Escape from Normality – Filling Up Your Creative Well by Sophie Claire

We all know the benefits of travel – how it can fire the imagination, help you escape from normal life, give you precious time to slow down, unwind, and refresh the body and soul. But what if you can’t get away? What if you could use an injection of ideas in your writing life, but travelling just isn’t an option right now?

Summer is the perfect time for filling up the creative well with new experiences and sensations, but you don’t always need to go far to find inspiration. Here are some ideas for breathing new life into your writing, no passport required!

Take a notebook, treat this as a game or an adventure, indulge your senses, and – most importantly – get out of your comfort zone.  

1. Be transported!

Go to the bus or train station and travel to a place you’ve never visited before. It doesn’t have to be far – a small village, a big city, perhaps a part of town you’ve never been to. Public transport is always a great source of inspiration (all those people to watch, conversations to eavesdrop on). The story of Harry Potter was conceived on a train, after all!

Once you get to your destination, explore, and spend some time observing what’s around you. Note down your thoughts and descriptions. If you’re working on a book, ask yourself how would your protagonist react to this place? What kind of characters would live here? How might they feel about returning here in later life? Perhaps buy a small memento to remind you of the trip: a postcard, or some stationery (a writer can never have too much stationery). If you like visual prompts, take photographs.

2. Challenge yourself

Try a new activity. Have you ever been camping? Horse-riding? Ice-skating? Bird-watching? Enrol on a day’s photography course, or learn to make cupcakes! If the kids are off school, take them with you. Children are always keen to try new experiences, but we, as adults, tend to be more cautious and maybe don’t have as many opportunities. What’s on your bucket list? Pick one thing and do it!

Alternatively, you could take an existing hobby one step further. If you like knitting or painting or swimming, then how about setting yourself a challenge? You could train for a race, or join a class, or make and donate one of your crafty donations to a charity.

My husband and I love hill-walking, and one summer we decided we’d climb Mount Snowdon. It was much harder than I expected, but the sense of satisfaction was immense, and the views were amazing. Plus, we passed some inspiring characters along the way, including an elderly gentleman wearing nothing but swimming trunks and hiking boots!

3. Listen up!

Go to a music concert or festival. (If these are really not possible, buy a new CD or join Spotify, which is free). You know what I’m going to say: the more unfamiliar, the better. If you like pop, go to a classical performance; if you like rap, try listening to some jazz. 

Music can be a great vehicle for transporting the senses, and some writers devise soundtracks for each book they write. Fellow Novelista, Louise Marley, has blogged about how music inspires her writing here. Open your mind to a new type of music and, who knows, you may find yourself with a new story idea or a character with their own unique taste in music.

4. Escape!

Read a book or watch a film set in an exotic location. Let it transport you and submerge you in an unfamiliar setting. 

I remember one Christmas when my children were small and the weather was so bad we’d been trapped indoors for 2 weeks, I left them with my husband and went to the cinema to watch a Bollywood film. It was a temporary escape from normal life when foreign travel simply wasn’t an option!

5. Time Travel 

Historical novelists do this all the time, but we can all use history as inspiration. After all, history is peopled with characters, and characters are the basis of every story. Head for a local place of historical interest – it could be a stately home, a castle or a park. When you get there, take the guided tour. They’re great for bringing a place to life, and your aim is to feed your imagination. The more interesting the story, the more it will inspire you and hopefully set your own imagination going.
Take advantage of any unusual activities on offer: try archery, wear a suit of armour, fly a falcon. Leave time to soak up the general atmosphere of the place, the smells, the views. Then zoom in and focus on one small detail that you feel is typical of this place. It could be a gravestone, a piece of fabric, an acorn. Note down a description of it. When you get home, use this to spark a new piece of writing.

Even if you only manage to visit a new café to do an hour’s writing, that’s still a break from your usual routine. I hope you’ll be inspired and come home buzzing with fresh ideas.

Have you got any exciting plans this summer? I’d love to hear about them…

Sophie.x

A Shady Terrace By The Rosencrantz Tower by Trisha Ashley

And yes, I know what popped into your head when you read the title of this post: ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.’ Am I right? But there really is a historic Rosencrantz tower in Bergen, Norway, and the week before last I was sitting in a shady courtyard right next to it on a hot summer’s day, drinking a deliciously tart berry juice and eating a big cake with chunks of apple in the middle, which seemed to be a square version of the famous Bergen bun I’d consumed only an hour before from a shop in the middle of the town. Life’s a moveable feast, isn’t it?

I was in Norway on my first real, non-work-related holiday in over fifteen years (though of course, like the rest of my life journey, it will eventually compost down and be reused in a novel). I had unplugged the umbilical cord of the internet and even the small laptop was abandoned, despite its desperate attempts to jump into the suitcase at the last moment.

Fred Olsen kindly wafted my cockleshell across the North Sea, in a reverse-Viking invasion. (My father says we’re all descended from the Vikings in my bit of Lancashire – town names like ‘Ormskirk’ are a bit of a giveaway).

I boarded with a map of the ship that would lead me to the two venues where I expected to spend most of my time: the dining room and the coffee shop. Other than this, I had a fully loaded kindle and knew how to use it. I’d also booked myself onto four daytrips to see as much of the country as I could, three of which involved much wondrous scenery viewed from almost vertical ascents and descents in a variety of conveyances interspersed with a lot of long dark tunnels.

Then, on a hot summer’s day, I absconded two hours into a three hour walking tour of Bergen and stumbled across this delightfully shady, cool terrace with a café right by the Rosencrantz Tower – of course I did, it was inevitable.

And once refreshed, my hands automatically delved into the deep recesses of my enormous shoulder bag to find a good old-fashioned pen and notebook to jot down a few home thoughts from abroad. It turned out that there are a few essential things you need to know about both Norway and cruising. Or at least, things I needed to know.

(1) Everywhere you turn in Norway there is a turquoise fjord, a vertical waterfall, a huge mountain topped with snow, or a glacier, so that after only a couple of hours your vocabulary has been reduced to, ‘oh, wow!’

(2) Turf roofs on houses are very eco-friendly and also, you can graze your goats on them. This one had harebells growing on it.

(3) If you like moose, you’re going to love the souvenir shops

(4) Norwegian floppy waffles spread with jam and sour cream are the most wonderful thing in the world.

(5) If visiting an apple farm, eat a good breakfast because at ten thirty you are going to be facing a line of glasses containing apple brandy, two kinds of strong cider and a large apple juice to wash it down with.

(6) Every tour guide tells you how delicious the traditional delicacy of sheep’s head is, provided you can get past the eye looking at you and the teeth grinning away on your plate.

(7) Don’t sign up for an almost vertical coach ride down eighteen hairpin bends unless you have a good head for heights.

(8) Completely enclosed tender boats full of people give me acute claustrophobia.

(9) And for a cruise, next time don’t pack three pairs of black trousers and several almost identical t-shirts, because people will think you’ve been wearing the same clothes the whole trip.

(10) You are going to put on half a stone, because of the amazing food. Just accept it and go with the flow. Flow round the promenade deck a few times a day, too, that might help.

(11) If your vision is poor, don’t assume every man in a striped polo shirt is your brother. Their wives don’t like them being chatted up by strange women. I even poked one poor man in the back with my flag (that’s another story) with the words ‘Oh, there you are!’ He’s probably still explaining me away.

(12) By pure chance, do choose the one cruise when all four Fred Olsen ships are berthed in their home port of Bergen at the same time, so that the whole town is one giant party and you steam off next day in a line, full of strange celebratory cocktails and waving the aforementioned flag, while singing favourite traditional sea shanties like ‘We are sailing…’

(13) This is the unexpected aftermath. Although I’m a good sailor who felt fine aboard, I suffered a week of something called Mal de Disembarquement when I got home, with migraine headaches and everything going up and down in a very dizzying way. Apparently this is quite common.

But I’ll tell you what, it was worth it!

This post originally appeared in the August issue of Trisha Ashley's newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.

Trisha Ashley is a Sunday Times bestselling author of romantic comedy. Her latest book A Christmas Cracker is out on 22nd October 2015 and is now available to pre-order.