There was a rather large fire in my hometown over the weekend. An industrial bakery was engulfed in flames, covering the city centre in a blanket of thick smoke and causing the local shopping centre to temporarily close when it entered the ventilation system. As I type this, the building’s being demolished, though high winds are hampering the process. Shops in the area are still closed and hundreds of people have been summoned to a meeting to address the future of their jobs. For them, and everyone in the area, this is a huge thing.
All this got me thinking about the nature of fire and how powerfully it can impact people’s lives. That obviously translates into fiction too, with writers striving to show how it impacts people and using it as a metaphor for destruction. For me, one of the most potent examples of this is at the end of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier when (spoiler alert) Manderley is razed to the ground. There’s a reason why that scene – in both the book and the film – is so memorable.
What influences an individual writer is down to their individual experiences and interests. Undeniably, major elements of my novels are constructed of both types of block.
I’ve written previously about office politics and how it contributed to the development of But By Degrees. That was experience, yet the theory of how human beings would react to such a charged situation was interest alone. I’m delighted to say I’ve never been in that predicament.
As for Valerie and Amy, those novels came with a splash of experience and a splash of fascination. Until I was nearly ready for publication, I didn’t realise that Amy’s early loss of her father was drawing on my own experience of losing a parent at a young age. Yet delving into Westminster politics in the second novel was pure fascination – I love the potential of that political world and it’s why I’ll keep returning to it.
I suppose where I’m going with this is that, while I was nowhere near the fire in my hometown, I have a connection with it. I know people who were forced to get away from the site quickly, and it’s a site I know well. What I’m saying, I guess, is that my readers shouldn’t be surprised if I draw on this secondhand experience at some point in the future and something goes up in smoke. After all, ideas always have a seed, don’t they?
