The Quest for Ideas

As I near the end of the first draft of my fourth novel, I’m often asked where I get my ideas. The answer is easy, and three-fold: from life, from long walks with my dogs, and from my job as an ESL teacher. Dog walks are my go-to when I get stuck on a plot point or need to take a break, but also a daily must if I want any peace for the rest of the day.

I have ideas and solve problems during these walks; the only difficulty is remembering the details by the time I get home. (Tip: the voice recorder on my phone helps, once I weed out the sounds of tractors, dogs, and heavy panting from trying to walk and talk at the same time.) I also draw heavily on my own life experience for stories. This is nothing but laziness in disguise—why would I invent a whole fantasy world when there are fully-fledged characters on my doorstep?

I also have one more secret weapon: my job. I work as an online teacher, and my students live all across the world. I teach English as a second language, mostly to children, but I also have conversational English practice with adults, a.k.a A Mine of Ideas. The stories they share and the experiences I am introduced to are any combination of incredible, emotional, exciting, ridiculous, and ordinary. I am exposed to a wealth of cultural information and insight into other worlds. Whatever the combination, the stories are rich and ripe:

As part of my current creative writing MA, I submitted a 500-word story based on a family in Wuhan whose son I taught, gaining me a first-class grade. A few years ago, I won a competition in Writing Magazine with a creative non-fiction story based on one of my students. (This story can be accessed here: https://www.writers-online.co.uk/writing-competitions/showcase/writers-competitions-wro-wro-jul18-creativenf/winner/ )

These two examples are both ordinary and extraordinary. The Wuhan piece was born from my tiny glimpse into the first Covid-19 lockdown as the pandemic took hold in 2020. My student, a lively 6-year-old child, was confined to a small apartment in the centre of the unfolding crisis, with his toddler sister. Their lockdown stretched to 74 days. I met him for an hour a week, and witnessed his increasing frustration and restlessness; his mother’s shortening tether, the family’s despair and uncertainty. They were finally allowed to leave their apartment the week of his 7th birthday. I cried when he told me this. An ordinary family; an extraordinary time that sadly has become only too ordinary since then.

The other story, the competition winner, is about a heart surgeon. Something I know nothing about, except through eyes and gentle explanations and recounts of my student’s days. Our chats were most often scheduled for the middle of his night, a wind-down for him as he finished a shift. If he didn’t show up, I knew he was busy saving a life. Or had fallen asleep from the exhaustion of it. He would apologise sincerely for missed classes; I tried to assure him that he, of all my students, must never apologise for missing class. I am in awe of him and he has taught me far more than I could ever hope to teach him. All I could do in return was share his story.

Recently, as an MA exercise, we were asked to share two truths and a lie. These were mine:

1. Over the heads of two giggling girls in Saudi hangs a wide mirror. Reflected in the mirror, their mother—grandmother? I can’t be sure; there is definitely some sagging—strips from the waist up, unclips her bra, swings her breasts at someone unseen, then redresses herself.
2. In a Korean nightclub, my conversational student needs to pee. It’s too dark to see much, but I’ve become more attuned to sound since doing this job. A clunk and flash of light indicate I’m lying on the stall floor, facing the ceiling. There’s rustling, then a flush. I’m scooped from the floor and we’re at the sinks. Raised, male voices exchange words I can’t guess at, over a soundtrack of running water, or peeing. There’s a scrape of a door, and her attention is on me once more. She giggles, and explains in faltering English we accidentally used the men’s toilets. 
3. In China, a 7-year-old student focuses intently on our class; all his attention on me. Behind him, his little brother—often a presence and source of background entertainment—scales a shelving unit. I call frantic warnings, but my student brushes them off, “It’s nothing. He is just trouble,” and the shelf topples slowly forward.

My peers struggled to find the lie (the last one, if you wondered) but even that could easily be true—It plays out in my head every time I meet this child. This, of course, is the place from which the stories grow: the shelf hasn’t toppled yet, but I’ve whole scenarios depicting what happens when it does. I’ve written it in my head as farce, tragedy, comedy, suspense, but never on paper. Yet. The tiny seeds of stories are present in most classes, and ooze into the pages of much of what I write.

Even on the days I don’t find story ideas in my ESL classes, I get to do writing exercises. I’ve been chatting to a boy in Taiwan for the last four years. We divide our time between reading (which leads to story critique and analysis), watching informational videos (Do you know who would win in a Cockroach vs Praying Mantis battle? Or how far a paper aeroplane can fly? We do.), and creating our own ridiculous stories. We set each other tasks and challenges: Think of the most boring thing and tell it in the most exciting way. Retell a story from another Point of View. Add a new character to a story and figure out what that does to the plotline. All this keeps me learning, keeps me thinking, and makes me not only a better writer, but one who has a lot of fun while I write. Characters and stories are in everyone we meet; we just need to notice them.

—

Jinny Alexander’s first novel, Dear Isobel, is out on March 15th, 2022, and is on pre-order from all major online retailers. It, too, is loosely based in a setting she knows and on characters she’s met.

Website: www.JinnyAlexander.com

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Dear Isobel

Women’s fiction book describing the fallout and recovery from an affair and its effect on both families.
Two marriages. A bucket full of dreams and a pile of broken hearts.

She’s not sharing her name. She’s been judged enough. She’s known as a wife, mother, friend, and to one person, a lover. In a tiny Irish village she runs a business with family friends. Except it doesn’t stay only business. In love with a man not her husband, she becomes the other woman, the marriage wrecker, the cheat and the betrayer. When the illicit relationship ends and is discovered, she’s stuck between the ruined affair and a crumbling marriage. Jobless and heartbroken she must discover what she can salvage. Will talking to Isobel help pick up the pieces or shatter their lives forever?

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips