One of the most common questions asked of authors is this:
“Where do you get your ideas from?”
From my actual life, is the answer.
When all my children were still at primary school, I helped to run an ambitious Christingle. We had around twenty-five angels of varying sizes, seven Wise Men, eight shepherds, an innkeeper and the Holy Family, comprising Mary and Joseph plus the Baby Jesus played by somebody’s doll. At the dress rehearsal, there was a punch-up between the innkeeper and one of the shepherds. Central Casting (me) had forgotten that they loathed each other. A wrangler was appointed for each people group to ensure there was no recurrence of violence. Nits broke out amongst the heavenly host. There was a lot of scratching.
A couple of days before our two performances (and we were expecting a capacity crowd), a sickness and diarrhoea bug swept through the village, picking off performers with gay abandon. My phone was red hot. Texts informing me that a Wise Man had been on the toilet all night, that the mother of several shepherds was having to wash a lot more than their socks and that Joseph was looking very peaky indeed poured in.
It was brutal. We lost four Wise Men, Joseph and around five shepherds. I made a battlefield promotion, telling my eldest that he would have to play Joseph and running up an emergency head dress. On the night, one of the younger angels wet herself, another burst into tears in the middle of, “Away In A Manger” and exited stage left and there was furtive scratching of heads when the lights went down.
There was no need to make anything up when I got to, “The Continued Times of Isabella M Smugge.” In it all went.
Last week, I found myself standing on the drive of my mother-in-law’s house (she doesn’t live there, just for context – it’s about to be sold) chatting to the most delightful man. We spoke of literature, of travel, of culture. It was an enormously enjoyable conversation. However, the savvy writer must keep her eyes and ears (and in this case, her nose) open at all times for inspiration and content. As we spoke, he was pumping out the septic tank. It was the final job (if you’ll excuse my use of that word) before the contracts were exchanged. The roar of the traffic on the A12 and the gentle slurping noise of the pipe, which was encouraging the contents of the said underground receptacle into the waiting tanker, provided a strangely soothing background to our conversation.
Which leads me neatly on to Max Weltz. In book four, as you may know, Isabella is about to host a celebration of her mother’s wedding on the lawn when she discovers that her septic tank has exploded. If you are the owner of one of these (which I am), you become part of a strange world of rods, soakaways and chambers, unknown to those who are connected to mains sewage.
At my homegroup, we started talking about wax melts. I don’t know why. One of our number got his words mixed up and called them max welts. I said, “Ooh, that sounds like a name! I’ll put it in book four.”
The tanker driver who came to pump out Isabella’s tank at the eleventh hour was duly christened Max Weltz, but one of my weaknesses as a fiction writer is that I make up too many characters and the names get confusing. I had to wipe my reference to him. As it very much were. The homegroup were not at all pleased.
So Max (of Austrian heritage, charming chap), you’re famous at long last. Friendly, professional, helpful, he spends his days draining people’s tanks and making everything a lot sweeter smelling. Just like Paul, my companion on the drive by the A12.
Life is copy. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You never know when or where inspiration will strike.