I’ve made a new category today as well as changed the theme of this blog, today’s new category is “About My Work” it’s where you can find out how I got some of my ideas and how I think (dare you enter the crevices of my mind that is).
The story and poem of “The Magic Daffodil” had a fairy character called Fragaria, I got this weird name from the Latin name of the strawberry Fragaria ananassa, pretty useful to think about foreign ways of saying things or Latinised versions for unique names in fantasy stories in my opinion. I do this a lot; Hail very nearly became Yuki, which is snow in Japanese and I think everybody who has ever touched on trying to learn French knows that Mrs Fraise’s name is taken from the French word for strawberries too?
I originally wrote this as a poem, thinking nothing more on it, a few hours after I wrote it, I felt I needed to enhance the work as a short story because it was nagging me too much to ignore.
I remembered reading somewhere about a year ago that publishers are desperately seeking new and traditional fairy stories for children and I think I touched on that, I was doubtful about putting the poem and story onto my blog because I am unsure if publishers will touch it being it’s been put on the web now, what do you think? Do you think having this put up here will affect it being published into an anthology or winning a short story contest?
I believe the poem and story invented itself in my mind because of a mix of things I’ve read and watched over the past year; I’ve started to learn about faeriecraft and various white witch methods of calling up nature spirits and faeries to assist in people’s lives, I have the fairy bible by Teresa Moorey and faeriecraft by Alice Geddes-Ward on my nearest shelves for constant reference.
Nature spirits and so forth I do believe in and I meditate frequently as I see unexplainable things – for example sometimes when I am not thinking about them I see a fairy type person laying down on a log in the garden, then I turn my head to tell someone and look back it’s turned into a nodule on the log, then I blink and the nodule gets smaller and blink again, totally gone. I think I am naturally crazy too, though, I love science so I try to work it out scientifically, but I love playing with my imagination, so I try to believe in some things to keep the magic in me alive, ha-ha.
Other things that bought about the cocktail that is known as “The Magic Daffodil” is the fact I’ve read a book called “The Snow Child” where a little girl comes and goes in snowy Alaska like a magic little wild fairy. Also, it’s been the snowiest year I’ve ever known in the UK, and the longest winter I’ve ever experienced, so to me, that had a big impact too.
I’ve also been eating imported strawberries all week, leading up to writing the story as well and planted some of them from Spalding bulb into troughs.
My poems have been mostly about heart-break I think, too? So that might have had something to do with it as well.
I am surprised by what I did because that night I wasn’t very well at all and I didn’t really want to work, but I just had to, I kept getting these little nagging poetic lines coming into my head and I must admit, most of my poetic work comes whilst sitting on the toilet… it’s annoying, but true, every one of my very best poems must have started on that toilet, sometimes I forget them as I am coming down the stairs again, because my little boy is up to something, so I must start leaving a note pad and pen in there.
I am begging to think whether or not it would be crazy to fashion a toilet into a chair for my office area?
Anyway, that’s it for now; hope you enjoyed the flow of my mind?
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