Yesterday morning it was still bitterly cold, but there was a lovely sunrise as I walked along the seafront in Penarth. For the first time in years I walked out along the pier there - and found stories beneath my feet. But stories in miniature; stories that, like all the best stories, stay with you because they leave it to your imagination to fill in the details, to really enter into the world of the characters.
Of course plaques on memorial benches are familiar sights on coastal paths, in parks and in other beauty spots, but I hadn't come across ones literally beneath my feet before. There on the planks of the pier in Penarth were dozens of plaques, some with fairly standard inscriptions but several with quite different ones. Maybe in truth the lives commemorated were quite "mundane" (if any life could be said to be mundane), but maybe far from it; I was struck, though, by how, for writers, those few words that summed up a lifetime could conjure up any number of realities. Next time I'm asked for some writing prompts, I know what they'll be, although I may well have used them myself first! In fact, some research into "Dick Lueken, US Navy" is already proving fruitful.
No comments:
Post a Comment