Spotlight On Writers – Dominic Rivron

I originate from Lincolnshire. When I was about five or six, I used to think you could hear the sun setting: I didn’t realise the roar I associated with the red disc and the multicoloured clouds was the sound of jet engines. We lived not far from the Scampton Aerodrome runway. It was the height of the Cold War and day in, day out, Vulcan bombers were taking off and landing. Through the barbed wire fence you could see grassy mounds with concrete doorways. Everyone said these were the bunkers where they kept the atom bombs. The land round there is very flat. You can see for miles. There were (for a small child) mysterious woods nearby, with old, neglected houses and farm buildings hidden away in them. When you’re small, everything’s new and you don’t have explanations for the way things are: what to an adult might seem commonplace, to a small child can seem surreal. I remember the shed on Barrack House Lane, with its dark, open doorway I never went into. The rusty metal case in an old chicken shed an older boy told me was a time-bomb. Everyone’s childhood leaves a deep impression on them: I guess I’m no exception.

I’m not sure. It tends to catch fire when you least expect it. There are a lot of things I do that I like to think stimulate creativity. If I’m not sure what to write, my first instinct is to pick up a book and read it. I usually have a few books on the go. Some of my favourite authors over the years have been Virginia Woolf, J.G. Ballard, Haruki Murakami, Ernest Hemingway. I’m a bit of a Bloomsbury nut, but I’m not sure if it comes out in what I write. I also find that if I throw myself into other creative projects (I’m a musician and sometimes make short films for my own amusement more than anything else), it can open me up to ideas for writing. I also like reviewing books and music: it means I’m never at a loss when it comes to having something to write about, even if it’s not my own creative work.

I think when people talk about writing, they tend to talk about the discipline of turning out so many words a day. There is actually so much else to do. Looking for ideas is hard work. What I definitely don’t like are ‘prompts’. That said, it can be quite productive to create a list of prompts of one’s own. Automatic writing can throw up ideas, too. The trouble with all such strategies is that they only rarely throw up really good ideas. I have an irrational belief, though, that pursuing them does create a milieu in which ideas you can really run with do pop into your head when you least expect it. It’s frustrating when they don’t. In Raymond Carver’s story, Put Yourself In My Shoes, he created a fictional alter-ego, Myers, and puts him through a hell familiar to most people, I think, who try to write short stories:

As he drove, he looked at the people who hurried along the sidewalks with shopping bags. He glanced at the gray sky, filled with flakes, and at the tall buildings with snow in the crevices and on the window ledges. He tried to see everything, save it for later. He was between stories and he felt despicable.

I read somewhere that scientists think creativity is stimulated by routine, unimaginative work – housework, laundry, washing up. I would say, from my own experience, that this is true. Don’t put off the washing up because you’re trying to think of something to write. Do the washing up and you might well find your head full of ideas when, afterwards, you do sit down to write.