Shades of Imagination – Enjoy your writing and don’t worry about perfection!
When you are trying to encourage others to experiment with creative writing the fear of ‘failing’ or not creating a perfect piece can be a discouraging factor for aspiring writers. So, sharing pieces that you have created and are far from perfect is a way of enabling others to ‘have a go’ and not be concerned by the suggestions from readers some of which may be helpful but if not can be completely ignored.
Personally, I find it useful to seek out competitions and try to write something that matches their guidelines, word count and themes. You don’t have to enter the competitions, but it does give you the chance to see if it is the type of writing you enjoy or have never tried before. This year in my ‘creative playtime’ I have written two prose style poems on the theme of ‘Time’ suggested for The Telegraph’s 2025 poetry competition and a crime fiction short story that had to be less than 4,000 words.
For me the joy and personal accolade is obviously not winning because none of these pieces (see below) has had any systematic ‘editing’. They are more like word sketches, but just trying to stretch my creativity into thinking differently is useful as it teaches me how amazing some writers are at being able to produce work of such a high quality and which is both entertaining and informative.
Enjoy your own ‘creative playtimes’!
The poems:
Blink and you will miss it!
In the twinkling of an eye,
The sun comes out,
Love steps in,
Winks at you,
Beckons flirtatiously,
Sunflower like,
You turn towards,
The saffron coloured meteor shower of unimagined delights,
Horus’s eye couldn’t be anymore hypnotic,
You have stars in your eyes,
The dawn of a new romance has begun.
Human Sandwich
Layered beneath,
the granite buildings,
weathered by centuries of rain is a timeline.
From the bronze age moorland dwellers,
Who found solace by the banks of fast flowing, gurgling rivers,
Vikings, who made it upstream carrying their coracles shoulder high,
In search of greener pastures and more treasure,
The calming influence of monks,
Recording the lives of bees on a clattering Caxton printing press,
Medieval traders, members of the Order of the Golden Fleece, bearing innovative ideas from Flanders,
Italian wool merchants buying only the finest fleeces fit for a Doge.
Church and Dukes leaving their stamps of authority in green Hurdwick and grey slate,
Mining copper ore and smelting foundries that choked a narrow valley in a cloak of smog and soot,
To be blown away on the international winds of changing economic demands.
The tramp of ‘D’ Day soldiers and now,
Thick socked, heavy booted, walkers,
Quick stop tourists on the hunt for scenic sites, Pannier market bargains,
All oblivious to the significance of the history of those who walked there before their hardships, loves and triumphs,
Their only concern is with the present time and how to find a toilet, grab a coffee, pasty or cream tea and take a selfie with a statue of some illustrious person.
Pirate or saint it doesn’t matter which, because,
The past is dead,
It only adds seasoning to the lives of the current members of the earthly time club,
and for whom the future tolling bell is unseen.
The crime fiction story:
Neat
Starless, windy, windswept nights thrilled me. Add a touch of sleet and frost and everything was perfect. The faultless winter weather meant that the backdrop was in place for me to fulfil her long cherished dream. I’d carried out a few test runs, mainly on rodents, human rodents but nothing on the scale of what was planned for two weeks of UK book signings and interviews.
My syrupy regency romantic fiction novels had topped the best seller lists yet again. My readers had an insatiable appetite for them. It made me laugh, because I wasn’t in the least bit romantic and had only written the first one as a way to pay back the student debts I had accumulated while studying for a Master of Science in Chemistry and to capitalise on the wide-eyed romantic optimism of the students of all sexes and ages that I’d been studying with.
I was never going to be one of the starry-eyed brigade. Definitely not after my years of growing up in a trailer that looked even more battered than my mother and possibly my father. I was never sure if he was my father. All I could recall was the rubbish, the sticky, grimy surfaces and above all the smell of alcohol. The odour of beer and cheap spirits and vomit all mingled together.
It was only when I was taken into care that my life began to take on a sense of order and meaning. I loved the smell of disinfectant and antiseptic and would have worn it instead of perfume, but of course I couldn’t. What I could do was keep my room well-organized and spotlessly clean and partly for that reason rather than my outstanding academic grades, I was lauded, praised and held up as the ideal example of how being in the foster care system was not necessarily a drawback.
My exceptionally high grades especially in the sciences, and my humble origins opened the doors to the Ivy League universities. I never went to parties and only drank soft drinks at anything social that I was forced to attend. The state my roommate arrived back in after going to a party, unable to walk in a straight line or to undress made me feel physically sick as did the clothes scattered all around their room, even on my uncluttered and well-organised side.
I quickly addressed the problem as by semi-accident I broke a glass and the barefooted girl I shared with was so inebriated that she didn’t notice all the shards of glass that were scattered on the floor near her bed. Not surprisingly, my roommate never came back drunk again after her rather long and painful time in A&E having the glass splinters removed.
I am still amazed that at the age of almost thirty I am one of the most highly paid writers around and even earning more than some of the big-name crime writers. So, to celebrate my success and my thirtieth birthday I intended to indulge myself and my love of order.
People don’t know how to behave. They are so, random and I hate it. Thankfully, no-one would ever guess that I loathed my adoring rabble of readers with the look of longing and unfulfilled dreams in their eyes.
The city was decked out in its pre-Christmas best with all the popular shopping streets brightly lit by the angels and stars hung across them. The shop windows were filled with glittery over-priced items designed to attract the attention of passers-by, tourists and workers. Restaurants had been booked for office parties for ages and any theatre with a musical being performed was sold out. The scene was set for my birthday treat.
Naturally, I had selected my target streets and places on previous visits. They weren’t the more upmarket ones where the beautiful, perfumed people shopped, but the areas where those addicted to various substances often congregated and that were perfumed by the scent of urine and spilt cheap beer and wine. Of course, there were those who were street sleepers through no fault of their own, but they still cluttered up the place and made everywhere look as slovenly as they were.
My first full day was spent signing copies of my latest novel and a drinks reception for my fan club and then dinner with two winners of a writing competition organised by the publishers. Then as soon as I could escape, I was going to walk back to her hotel even if it was raining.
I sipped my alcohol-free fruit cocktail while I was introduced to what felt like an endless stream of admirers and signed the copies of my special edition novels. I had switched to my auto-pilot style of communication. Fortunately, I had learnt how to make my answers sound genuine. The pattern was usually the same with an adoring reader saying, “I just love your novels; they make me feel that all is well with the world.” To which I would reply, “Thank, you. I am glad they give you pleasure.”
Eventually, a member of my publicity team came up and prised another limpet-like admirer away from me, by directing them to the free ‘choose your own goodies bag table’. While another of the team reminded me that it was nearly time to leave for dinner where I was going to meet Jo and a Carmel the competition prize winners.
Thankfully, I wouldn’t have to use their family names. Carmel was bad enough, it sounded like she was some sort of gooey, buttery toffee of a person. I imagined that she would be on the ample, curvy side and wearing something that was glittery and body hugging. Jo was a fairly nondescript name, and I imagined that he was a research librarian in some dusty and rarely consulted archive.
Entering the dining room and being shown to my table I gave myself a mental congratulatory pat on the back. Carmel looked almost exactly as I’d imagined, but Jo was a bit of a shock. He looked about eighteen, but I knew he had to be older because the competition rules had clearly stated that writers should never have been published before and be over the age of twenty-five. This was unusual, but my publishers had explained that they’d had enough romantic zombie and werewolf fiction submitted to them by younger writers to make them want to impale themselves on stakes.
“I’d like to introduce you to Carmel Jones and Jo Montano. They were selected out of over ten thousand entries to our romantic fiction competition to meet you and to have their work considered for publication,” said the publisher’s representative.
“Wonderful to meet you and congratulations. You must tell me why you enjoy writing romantic fiction and what your stories are about as I haven’t been given them to read as yet,” I said accompanied by my most charming and inviting smile.
Carmel took up the offer to explain, which she did throughout the first course and main course while Jo simply ate and listened. The moment Carmel excused herself to go to the ladies, gave me the chance Jo a question.
“Are you related to a famous singer from Trinidad?”
“No, nothing as romantic as that. My Dad is an accountant, and he can’t sing.”
“What made you write your novel?”
“A bet.”
“What sort of bet?”
“Well, there was a girl I liked at Uni, and she said I hadn’t got a romantic bone in my body and she bet me that I couldn’t write one of the novels she liked to read and that she’d sleep with me if I did. So, I wrote one but by the time I’d finished it I had gone off her.” I couldn’t help smiling at his literary motivation.
“So, what do you do, Jo?”
“Well, I am really an aspiring actor. Lots of aspiring, but not many parts and so I’ve joined the Met.”
“I’m American. So, what’s the Met? Anything to do with opera?”
Jo laughed, “Nothing as glamorous. It is the Metropolitan police force and I’m on the graduate detective scheme.”
Momentarily, I didn’t know what to say and so I gave him a radiant smile and was saved from replying by the return of Carmel, who oblivious to everyone else managed to keep up an unbroken inane monologue until after the coffee when everyone was free to leave.
I made a gracious exit having wished the novice novelists the best of luck with their writing and headed out into the lashing rain. There was plenty of time left that evening to check out my panned route for the next evening.
I noticed that Jo watched me leave and was following me. No doubt he was curious about where a famous author might stay, or he was bored and didn’t have anything else to do.
Despite the biting wind and rain, I was in no hurry to reach my destination and meandered backwards and forwards across streets, which were still crowded even though the shops had closed hours before. Jo might have thought it was a little odd that instead of looking in shop windows I seemed to be scanning the shop fronts. If I hadn’t been a well-known author, he might have thought that I was looking for CCTV cameras and security alarms. I imagine Jo was using me almost like a research project and would decide that it was something successful authors who wrote about the Regency period did, examining the fronts of building to see if they were old enough to feature in their novels.
Arriving back at my hotel I was only too glad to take a warming shower and go to bed, but not to sleep. I just lay there, reconfigured my plan for the next day and reset my alarm.
Frost, mist and darkness were my ideal companions as I made my way along the route I had mapped out. I’d avoided all the hotel security cameras. I didn’t run, but walked quickly and delivered my gifts to all those who were sound asleep wrapped in sleeping bags and flimsy tents. On my walk I left twenty small miniature bottles of alcohol with the added extra. Of course, I was wearing gloves, a wig, artfully applied make up, coloured contact lenses, a false nose and a baggy jogging outfit that I would never be seen dead in usually with my ordinary clothes underneath. I carried DNA cleaned bottles in a light backpack slung over one shoulder and all the marks as to where the bottles had come from had been filed off just in case.
Afterwards, I made certain everything I had touched was disinfected and squashed into a nondescript plastic bag that I had retrieved from a rubbish bin at the airport when I’d flown in. Then I headed for a café near the next bookshop I was supposed to be signing more books in. I manged to find a suitable bin to put the plastic bag in just before it was emptied. I knew I had planned everything to perfection, but I also knew that nothing was ever perfect and yet for once there were no hitches and so I was able to indulge a very unhealthy and fat ridden breakfast as a treat for accomplishing my mission. All I had to do the was wait.
As I was leaving I noticed that the news presenter on the TV café wall screen was saying something about three dead, but I couldn’t hang around to find out more as I was going to be late for the book signing.
I arrived at just in time. A queue of doe-eyed romantics was waiting for me to write dedications in their pre-purchased copies.
“Did you hear the news?” The publishers press representative asked me as I was being shown to the signing table.
“No.”
“Well, last night three street sleepers died. Well, actually they were murdered quite close to here. They were knifed and I assumed people might have kept away, but no way just look at the queue.”
I did and much to my horror I noticed that Carmel was in the line. So, my first thought was not another stalker fan and my second was that the bottles I’d distributed the night hadn’t killed anyone. My remedy which I’d been working on for years was designed to put serial drinkers off ever touching a drop of alcohol again. It worked in two ways. Even a whiff of anything with alcohol in it would put most people off drinking it. I’d taken the pungent, putrid scent of the durian fruit as a base and if they were unable to smell anything one sip would make them violently sick and continue to have the same reaction anytime they drank alcohol. I had been trialling it everywhere I went for the past two years with no fatalities. I might like things to look nice and for people to behave, but I was far too intelligent to want to kill them especially because they were killing themselves anyway.
I switched myself into, I hope you enjoy the novel and what would you like me write as a dedication and of course I don’t mind that you’d like me to dedicate it to your cat’ mode.
By the time Carmel reached the desk my patience was wearing thin, and I was in need to another coffee.
She started by wishing me a happy birthday. Followed by would I like to go to lunch and telling me that she had organised a special birthday surprise for me and wanted to tell me about it. I was able to graciously sidestep the invitation and eventually the publishers rep. came to my rescue and prevented Carmel from hugging me.
During my coffee break I arranged for one of the bookstore staff at the end of the day to walk back to my hotel with me. I’d had quite a few followers who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Interestingly, these were often youngish men, who had somehow muddled me up with my gorgeous heroines, which was bizarre as I definitely have an academic look about me, and there certainly isn’t anything model or sugary sweet about me. I had an increasingly nagging feeling that Jo, the other competition winner might be under that kind of illusion about me, because he had been flitting in and out of the shop all day looking at random categories of books like beekeeping for beginners. The difference with Jo was that he wasn’t being a pest. Carmel was going to be much more difficult to avoid.
My arm was aching by the time the book signing was over and so was my mind. I kept trying to work out why anyone would kill any of the rough sleepers unless they were on some sort of drug themselves.
The walk back to the hotel was grim. It was sleeting and my coat wasn’t as waterproof as the label said it should be. There wasn’t any sign of Carmel, but my intuition told me she’d already positioned herself in the hotel lobby, which is why I’d hedged my bets and asked the assistant who was walking with me to come up to my room and that I’d give her an uncorrected copy of my latest novel. I could see that for her it was like winning some big raffle prize.
Carmel wasn’t tailing me, but Jo was in a rather sweet puppy-dog fashion. He certainly wasn’t very good at remaining unseen or for that matter unheard, because he kept bumping into umbrella carrying shoppers and saying ‘sorry’.
I had a fleeting sisterly sense of affection for him. By the time I had locked myself into my room I was exhausted and decided that birthday or no birthday I was not leaving the room that evening and would just eat all the complimentary mini-bar snacks for dinner. I was concerned that Carmel might have checked into my hotel and so have access to the keycard activated lifts and so I locked and put the chain on the door and pushed the heaviest chair in the room against it.
I’d just finished nibbling my way through all the snacks when I had a call from reception to say that a package had arrived for me and asking if they should bring it up. I told them to hang on to it until I came down for breakfast. My suspicion was that it was a gift from Carmel, which meant she was lurking in waiting for me downstairs.
Outside by bedroom window the sleet had turned to snow and so I was only too glad to snuggle under the duvet and switch off the lights before ten. I woke up just after midnight by someone trying a key card in my door several times followed by silence. I knew no one could get into my room and so I just turned over and went to sleep again. My phone woke me, and I quickly dressed and slipped out of the hotel by a back entrance and headed for the nearest large railway station knowing that even at that early hour I’d be able to get a coffee.
It was dark and icy cold, but not as bad as the previous day. The station was already buzzing with grim-faced commuters. I managed to squeeze into a crowded take-away style café and perch myself on one of the few bar-style seats, sip my coffee, and read the free newspaper I picked up. Its headline story was about the stabbing of another two street sleepers very close to my hotel and that the ‘perpetrator’ was still at ‘at large’.
Arriving at the next bookshop on my signing itinerary and looking tired and even less in the mood to be charming than usual I immediately spotted a tall and what in the eyes of a romantic fiction writer was a ruggedly handsome man chatting to my publicist. Next to them was Jo looking scruffy and very un-policeman like.
My publicist saw me and dashed over and threw her arms around me, which she’d never done before.
“You’re safe. We’ve been so worried about you.”
“Why?”
“Your stalker,” explained the handsome early forty-year-old man.
“I don’t think Jo is what I’d define as a serious stalker. Are you Jo? I know that you have been following me, but…”
“I haven’t been following you,” said Jo.
“No, he hasn’t. I am his boss, superior officer and he hasn’t been following you, but protecting you.”
“I’ve been keeping an eye on Carmel, who has been following you,” said Jo.
“It’s a very unromantic story,” said Jo’s boss and added, “To cut a complicated story short we think that Carmel murdered her flatmate to get the story that won the prize. We just couldn’t prove it until you turned up.”
“Sorry, but I must be having a dense moment.”
“Carmel has been yearning for the kind of fame and accolades that you have achieved. Her semi-literate diaries are all about you and has added in quotes you have made in the media including ones about the need to clear rough sleepers off the streets. She hadn’t copied in the part where you’d added in that there wasn’t enough support to help them with addition, homelessness and other issues that contributed to homelessness.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say except, “What did she do?”
“Well”, said Jo “you might not believe me but I did actually write the story I entered in the competition. Then when all the short listed writers were invited to the party where the winners were announced at I was collared by Carmel and realised that something wasn’t adding up. She kept talking about you and your success, not your novels but your success. It quickly dawned on me that she hadn’t actually read any of your novels, because I had and realised that it was her flatmate who, “had suddenly died” had told her the story lines and so it followed the flatmate rather than Carmel had written the novel. Carmel didn’t even know how to use an apostrophe and that clinched it for me.”
“That’s why he came to me,” said Jo’s boss, and that led us to follow you around just in case Carmel became disenchanted with you and decided to get rid of you, but she became even more fixated with you. Her literacy levels might not be great, but her cunning and planning skills are top notch. She wanted to give you a present that would make you admire her and become her friend. So, she tidied up a few of the street sleepers and stabbed them in order to please you.”
“How did you find out?”
“Jo, saw her leave a package for you at your hotel and then watched as she waited for you to come and collect it. In the end she clearly started to get agitated and booked herself a room to get a key card. “
“That explains the attempt to get into my room last night.”
“Yes, but we were watching her and as soon as my boss managed to get permission to open the package Carmel had left what do you think we found?” Asked Jo.
Immediately, my mind filled with grisly images of human remains.
“It was a pre-paid phone loaded with video clips and a birthday card for you that wished you a happy birthday and hoping that you liked your present as she had tried to tidy up some of the human mess you disliked so much.”
I found it difficult to imagine what was on the clips or rather my mind simply didn’t want to know, but Jo didn’t wait for me to reply.”
“She had recorded herself killing her random victims.”
At that point I fainted and when I came around, I was face to face with the gorgeous police detective, who looked just like one of the heroes in my novels. Jo and my publicist were keeping my fans, who had come for me to sign their books, as far away as possible. It was then it dawned on me that much as I wanted to I couldn’t organise anyone’s life let alone control my own, but that even if I couldn’t create my own happy ending at least it would be a satisfactory one for Jo, who I suspected would become a best-selling novelist and an excellent detective and perhaps I could change my own life and find love myself rather than creating happy endings for both my fictional characters and for ‘real’ people however untidy their lives were.
