THE MOTHER OF INVENTION

So it's Monday, and I spent the weekend looking at my daughter's art show at her sixth form college, eating Turkish food in Stoke Newington and writing my PhD thesis with the blinds down because it was sunny.  (Normal people were outside.) Also watched Dark Water* which was brilliant (slightly too scary for me, but I have to butch up now due to having teenage kids who aren't scared of anything). And I read some of Susanna Jones's new novel When Nights were Cold which is also brilliant and increasingly intense. Oh, and I did three loads of washing, went to two cafes and two pubs, walked round Clissold Park and spent 45 minutes at the gym.

But the writing? What about the writing? I was going to do one of those posts where I say, it's fine not to write for two days, because sometimes life closes in, when I remembered that last night I edited two short stories down to flash fiction length, and then had an idea for another story which I will write today. Writing can be done in corners of time, there is no need to rent a cottage on a Welsh mountain though I would dearly like to. (I wrote my first novel when I was a busy freelance journalist by pretending it was a succession of feature articles.)

Creativity doesn't need vast swathes of time. In fact, deadlines can be a useful prompt: check out Jonah Lehrer's book How Creativity Works if you don't believe me. Necessity really is the mother of invention. It's the deadline for the Bridport prize on May 31st, which is this Thursday. And that is all the prompt that anyone should need...


* N.B. Pedant's note: this was the Japanese version. Haven't seen the US remake, but as a general rule I'd rather see the original than the Hollywood imitation, subtitles or no subtitles.