Like all writers, Angela Sherlock knows the importance of practising the craft every day. Here she describes how she found a room of her own in the unlikeliest of places.
'All the books tell you to write everyday. Make rules, abandon the newspaper and the coffee, go to your desk, pick up your pen or go into Word. Write. This discipline is essential. If you are not sitting at your desk, the ideas won’t come and the masterpiece won’t happen. An addendum to this advice is to carry a notebook and add to it as you go through the day.
Well, I have been in the habit of following none of the advice given above and they’re quite right, my body of work is a trifle meagre. No. 'Was'. Because, thanks to First Great Western, this has all changed.
In case you are unaware, First Great Western is the rail company that "serves" the travellers of the south west. And its service is pretty poor. Trains are late, or do not appear. They may have only one carriage or no working toilets. On the rare occasions that there is a shop on board it spends much of the journey closed for stocktaking. FGW’s customer is never right and rarely compensated.
So how does this relate to my writing practice? Ignoring the university on my doorstep, I have opted to study writing at Falmouth, which means I am daily delivered over to the tender mercies of First Great Western. I scurry through the darkened town to catch the 7:05 am train. We are a select bunch of commuters, driven to conversation only when the vagaries of the service prevent our travel. So for two hours there is nothing to do but write.
I find a window seat, unpack my writing pad, and before we have reached the first station I am lost in whatever world I am recording or creating. I scribble, I think, I correct, I pause. The ticket collector interrupts me briefly and probably wonders what the sheets of A4 are about. New passengers avoid my untidy heaps of paper, coat and rucksack, and sidle on down the carriage. But from 7:05 am each morning I write for about two hours. First Great Western provides my desk and my writing environment.
I ought to be self conscious, I suppose. I always feel an idiot when I produce my mobile on the train (usually to report that FGW has stranded me once again and yes, I am on the train). But when I start to write I forget everything else and it never seems to occur to me that others might take note of what I am doing and make judgements about me. Sometimes their talk intrudes, and is a minor irritant, but whatever I am writing about seems to insulate me from my surroundings.
The arrival of the school kids does make a difference. There are a lot of them and they make a lot of noise. But they are interesting. They pose, they seek attention. So I write about them and this means I remember. I am interested in words and people, and a railway carriage is a great place for both. Because I write everything down it gets filed in a retrievable place, unlike memory where there may be many tales I could pass on to the world, but I cannot always remember them.
Sometimes I write my blog. It can be prompted by events around me and the conversations I overhear. A glance out of the window reminds me how very beautiful is the view that rolls by, and how privileged I am to see it in all the variations of its early morning moods. This sets me off experimenting with words to describe it, to working at setting and playing with figurative language.
Several of my train journeys have been translated into short stories and others have gone into storage for future use. I register habits of speech and gesture and watch the interplay between the live characters before me and from some of these the characters in my novel will be drawn. Oh, yes, I am writing a novel. And I began it in a railway carriage where the words came tumbling out and ideas jostled for expression as the train trundled through Cornwall.
So, back to the advice. If you want to write you must do it everyday. You will collect items to write about. You will polish techniques for writing. Just like anything else – making soup or lifting weights – you must practise and you will get better.
Thank you, First Great Western. Could you improve the service next, please?'
