New place, new ideas

The formula for new ideas is simple, go somewhere new and talk to new people.

I have been scribbling notes this week, of course, while I am away. My mind that much more blank, with fewer responsibilities. My time a little less cluttered and already pursuing novelty as I look for new places to see each day as a tourist.

A great advantage of travelling around Britain is that it is particularly easy to talk to the locals. It seems the novelty of it all is all I need to get a new idea. I like to have a natter with people anyway (it’s probably the Northern-ish in me). Somehow though anywhere outside London, people seem a little more relaxed to tell you what they know about local history.

Being interested in all things folklore , it turns my head when I hear local legends. I still want to incorporate the famous argument about a bear I heard in The Forest of Dean in a story. I like my idea of about the Miller’s son I wrote down in Lincolnshire last year. No doubt my new interest will take me down a new path too.

Around here I have been reading a local pamphlet, having visited briefly the small museum at Bideford. There’s some lovely craft shops here too and all in all I have been absorbing facts and folklore from the place. My current work-in-progress has been glaring me as I make notes on a new topic.

I wrote back in January how the newness fairy often tempts me. My top five ways having new ideas can help your work-in-progress. The one positive about writing a novel is that it takes time. (Maybe not as long as I take.) Part of the process is trusting the small part your are working on,- a scene, a backstory will fit into the whole. So it’s really not a whole work but a series of inspired moments you are trying to pull together.

It is just as likely that these ideas will sit in my “snippets” folder alongside the Gloucestershire and Lincolnshire ideas, floundering with nothing to do. But it’s good to know I might be able to pursue them because I have no shortage of ideas and, one day, I may have time.