer is asking for trouble. Village churchyards are a good prospect, but not much hope of food and a long way from places that give you a meal. Cities scare me, you get kicked and pissed on so I stay on the edge. It was getting late when I stumbled on an old chapel, I could see that there was a village in the distance but the chapel itself had the air of being unused. I was just walking past the door in hope of finding a sheltered spot when the man came out. I thought for a minute that he recognised me, he looked at me as if he knew me. When he spoke I realised that it wasn’t that at all, that he had been having an internal debate about my trustworthiness.

“You can sleep inside, just for a couple of nights, if you like, it looks as though there is a storm coming,” he said, Then he added very apologetically “You must promise not to make a mess though, well it’s already a bit of a mess, so no worse. The Estate Agent is coming after the weekend to assess the building for sale”

He gestured for me to go inside. I followed him cautiously, I worry that there was a catch whenever someone appears to be being kind. Sometimes it’s genuine, but often it turns out to be some sort of cruel joke or a way of getting the authorities involved to move you on out of their sight. The church was a bit of a mess but not with rubbish, only in the sense that it hadn’t been used for a long time. Everything was covered in thick dust, some windows had been broken and boarded up, but the glass remained on the floor. Most of the useful or ornamental stuff had been taken out but the pews were still there, and the altar and pulpit. It had that sense of quiet that you sometimes get in a church. He leads me to the front to a small room he called the vestry, there was a desk and chair and an old settee, It also had a cubicle with a toilet and sink. He explained that he would have to lock the main door behind him, but the vestry had a door that could be opened from the inside without a key so I wouldn’t be locked in.

This we are concentrating on editing so I plan to come to this piece and develop it further if I can

A Writer's Notebook

The writing course I am doing at the moment is excellent and there have already, after only a week and a half, been many helpful suggestions. A lot of the work we have done centres around have a writers notebook. This idea is not new to me, of course, it is standard advice almost anyone with any experience will give you. So Important is a notebook in the writing process, that in the past I have been put off writing altogether because of my struggles with using a notebook. This time I am determined to get to grips with this important part of the writing process, so I did a bit of self-analysis and combined it with a bit of research, and came up with some reasons and some solutions.

1 Fear of making a mistake.

My fears, like many other peoples, are rooted in childhood. In this case, my lack of ability to spell was the problem. I realise that I am not afraid of being corrected, but I am terrified of being laughed at. For some reason, poor spelling is funny for some people, and certainly, at school, I was subjected to being patronised, having my work passed around so that everyone could laugh and other forms humiliation. So reluctant was I to write when I left school that I wouldn't even sign cheques for fear of making a mistake. Writing in a notebook would be like setting myself up for humiliation.

Technology has been my saviour here, a word processor with a spell checker not only solves this problem but made me realise that my spelling errors largely consist of transposing certain sets of letters, easy to solve when you know that you are prone to doing it.

2 Fear of spoiling something.

Notebooks are so lovely when they are new with beautiful clean white pages. I hate the thought of spoiling something like that. Now interestingly enough I have come across many other people who share this odd phobia so did a bit of research into other peoples solutions.

Use spreadsheets, they are easy to organise and change and are not remotely pretty.
Use a computer notebook as they don't have the same charm
Use a Paper Notebook, but scrapbook style. Sticking things onto the pages once you know that you want to keep them.

So after working on these ideas for a few weeks, I think that I have come up with solutions that work for me.


I tried spreadsheets first and actually have a couple of stories planned out on spreadsheets, I don't think that they are for me though. I can never remember how to use them and they are so functional it puts me off. Being that organised seems to kill my imagination.

I downloaded a computer notebook mine is called Simple Note and has the advantage of being very simple. Easy to make a quick note and access it when I need to. I have a separate one for saving bits of web pages. Yes, I know that there are apps that will do both, whilst teaching me to juggle and making me coffee, but honestly, I get confused easily.

I have created a storyboard, A large corkboard on an Artists easel  I can stick notes, photos anything on and rearrange them to my heart's content. This is my favourite thing I can see everything at a glance I love it.






The strange thing though is that doing all of those things must have been cathartic because I have now organised my notebook using post-it tabs. I was seriously worried that I would write things down and never find them again. I have a recipe book which has that problem

And even better I planned this blog using my notebook and it worked out really well.