Day 114

Do you write what you feel, or do you write what you must?

…

I don’t think I have ever written a story because I had to, well, not until now in the process of writing a book in 365 days, from my literary calendar.

But..

The stories I write for this are not to any sort of format. Yet, I guess because I have to write something specifically asked for, then in that case, I write what I must.

But for everything else, I write what I feel like, and quite often those stories follow a set of feelings that are created or prompted by what I see around me, what I see on TV, what
I hear on the radio, and what I read.

It’s nothing to glance at the headlines and sift out one or two, or a set and weave them into an idea that might be the basis of a story. I like the idea of unconnected and random events, and from these, I weave them into a story.

For example:

There was a TV show on, one of a series, and it was in part about a spy network being wound up because they were about to be blown. I write about spies, especially those who have tried to escape from their former lives, and this was too good an opportunity to pass up.

Then there was another, of which I only saw a preview, but it had an interesting premise: what if you didn’t really know the person you had been living with for the past twenty-five years? Yes, you guessed it, a spy.