I can't find the memory card, Jim...

Tomorrow I head back to Essex for good. Back in my old bedroom until I find a job. Back in my old home town until... Well, until something else happens. I originally left four years ago, moving to Cork in Ireland. Feels a bit like I’ve come full circle.

I’ve travelled a lot in my life. Now that’s relative, of course. Compared to plenty of other backpackers I don’t think I’ve done that much, but in comparison to the average guy or gal I think I’ve seen a fair bit. I use my memories as the base for describing scenery in my work. If I need a coastline or harbour, I think of Porsgrunn and Arendal in Norway. If I need mountains, valleys and other such grand scale, then my time in Queenstown, New Zealand works well. Similarly Vietnam for vast areas of countryside covered in both trees and farmland, while Hanoi specifically provides a platform for writing about dense population. Ireland and England, being quite similar, is where I think of when I need rolling acres of grassland and hills. Morocco for deserts. Spain for the heat of a summer in the city streets.

I’m blessed with quite a good memory. A lot of people I know will argue against that, but I tend to remember the important stuff. I can be quite bad with names, dates and shopping lists, but in general when I witness things happen I can recall it with a fair amount of clarity. So, for example, when I see pictures of myself in Malaga when Spain progressed to the semi finals of the World Cup in 2010, I also recall the sounds of the celebrations (fireworks, chanting, drums, people banging on the sides of busses and cars as they drove by), the smells (firework smoke, exhaust fumes, sweat and beer) and the atmosphere (jubilation at the victory, mischievousness at the chaos the crowd were causing in the traffic, tension when the police turned up in riot gear to chase everyone away). This helps me when I’m writing since I can usually draw on a memory like that to help remind myself of more than just the visual.

In my last post I touched on how much of your own personal experience should be put into a story. I think with dialogue, emotions and people you know it should certainly be held in check. But with description it’s definitely a case of the more you know, the better. I think that applies to plenty of stuff you don’t know, also. So if you’re writing Science Fiction and have never been to space (surprisingly!), you can probably get a sense of scale if you were to, say, go scuba diving. Now I’m not saying you can compare being in the ocean to being in the great expanse of nothingness outside of our atmosphere, but it should help get a taste of it. Like, say you want to write about a person being thrown out of a plane BUT you’re too scared to actually go skydiving. How about a bungee jump? It still involves a freefall. Can’t drive but want a car chase scene? Go-karting. It’s not like you’re applying for a job here. You won’t get laughed at for twisting the truth of your experiences slightly. Besides, all that stuff is just fun. Fun times are always worth a crack, regardless of why you do them.

Anyway, saying to someone ‘I just got my nose pierced, booked a flight to Peru and spent all my money on motorbike with a dodgy gearbox clutch because I’m researching a novel about a post-apocalyptic gangland war’ sounds so bad-ass that it could be worth it even if you never write the thing.

As for me, I’m going back to Essex. Picking up where I left off four years ago. It’s like rebooting your
PC; all the same shit will be there if you need it, but you just have to load it all up again.

Peru does sound nice, though.

Oh, and my final publisher edits came back yesterday. So it’s time for the final draft of Queen of the World. Plenty of work to be getting on with this week, which I’m looking forward to. Also I’ll meet a new marketing intern from Inspired Quill this week who’ll be helping me get the novel out to the hungry masses, which should be bags of fun. They and I will probably know roughly the same amount about launching a book – as in, not very much at all – so it has that ‘school project’ feel to it. Can’t wait. /glee