The Writer’s Pocket Rocks
By Jennifer Jenkins, author of ‘Three: A Tale of Brave Women and the Eyam Plague’
Whenever I visit the beach, one of my favourite things to do is to scan the shore for new pocket rocks. My sons are amused by this practice and they are yet to appreciate the soothing capabilities of a good pocket rock. We joke that when I am gone, they will need to rummage in my many jackets and coats and find my best ones to bury with me like sacred grave goods.
Sometimes I choose stones that remind me of something else, like the one that is shaped like a heart or the one with markings like a barn owl’s feathers. Sometimes they are little fossils or stones with interesting markings that speak of life long, long ago.
Other times they are chosen simply because of their shape or a texture that feels nice to the touch or fits perfectly into the hollow of my hand. When I’m walking I often reach for them and when I’m sitting I find the connection with cold stone very grounding. It reminds my nervous system where we are right now but also where we have been and an invitation to where we may yet go.
People sometimes ask me where my ideas for writing come from. In the case of ‘Three: A Tale of Brave Women and the Eyam Plague’, it was a regular encounter with a specific place and a well-documented historical event. I kept returning, to both the Derbyshire village and the tragic story, looking at it from different angles as if peering down from a spiral staircase. ‘Creative leaps’ from the historical record into the depths of my imagination would suggest themselves, allowing for a fleshing out of the bare bones found in the historical record. Oft times it was an element of nature that teased out a new thread; a plant, a bird, the weather. But it was always grounded in the story of that destructive visitor several centuries earlier and the real women of the village’s history who had to navigate that treacherous time.
But for my next book, another tale focused on women but this time drawing upon local history and the riches of our own geographical location, I am noticing there is a gathering of ideas that is a bit like my pocket rocks. These are small things I want to draw close to me, to put near to the ear of my heart and to let them muse to the writer within. Due to chronic illness, my progress with the research and writing for this new story is slow. But I can share three ‘rocks’ I have gathered into my pockets for later:
A special line from another book
One of my neighbours is fellow Rugby-based writer, Jason Cobley. In his splendid book, ‘A Hundred Years to Arras’, there is a line that has embroidered itself into my heart: ‘The land knows no time’. From this one line I’ve stowed away for safe-keeping, a story rooted into the land of one place but traversing the richness of life across centuries, is taking its first breaths within the bounds of my notebook. Five fictional but very-real-to-me female characters are emerging from the soil. I wrote that line out and I keep it tucked into the pocket at the back of one of my notebooks. Our fellow writers can so often offer us a gem for safe-keeping.
A beguiling tree
If I walk slow and on the flat, I can sometimes do a little walk down to the church yard in our village. I like to sit there, to catch my breath and rest a while, but also to just be with the wonderful nature that resides in that space. There is one tree, a willow, that I find especially beautiful, particularly when the sun threads its way through the long, green tendrils of its leafy branches. It is beguiling in its mix of elegant beauty and deep sense of melancholy. From this one tree a character emerged for me and with her a story of love and loss. Then one day I saw a piece of artwork by Michael Cook of a woman bowed beneath a willow tree and I have purchased a copy from this wonderful artist. It’s too big to fit in my pocket but it sits on my desk and reminds me that I need to find the energy to let this woman and this tree tell their story. It is a beautiful reminder that I have work to do.
A house that whispers history
In my first novel the setting and characters were already set and indisputably connected with the story I was desperate to tell. But with this second one, I am creating the characters, and the setting, while loosely connected with a particular locality, is in need of embellishment. The historical aspect of the story I am proposing to myself is through weaving in the real events that took place in this area and then imagining the way my crafted characters interact with these. My ladies have got to live somewhere, so something I have taken a shine to lately is a particular house in our village. It is very old and I fancy I know what one of my protagonist did within its walls when she lived there in the fictional past of this village that is brewing in my imagination. So into my writer’s pocket I’ve dropped a Manor House and all its inhabitants several centuries past. It’s a giggle to think of a house within my pocket.
My writer’s pockets are getting full with new ‘rocks’ for my future historical fiction novel. I don’t know how other writers do it but this is what works for me; growing a collection of ideas until they can be sewn together into a tale that will entertain the mind and move the soul. As I said, my progress is frustratingly slow but my eyes are always on the lookout.
