Cat Literature! Introducing Inkytails.com

I've released a new site! Please visit http://www.inkytails.com if you're interested in some kibble sized fun fiction!

  

Website: http://www.inkytails.com
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/inkytails

My two little cats have been thoroughly entertaining, encouraging me to give them pseudonyms, adventures and lots of food. 

Hope you enjoy our inkytails!

Inspiration from real life

I've had the unfortunate privilege of watching my life spin out of control. A blur of events which my creative insanity delights in.

A portion of my brain seemingly detached from reality looks on grimly, sometimes in awe, sometimes with the goosebumps of excitement.
It snags against certain experiences and replays the event in my head like a flickering projector in the dark.

And I begin to knit. Knit the folds of reality and labyrinths of imagination together to create a story. A story far-fetched and unrecognisable maybe, but a story reincarnated from a tangible history.

This is a shady if not dangerous topic. To myself personally, with nervous friends who now wonder whether they've cast shadows to ignite my characters. But where does a writer's inspiration come from if not from obscure intersections with the world? Even the ideas that come like an arrow in the night - how long have they brewed, flavoured by the writer's own life?

So then, how true can this caveat be?

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

There is very little in my fiction that I would ever claim as a straight copy of reality - of people, places, incidents, events. Frankly, it would be a bit creepy, if not too personal to write. But I will admit to borrowing elements of things I've experienced, people, places, incidents, events - to morph to my purposes. How could you even recognise it? It is the wrinkle that gives character to an imagined face.

I have hidden from the pen before. A creative friend asked if I had ever been too scared to write. It's the type of question I can only answer in reflection, when I feel oddly anchored to safe harbour, standing nervously in wait for the next disaster. I have been paralysed from writing. About 9 months of incomplete sentences and evaporated ideas. Life threw enough dramas for me to watch first-hand like a mini-series, I had to hide in the quiet of my mind, too terrified to entertain anything else.

But life changing events have a rich legacy. Things I could not possibly appreciate - the million gray shades of life, the eternal paradox of logic and emotion, the depth and ruin of human nature - I've only tasted. I'm terrified of seeing more, but no doubt, if the Lord sees fit, I will endure.

So I've been grappling with the scenes that trace it's roots to reality, twice shaded, and thrice turned. And intermittently, appalled to find myself on dark treacherous terrain, so I turn and turn it over again, until it is safe and inpersonal enough to navigate. Then I come to eerie calms, when I lie in wait of what else life shoots up to capture.

These moments make me wonder if I create new stories, or merely re-create them with my own rules. I wonder if other writers, whether conscious of it or not, do a similar thing. I've read a few manuscripts, and excerpts from writer friends, and I have come across scenes which are hauntingly familiar down to the dialogue, whether from creative mastery or a creative transposition of reality,  I can't be sure. But either way, it made a very good read.