Inspiration from Unlikely Places - The Humble Toilet Roll

The humble Toilet Roll. Source of inspiration and medium of creativity. From the main ingredient in a Halloween Mummy costume, to the staple of every junk modelling arsenal. It has inspired thousands of people with it’s versatility for years.

One small cardboard toilet roll inner tube has countless possible futures… plant pot, pen pot - (thank you Blue Peter), bat, dog, crocodile. Kaleidoscope, rain-maker, telescope, binoculars, towers, turrets, hamster adventure playground. The possibilities are endless.

A toilet roll is a lesson - no a masterclass in inspiration and that it can come from the most unexpected places.



You’d think maybe a toilet roll muse would only be for children, parents and childcare professionals. I am a parent but one child is now safely into adulthood, and the other almost there, and I am not a childcare professional. But earlier this year I did find that a toilet roll became my muse.

I was on a retreat on my own. I had meant to be going on a retreat with my awesome critique group but covid had other plans, so I booked a couple of days away on my own to Holland House, to actually get my edits finished. While I was there unhindered by the to-do-list or nagging teens or needy builders I managed to get my edits completed, but I was also touched by inspiration whilst in the bathroom.

You see Holland house is dedicated to being as earth friendly as possible and uses bamboo toilet rolls which are individually wrapped in bamboo patterned paper. One of the patterns struck me as looking like fish scales. So when I unwrapped a new roll I saved the wrapping.

While as was having some down time I was looked at the paper and reached for my my pens, pencils and glue, and doodled a mermammoth. I used the paper as the scales on the tail. I was having fun, so I thought why stop there? Soon I had a notepad full of unimammoths, pegumammoths and other mammoth-mythical creature mash-ups.

These mythical-mammoths sat in my notepad for months until one day I they unexpectedly burst into my brain in a story, which I have now penned and in the process of editing.

I didn’t think much about it until last week while I was away on holiday with several teens that didn’t belong to me (and one that did), when one of them came down poorly and had to stay a day at the apartment. They were feeling down, but are very arty, so I told them this story, and we looked around the apartment until we found something that could inspire them - a french language wild-west comic. They used the illustrations as the basis for many amazing fantastical beasts.

So to bring this full circle, a humble toilet roll gave me the inspiration for a new story, and inspired me to help find the best in a less than ideal situation that in turn inspired another creative. Reminding me that inspiration can come from the most mundane of muses.

Out of the mouth’s of babes… confidence boosts from unlikely places

Being a pre-published writer is a rollercoaster of emotions. From the highs fuelled by confidence boosting short-listings or full manuscript requests to the deep dive into depression caused by imposter syndrome and rejection. Sometimes the pursuit of publication grinds you down and you doubt your ability, and wonder if you have anything to give or say that readers will find interesting. This can be difficult to circumnavigate.

For a while I’ve bumped between these two emotions, like a jack in the box. However I’ve had a few encounters that have reinforced my confidence and convinced me that my books do have something that would appeal to children.

 

Recently I’ve re-embraced by first passion for illustration, *read about it here* as a consequence I’m setting up an Etsy shop and am running a pop-up shop selling my work. This is the unlikely setting where these encounters took place as I had the pleasure of meeting some incredible children. The children in question were intrigued by my mammoths and we struck up conversations.

One 10 year old, dyslexic boy was fascinated by mammoths, and by my illustrations. I showed him how to draw mammoths and told him about the science that has inspired my latest WIP. His mother has since contacted me to let me know that he (two months later) is still drawing mammoths, telling everyone about mammoths and enquiring about when my book will be published! Editors and agents feel free to contact me!

Look at these AMAZING drawings by the 10 year old I mentioned.

Another 12 year old with dyslexia and dyscalculia was equally enthralled by mammoths and with my illustrations, we made a pact that next time he comes in I’ll teach him how to draw them, and he’ll show me how he draws goats!

 

Another younger boy or 8 or 9, was conversing with me and when I mentioned the ‘Mammoth Rival Project’ and the idea that cloned mammoths could help with the battle against global warming, he got very excited and begun explaining back to me how scientists were looking for mammoth genomes in order to edit elephant DNA ! His mother’s face and amazing, she had no idea how passionate he was about genetics. He was therefore very taken with the concept of my novel.

Amazingly most of the children I’ve spoken to are dyslexic and many have dyscalculia also, and all were very keen to read an own-voice book with a protagonist like them, just like mine!

It bring me joy to know I’ve inspired them in some small way, and they have given me the affirmation I need needed to continue in the relentless endeavour of submissions.

Submissions here I come! 

Inspiration, mining the family memories…

As writers we take inspiration from everywhere or our characters and stories. I’m always on the lookout of interesting and query stories and facts to use in my narratives. I’ve taken inspiration form, fairy tales, folk tales, ghost stories, and history; the Nazi’s doctor’s inhumane and amoral human experiments, the eating of the Persian zoo animals during the Napoleonic Wars, the list goes on.

All of these things are widely known, often already used and need careful research where you have to be mindful and respectful so not wonder off into cultural appropriation or get facts wrong. So, I was thinking; is there a more personal experience of my own or from my family history that could serve equally well for a character inspiration or a story concept?

On the face or it my family is pretty boring. My Dad’s from a long-long-long line of farm labourers, and my Mum is an RAF Officers daughter, with an Irish and Romani lineage. However the anecdotal family history has a few gems which could be cut and polished and developed in to interesting narratives.

Here’s just a few…

• My Mum travelled on one of the last ships to pass through The Sewers Cancel before the crisis. 
• John Betjeman wrote a poem about one of my Aunts.
• The same Aunt allegedly once had a job keeping a young Princess Margret away from Stable Boys.
• My Great-Great-Great-something or other – Granddad, had a fleet of ships working out of Bristol. His name was Captain Lewis, but the only Captain Lewis I can find from the city at that time was a pirate!
• The time when my mum was arrested my Military policy on suspicion of being a spy, (she was looking into an army barracks with binoculars), when she was actually looking for a lost parrot.

From  ‘John Betjeman Letters’ by his daughter Candida Lycett Green, featuring my Great Aunts Florrie and Pearl and uncle Bob

The list goes on, and on. Then there’s my own silly entrepreneurial exploits as a child. Like the time I brought 500 WWF posters from an auction. I believed I could make a tidy profit selling posters of pandas and dolphins at my primary school fate, only to find I’d spent all my money on 500 poster of Hulk Hogan.

Or the time when me and my sister brought a breeding pair of rabbits, with the plan of selling the babies for profit. I’ll stop there as I’m sure you can imagine our comical and costly error. After all rabbits need to be fed even baby ones!

So, what I have discovered is that if you mine the anecdotal family history you may just find a goldmine of story starters. And if nothing else if you write them down, you are recording them for future generations, saving them from being forgotten.

Brain Food - Unclaimed Babies, Violent Rabbits and a Dead Monkey!

As a follow up to my last post on inspiration and where it comes from, (if you missed it press here) this week I’m musing on some of the strange facts and bizarre trivia that I’ve discovered recently whilst ‘feeding my brain.’

As I said last week I spend some time every day feeding my brain, digesting non-fiction, or watching documentaries, or asking myself hypothesis and seeing if I can answer them, which often leads to inspiration and with a bit of luck, a lot of work and few tears - a manuscript. So I thought I share a few of my more recent discoveries…

Unclaimed Babies…

When it comes to things that make you smile, you can’t get much better than the sweets/candy Jelly Babies. Cute, colourful, chewy sweetness designed to make you happy. But recently I read an article which explains their history, and says that these sweets began life as a failure, they were supposed to be jelly bears but the ears didn’t work, so they were rebranded as Unclaimed Babies. At the time (late ninetieth century) abandon babies were rife, but calling something you eat after foundling infants is a trifle macabre, fascinating but macabre.

Violent Rabbits…

In my WIP, I have a character BOB, who is a cute big eyed, floppy eared bunny – from Hell. Hell Bunnies in my books are one of very few living creatures that can go between the underworld and earth, and therefore are the equivalent of homing pigeons. But they have a dark side and crave raw meat. Whilst researching I found that Hell Bunnies are indeed a staple of medieval literature, and feature heavily in the illustrations of scripture known as drollery and often depicted hunting humans. It is strange because I found this after I had written BOB, but I am pretty sure, I’d read about these before and that it sowed a seed in my brain and gradually grew and therefore Bob was ready when I needed him.

Dead Monkey…

YES I said a dead monkey. I often have cause to drive through Henley on Thames, and I have often driven past an old oak tree which has an aging grave stone beneath it, although never had time to stop and read it, to find out why a grave would be by the side of a busy stretch of road. Then one day whilst ‘feed my Brain’ I decided to watch a random BBC Archive documentary about architecture for animals, which was quintessentially English and therefore quite bonkers, but truly fascinating. At one point the presenter was stood on a stretch of road I recognised, under an oak tree, and she was telling the tale behind the mysterious grave stone. It is to mark the burial place of Jimmy, a rather naughty marmoset monkey who belonged to one of the residents who wore him as a living fur scarf. Jimmy was well known in the town (or probably infamous, as he regularly bit people) and died in august 1937. This slightly strange piece of local history intrigued me, and Jimmy has therefore ended up as a character in my current WIP. Rest assured he is still naughty.

So, as far as random brain food, these are as good examples of rather eccentric, trivial and strange historical facts that make you look at things in a new light, and sometimes making you wonder; what if?

The Inspiration Question

Graffiti in Barcelona 

So when I was brainstorming blog ideas, my 14 year old overheard and suggested I post about inspiration and where it comes from, so here are my musings on Inspiration.

It’s a great question: where does inspiration come from? For me the answer is also a question. My writings (and so far this amounts to four completed novels, one novella, half a dozen part finished manuscripts, a dozen picture book texts and draw full of book ideas and plot outlines) all start with a question.

But what question you may ask? The answer is depends on the project, but they all have one thing in common, that it is an obscure question which springboards into a hypothesis to which the quest for an answer evolves into the story. 

Questions like…

What happens if Fairy Tales are real? 

What would happen if every time you sleep, your soul was transported into someone else’s body at the point of their death? 

How would you catch a kangaroo? 

What would the movie Elf be like, if the baby didn’t crawl into Santa’s sack, but The Grimm Reapers cloak? 

What would Rag n Bone men be like in space? 

What would happen to all the domesticated and incarcerated animals if human kind was to suddenly die out? 

If Heaven and Hell are real, are there more souls in the afterlife that have seen a flushing toilet than have not? 

The questions all come from my brain, but why I create such bizarre questions?

The answer is I feed my brain. Creativity is, in my opinion, a living thing and like all living things it needs to be fed. So I feed it a varied and eccentric diet. Often while I eat my lunch, I will watch a random documentary, it really doesn’t matter what, I just pick something a random from the BBC I Player Archive. This week I’ve watched a program about Tom Thumb, not the English Fairy Tale Charter but the nineteenth century international superstar with diminutive stature, Charles Stratton. An Attenborough led film about Jumbo the elephant and a documentary about architecture of animals. I also spend ten minutes a day reading the news, the more obscure the better, plus I read random and bizarre non-fiction books, harvesting a wealth of useless snippets of trivia. 

When I was kid, I would tell my parents facts like… 

The Romans had central heating. 

The Incas invented bulldozers (in spite of not inventing the wheel) they had a man powered machines for demolition purposes. 

The ancient Egyptians had a crude version of a television that was electrical, they used monkey and baboons as conductors, cue lots of dead primates. 

This lead to much ridicule from my parents, but I was fascinated by these bizarre facts that I found in genuine History text books.

This type of food for the brain set seeds in your creativity and eventually surface as a question, which leads to inspiration and a story. Well, at least for me.

So back to the original question: where does inspiration come from?

Answer: The questions of an inquisitive mind.

Art Installation in Shop window in Barcelona