Jessie - Winner December 2011

http://creativewriting.ie/2012/01/27/december-short-story-winner/

      It's always exciting to see someone appreciates a story!! The story of Jessie started when I was walking to work one summer morning in south west London. It was nearly 8am and the couple in the story were ahead of me. He was just as I described and presented a very comical picture - the trousers were proudly showing off his socks, his feet were flopping and his coat was long. An original draft included his black NHS prescription glasses which appeared to spell the word NERD across his face! Her dress was adapted for the story, but her reactions to the young man were as told until they separated at the intersection.

       The sad thing is, I wonder if the picture I painted in the story could possibly have been anywhere near the truth. And the sad thing is that a place like Lulu's possibly doesn't exist.

       Real life offers many writing prompts, it just takes imagination to build it!

www.creativewriting.ie

Starting Point

In the beginning

A few years ago I bought a writers magazine for my daughter who was about to embark on a university course in creative writing. However, I found the mag fascinating and started putting pen to paper myself! One of the competitions in the mag was to write a short story based on a simple photograph. I remember the picture well – it was a woman with a red umbrella walking up some steps. I wrote the story but didn’t submit it. At least it was a beginning!

Soon afterwards I read Jonathan Coe's book The Rain Before It Falls (didn't finish it!) which at one point had someone describing photographs to a blind girl. There was a story in everything she described: the reason why the caravan was at an angle, the weather, the tree, the Spring flowers. This inspired me to start building a family story book on the photos I have in biscuit tins and ice-cream tubs. It was like stepping into a time machine with every picture; I recalled the occasion, the place, the people, the laughs, and the tears.  Needless to say this can leave one in a rather quiet and melancholic state of mind.

When my mother turned 70, we bought her a lever-arch file, a pad of paper and a brand new pen and instructed her to write down her life story! She was always saying things like: “When we were kids….”, or “Your Granddad used to….”.  She enjoyed the experience and we now have a lovely story of her childhood, early days of marriage, travels to a far away country, fears and aspirations. Although I’m nowhere near 70, I decided I needed to at least start on my own life story – for my children and still-to-come grandchildren!  I’ve got 67 pages, with a few photos, and haven’t yet got to the part of meeting my darling husband!

Fortunately I’m a diary writer. For my first Christmas after finishing school, my sister gave me a very small page-by-page diary to record my first impressions of working life. The following year I continued on note-pads – which are now falling apart and almost out of date order! Apart from quite a gap when my children were very small – which would probably have been good fun and the most interesting parts of a diary – I’ve sat each morning over coffee and breakfast and recorded frustrations, the weather, and family news, so it was easy to start writing a life-story, but it’s possibly also a life-long task!

And then to blogs ….. And a family website ….. And an internet-published story …. And a real published poem!

Come to think of it, I have a vague memory of saying I was “writing a story” as a 9 or 10 year old, so maybe the beginning is earlier than I thought!?