Favourite writing
A few days ago, Deborah Jenkins wrote her blog on this site giving us a lovely quiz about how weather affects our writing. This jogged my memory of a particular day when I was trying to write in adverse weather conditions. I was indoors, in the warm when I wrote what turned out to be my favourite passage in Out of Silence. It was a very windy day when I was trying to write the planned chapter of the novel; the beginning of a storm. I kept looking out of my study window to watch the tall trees in my garden bend and sway. The sound of the wind and the movement in the garden could not be ignored. Each time I began to write my attention was hauled towards the dramatic scenario playing out in front of me. I gave up with my plans. Instead I let my protagonist look out of his window into the imagined park opposite. First he watched the weather then the whole scene unfolded in my mind and I wrote it just because I had to! I wasn’t going to use the story that emerged of a child needing h...