How to write: be intrigued

If you’re intrigued with your subject, you’ll not only keep writing to the very end, you’ll have a reader who’s loving every word.

 But how do you find something that will keep you interested for 50,000-plus words: interested enough to sit at your computer day after day for months if not years?

You might have a hobby that you love: bushwalking, cooking, working out, stamp collecting, crossword puzzles, bee keeping. It could be anything. Any of those hobbies make a great starting point for a novel. You could give your hobby to your main character and see what happens. I

 

n my novel Stella’s Sea, it wasn’t until I turned Stella into a beekeeper and she came alive for me and started to take control of the plot. I’m not a beekeeper, but as a journalist, I had to write about bees and the desperate research that’s being undertaken to ensure they survive. I found out all I could about bees and the people who care for them. I spoke to scientists, queen bee breeders and a honey-supplier. I went to university labs, bee yards and a bush clearing where an old beekeeper calmed the bees with smoke before pulling out the frames to inspect his hard-working bees and their queen. The more I found out about bees, the more I was desperate to learn. It was a joy for me to write about Stella’s bees and her need to get them back in her life.

 

 

 You might have an ancestral tug to a country far away. Acknowledge it. Don’t put it out of your mind. It wasn’t until my Dad died and I took his ashes home to Wales (we live in Western Australia) that I returned to ‘the land of my fathers’ for the first time as an adult. And I was blown away by it. I didn’t want to leave. Hearing Welsh spoken, even English in that lilting way Dad had, made my heart sing. And the choirs that sound like rainstorms, the ruined castles that loom into sight unexpectedly when you’re walking along the coast or in the hills, the wild foxgloves and honeysuckle and roses, the rushing streams and leek puddings – it’s magic. I had to come back to my children, my animals, but I found a way of living there at the same time: by inhabiting a story about the place.

 

Chepstow Castle, Wales

 

I hadn’t been all that interested in Wales until my father’s death but after going there, I was starving for knowledge. When the children were at school I’d sneak hours in libraries, poring through ancient books that told of Celtic fairy stories and customs, of Romans mining that blood-red Welsh gold, of Vikings stealing up Welsh rivers in their flat-bottom longships to plunder and pillage, and spill their seed. Many of my novels are set in Wales in different historical eras and I hope to write more.

Plas Mawr, Conwy, Wales, an Elizabethan townhouse recreated

What are you interested in? Indulge that curiosity and let your wonderment fire your stories.      

Kitchen, Plas Mawr, Wales