Have you ever been caught
daydreaming? Missed your stop on the bus because your mind was miles away? Been
hauled up for staring out of the classroom window as a child? If so, you
probably learnt that escapism was best avoided. But the ability to switch off,
to transport yourself, to imagine possibilities and ‘think outside the box’ is
essential to creativity and it’s the bedrock of a writer’s existence.
My first forays into escapism
take me back to when I was around nine years old. The girl next door lent me a
box brimming with small Bunty magazines, from a range called ‘picture story
library for girls’. These little books transported me. There were around fifty
of them and I devoured each and every one. I became the ballet dancer in one story, the gymnast in another.
Spurred on by such stories, I learned to do the splits and have been able to, ever
since! The Mallory Towers series by
Enid Blyton had the same effect on me. I was totally immersed in those
adventures. I still get a tingling excitement when I type the title. They were
my first recognisable ventures into escapism.  |
| My finest gymnastic achievement! |
Escapism allows us to drift away
from our own life – the routine, the humdrum – for a while. To leave our known reality
behind and enter an existence somewhere else. Avid readers find this when they open
a new book. Within moments, they have entered a new world with all their
senses. For me, as an author, each time I write a new book, it’s like stepping
through the back of the wardrobe in Narnia
(CS Lewis) or opening the gate to The
Secret Garden (Frances Hodges Burnett). A new place, new people and a new
mystery. I become a new self, identifying with the characters in the book, joining
them as they unravel the threads of a murder, facing their dilemmas, responding
to their emotions from the safety of my writing desk.
I have one of those minds that
naturally seems to take off somewhere. Very easily. I tend to do a lot of ‘what
if’ thinking with regard to my own life. I think a crime writer needs that much maligned part of us that
tends to slip into ‘catastrophe thinking’. I’m often dreaming up nightmare
scenarios, asking myself ‘what’s the worst that could happen here?’ and running
with it in my mind. I visualise. A lot. I have a second life going on inside my
head all the time – a constant film running that jumps around from planning,
rehearsing, daydreaming, reflecting and making stuff up. It’s busy in there!
This kind of ‘wild mind’ is
useful when looking for ideas for writing a new novel. Brenda Ueland, (If You Want to Write: A Book about Art,
Independence and Spirit) calls it ‘moodling’ – daydreaming with a pencil in
your hand. It’s the process of brainstorming and letting your imagination
wander, then catching whatever comes out, like netting butterflies.
Someone once asked me why I don’t
do more travelling and I told them that I do all the travelling I need inside
my head. This is true of many introverts – instead of spending time ‘out there
in the real world’, we go inwards into our thoughts, reflections, memories and
imagination. The books I read feed this rich inner world and the books I write
emanate from it. I forage around in these other lives in order to gain insights
to bring back to this one.
In my writing, escapism means I
take myself into the scenes I’m creating and explore them as though I’m
physically present. I look around the room, the boat, the cellar and feel the
cold, see the shadows, smell the mould, taste the dust, hear the footsteps,
sense the foreboding. Then I describe the experience.
Of course, there were
many times during the writing of my latest thriller, Don’t you Dare, when I didn’t know what something looked or felt
like. What does the cellar of a pub smell like? How warm is it? How fast can
you go in a speedboat? So I looked these details up, but most of the time I’m inside the story. And that’s where the
fun starts, because I can design who does what in a novel. I’m in control. I
can make people become who I want them to be. Make things happen in the way I
decide. Like an adult playing with a train-set or model village! (It makes the
process of writing sound like a doddle, which it really isn’t – but it is all-consuming.)
There are no two ways about it,
I’m hooked on escapism and admit to being a self-confessed daydreamer! I
wouldn’t give it up for the world.
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This feature was first published in The Crime Readers' Association Newsletter.
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- Over 450,000 books sold worldwide
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