People often ask, “How do you know what to write?”

“It just comes.” I reply.

As I write creative non-fiction and memoir, it could be a conversation overheard in a coffee shop that piques my interest, or it could be someone I meet on my morning walk. It varies. But what is constant, is that the moment sparks something that’s been bubbling around in my head. And then I’m away.

For instance, the book I am currently writing (working title)—Coast Dog: Island Meanderings—got its spark at least a dozen years ago from a meeting of my book club at our local pub in Crofton BC.

We had invited a well-known author from nearby Salt Spring Island to join us for lunch and to read from his latest book. The pub overlooked Osborne Bay and the ferry terminal and we watched in anticipation as the ferry docked and the walk- on passengers disembarked. He was easy to pick out, older than I had expected in his tweed cap and rumpled blazer, and I watched as he laboured slowly up the long jetty, his bulky messenger bag slung over one shoulder. A couple of the women in our group, each with a copy of one of his books in their hands, walked down to meet him.

He was delightful. A little hard of hearing and struggled to answer the myriad questions thrown his way from our group of twenty or so fans. He was at his best when he read from one of his books.

One woman eagerly told him she had read all his books and couldn’t wait to read his latest but she was on a long waiting list from the public library. His face turned a peculiar shade of purple as he spluttered, “Good God woman! Couldn’t you at least buy a copy? I’ve a mortgage to pay.”

But my spark didn’t arise from that anecdote, it came as I watched him walking along the dock from the ferry carrying his bag and I was struck by the romance of it all. How living by a ferry terminal to one of the gulf islands I was aware of the divide, the space between one island and the next, separated by water, each island holding its own mysteries and life styles and every island a ferry ride away to a place surely more romantic than the place where I am now.

And because any senior can travel as a foot passenger free mid-week on the ferries Grant and I would often take a trip across Stuart Channel with our dog and walk to the little beach in Vesuvius Bay, and have lunch at the pub and bask in the Salt Spring vibe and feel like we’d been on a holiday.

The idea of a small book of holiday spots on the gulf islands, easily accessible, inexpensive, where you can take your dog, where people are laid back and life is simpler, grew from that day.

But of course, the book is not that book now. Yes, that part is there but it has taken off in different directions which has necessitated many re-writes and has grown to a more complex and thoughtful telling of a story about middle age romance. And travelling with older cocker spaniels.

With any luck, you may be able to put (working title), Coast Dog: Island Meanderings: And the Dog Came Too on your Christmas wish list later this year.

Before you go, a quick post from the psychic me. Like writing prompts or sparks, they just come to me, at strange times and are nearly always dead on.

Something big is coming this year, something shocking and life changing. I don’t feel a sense of foreboding. Its more of an individual change of some major proportions…. and wear purple.

That’s it… take it or leave it. I never question the message. It usually explains itself.

If you enjoyed this and are curious about more content from an Island Crone, please subscribe from my blog sidebar. I promise to post at least once a month and sometimes more. But not often enough to bore.

Island Crone by Liz Maxwell Forbes