Creative non-fiction can cover some very diverse areas. For me a fruitful area for non-fictional inspiration has been the family history research I've now been carrying out for a number of years. Not that our family has been anything out of the ordinary, but you can always find the extraordinary in that ordinary. I've learned so much about social history - and it's been a lot more interesting than the political / military affairs of nations that passed as history in my school days!
Next month Vintage Script magazine will publish "Victorian Juvenile Justice", my article based on the experiences of my grandfather in the 1880s and 90s, when the theft of a loaf of bread and half a pound of butter earned him two weeks in gaol and two years in a reformatory - at the age of ten! Their last issue featured my article on mourning jewellry, a topic on which I'd known almost nothing until being given a brooch belonging to my grandmother in which was embedded a lock of her mother's hair; that started me off on a fascinating journey of discovery. The magazine, which comes out three times a year, is an interesting mix of historical / retro articles and stories and it's well worth a look at if you have leanings in that direction.
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