My plan this week skirts close to a fool’s errand. But in this year long challenge, we must consider the most boring question in writing:
‘Where do you get your ideas from?’
This query involves so many subconscious twists and turns that any answer will be on some level incorrect, and tiresome for all involved. Never ask it at a book launch.
However, at the moment the partial truth to that question is ‘The Butter Mouse.’ His challenge sets my ideas.
So to go deeper into his plan, I must explain how the flash fiction piece ‘Ants At A Picnic’ came together. I must attempt to find a reasonable answer, in order to get to a deeper truth.
Plus it is not like we can go outside, is it?
This month’s prompt was useful, and I got lucky. After drawing the four cards, the plot appeared to me at once, as opposed to the slow reveal of A Perfect Nap.
I knew the King and Queen were a couple. But the Butter Mouse said that you had to get away from the cards, so this was not to be a tale of royal love. They formed the two main protagonists instead.
The number and the jet black colour of the clubs reminded me of a colony of ants. The phrase ‘ants at a picnic’ crawled into my mind. It pushed my thoughts into a carnival swirl. Two people climbing up a hill. Something swarming after them. They had to go down to get away.
I wrote the whole story down in less than an hour. The pieces slotted into a perfect whole. What was different is that it was like describing a memory, rather than creating a fictional tale. Thick pressure in the air forced my pen to wrench my story up from somewhere else.
Upon completion I had an artefact on my computer, a lump of something new rather than my thoughts spewed out on a screen. I knew the paint was flaky under her hands. That was not a made up detail, but a description of a fact.
I am not sure what that means.
We have all been inside for a long time. Maybe this is psychosomatic. A way to make my one bedroom flat more enjoyable. But this blend of research into The Butter Mouse and following his instructions is yielding results. At the very least twelve stories will appear, and a history of a man will be told.
However, we may learn more. We may learn where The Butter Mouse got his ideas from.
It may not be what we expect.
