What to write about, indeed? How does anyone decide what to write 50,000 words about?
I suppose if I wanted to write something for publication I’d have plotted out a bog-standard murder mystery or some such thing, but I’m not playing that game. I’m simply interested in getting in some writing practice and speeding up my output, which is abysmally slow these days. It’s very freeing already to be done with the inner editor and with the need for research; to know there won’t be anyone reading my scribbles in earnest, if at all. Still, I know from experience that it can be difficult to keep a story going when it runs out of steam, so I need to find a subject that has a lot of meat on it. Something that can be told in more than one way, preferably, so that I can change perspectives at whim if need be.
I’ll start with the obvious question: What do I know about?
From past lives: sibling rivalry and affection, astrology, rock climbing, orienteering, Christian extremism, folk music, rock’n’roll music, early computing, performance, gay rights, stand-up comedy, taxi driving, truck driving, Brixton around the time of the riots, left-wing politics, womens’ peace camps, Judaism, Jerusalem, small towns, hotel work, seaside towns, vegetarianism, hitch-hiking, camping, mysticism (in many forms), drug addiction, widowhood, raising toddlers, Web programming & open source programming culture.
From now: outdoor gear design, long-distance walking, the Middle East conflict, volcanoes and earthquakes, cooking, growing fruit and vegetables, laying paths and building garden structures (yes my life has quietened down some).
Not a sausage out of that lot, unless I wanted to write a Dan Brown style paranoia-fest about Jerusalem. Which I really, really don’t.
What do I read? Hell, anything. (Not helpful.)
Which authors do I most admire? Graham Greene, P G Wodehouse, Saki, the Bronte sisters and of course Jane Austen. Terry Pratchett sometimes, Douglas Adams always, but then Dick Francis and Agatha Christie occasionally get in there too. All for disparate reasons, and the list changes on a regular basis. (No clues there either then.)
Which people do I most admire? Ah, now we’re talking. I have a hero–a real-life hero, although he’s been dead almost a century. An explorer: Gino Watkins. A man who, by all accounts, came across as an effete dandy and socialite, but who led three Arctic expeditions before the age of 25. Someone who believed nothing was impossible, and who lived his life by that understanding. Someone who single-handedly changed the way Polar expeditions were planned and carried out. Someone whose body was never found, who may still be frozen into the ice-cap like the coming of some Arthur-esque Inuit legend.
And there are sideshow mysteries that could become a main thread in a novel. Could Gino have fathered a child by an Inuk woman, for instance? Possibly; it’s almost certain that some of his expedition team had conjugal relations with the indigenous locals. Do we know for sure that Gino died when they said he did? Maybe not, but it’s very unlikely he survived. We’d have to conveniently forget that he was someone with a highly developed sense of responsibility to both his expedition team and his family, for that line of inquiry to go anywhere. Plus, he was in love and newly engaged… Does he have any relevance to us now, in 2010? Yes. Yes, he does; that final, fatal expedition was otherwise considered a success, and without it we may never have had cheap flights between the UK and the US of A. Y’know, those flights that are helping to melt the Arctic ice Gino loved so much.
Irony aside, there’s a lot about Gino that is truly inspiring, and will remain so across all time. Hence my use of the word “hero”.
There are a lot of potential stories, then, in and around this single historical figure. A lot of ways to approach the Gino Watkins story; myriad openings and closures; almost infinite possibilities. So I shall fictionalise Gino, or perhaps the people around Gino, or both; and I’m pretty sure he’ll take up at least the requisite 50,000 words, even (especially?) without research.
