Adventures in Inspiration
Inspiration can come from anywhere. Any writer knows this, as does any musician, any artist, any sculptor, etc. You may be hiking across fells, absorbing a spectacular vista. You may be stomping through forests, breathing in the pine and relishing the sombre solitude and quiet. You may simply be walking down the high street, admiring the twinkling Christmas decorations and fairy lights that line shop windows. You may even be lying in bed, staring at a stain on the ceiling, wondering if it will grow and, if it does, what shape it will take. Your daily life and past experiences all create areas in your brain that can spark imagination, sometimes when you least expect it.
The inspiration for Wolsey’s Adventures lies not only in an incident that occurred when the real Wolsey disappeared from my garden one Saturday afternoon, but also in a variety of real experiences that happened either to me or to Wolsey himself, and sometimes to both of us. That’s not to say the stories in the first collection (Tails from Foxtail Green) really happened, but I can recall the exact incident, the precise moment, the distinct chain of events that drove the creation of each adventure in that collection. I then used artistic licence to ensure that Wolsey’s view of those stories was as unique as he is.
A hike in the Scottish Highlands, around 2001, saw Wolsey’s brother Henry fall into a hole in the ground beneath the heather that blanketed the hillside. He was there one minute and gone the next. It took my partner and me close to half an hour to find the exact spot where Henry had disappeared, and when we found him, he was covered in mud, sheltering on a shelf three feet below the surface. What did he find down there? A magical cavern? An underground larder of canine delights? It was neither of those, of course, but when I came to write A Hole New World, that incident sparked a creative drive in my head that led to the story you (hopefully) have read by now.
In a mid-terraced Georgian house in a well-known street in Islington, London, circa 1992, where I was living at the time with several housemates, I climbed the steep stairs into the attic to use the WC that was situated up there. It was the middle of the night, with very little light to guide my way, but I saw a woman at the top of the stairs, wearing a dressing gown that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Ebenezer Scrooge. Her hair was pulled to the sides and tied in what appeared to be braids. She was as real as the two dogs currently sitting by my side on the sofa as I write this. She looked at me and then turned and walked into the only bedroom at the top of the house. No woman lived in the house at the time. My (all male) housemates all claimed to have seen her at some point. Was she real? Was she a house guest, or was she a ghost? Do I even believe in ghosts? It doesn’t matter, because that night was what I had in mind when I wrote A Bump in the Night, the story in which Wolsey sees a mysterious woman at the top of the stairs and chases her into the attic.
Each of Wolsey’s adventures has an occurrence, a moment in time, sitting behind it. There are no exceptions. And so, as I continue going about my daily life, walking the dogs, commuting to work by train, walking through Edinburgh’s numerous stunning streets and parks, I keep my eyes and, most importantly, my mind open to the possibility of finding yet more adventures for the wee chap who was once my faithful companion. If you’re a writer or an artist of any type, I do not doubt that you do the same.
