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Craft of Writing

B.A. Goodjohn

The Bus to Inspiration

When you asked me, “Where do you get your ideas from?” I’m sure you didn’t think you’d end up sitting next to me, freezing your arse off on the top deck of a bus heading for town. But, like many other answers to life’s questions, this one’s easier to show you than tell you. And anyway, as a writer, I’m not allowed to merely tell you anything.

Look around. I mean, really look around. You see, all these passengers are story lines. Everything outside that window is location, and each overheard conversation is potential dialogue. So sit back, enjoy the ride and let’s answer your question.

Essentially, we’re going into town so I can get some shopping—bread, milk, and a box of chicken kievs from Marks and Spencer. But creatively, I’m on my own personal hunting trip. After all, from a foraging point of view, the bus isn’t the best mode of transport; it’s cold, expensive and takes forever. And as you know, I do have a car. But I’m a writer, and my best friend and mentor told me a good writer gets down into dark, desperate humanity before she attempts to write about it. He also said, “Get in touch with your own subversion.” I don’t know about you, but I can’t get subversive in a red Ford Fiesta with imitation suede seat-covers. So, that’s why we’re on a number 318 bus. We’re hunting down subversion—otherwise known as material.

We can start here, right in front of us. There’s chewing gum in the defunct ashtray and “Gazza’s got a big knob” scrawled in pen on the back of the seat. At least they remembered the apostrophe. And “knob” is a difficult word, what with the silent ‘k’. An educated vandal is a joy to encounter. But I digress...

Take him, the Indian boy in the front seat with the carrier bag of cabbages. There’s at least four cabbages in that bag, and he doesn’t look like a vegetable-eating kind of boy to me. So why all the savoys? His nose is red...perhaps from a head cold he picked up at school. If he goes to school. Maybe he’s a run-away? Perhaps his father runs a brothel staffed by under-aged girls, including (he looks like a Keesal) Keesal’s sister?

Or he’s the unwitting love child of that man over there, two rows behind him—the one reading The Daily Mail. But he’s not reading it. Not really. He never learnt to read because his mother kept him in a broom cupboard from the age of two until he was fifteen and began to sprout facial hair. She only let him out when she discovered his singing voice was above average, and she knew if she didn’t nurture him, he would join a terrorist group and kidnap an Opera singer...oh no, Patchett’s done that. Damm! Don’t you hate it when you’re late out of the trap?

Ah, we’ve stopped. Or rather, the bus has stopped. No one interesting getting on down there. No one colourful or pained or overloaded with life’s burdens...or joys. Okay then, what about that shop by the bus stop—the one selling plastic storage bins and hosepipe reels. The shopkeeper, the one in the brown coat, sells plastic because he loves the smell. More than loves. He NEEDS the smell in order to go on with the mundane minutiae of his own life. He’s in love with the greengrocer next door—the one in the plastic pork-pie hat. Every day, the greengrocer, we’ll call him Mr. Golden Delicious (a working-name of course), polishes fruit on the hem of his apron after making love in the stock room with Mrs. Porterly, a customer who buys ten pound of russets and a melon every third Tuesday...off we go. Bye bye, Mr. Shopkeeper.

Hmm? What’s that on the seat? A cinema ticket. A cinema ticket to see The Village. Let’s say it was bought by an obese little girl with a leg-brace (who is forced by her foster mother to wear red stockings), but when she gets to the ticket booth, the cashier tells her she is far too short to be eighteen, and anyway, they have no provision for handicapped customers. Maybe the girl takes the bus home, batters her foster family to death with her leg iron, and then becomes a prominent figure in a political group that champions the rights of fat little girls in leg-braces?

Come on, Bunny! You’re wallowing in ordure again. Upbeat. Upbeat. Upbeat. There must be subversive, yet upbeat material somewhere on this red bus snailing down St. Albans road on a Saturday morning. Hah! Football supporters. Down there on the bridge. Hordes of them, heading for the stands on Vicarage Road. Maybe that one, the one with a lifesize cut-out of Brittany Spears under his arm. Perhaps it’s his birthday and his friends are taking him to the footie and then for a night of drinking and darts, and he’ll meet his future wife, a girl who works behind the bar of The Tanners Arms in the evening, but by day is a telephone sex line operator. Maybe she’s a dead-ringer for Brittany Spears, and when he props cardboard Brittany up against the bar and sees the barmaid, he knows he has to have her or die? But she’s already married. Or dying of an incurable mouth infection. Or she’s the divorced wife (or bastard daughter) of Manchester United’s football coach.

I know! She’ll give up the sex line job to be a produce picker for Tescos. She’s developed a fear of daylight and telephone receivers, and this is the only way she can support herself, filling Internet orders for housebound shoppers. Not Tescos. Let’s think upmarket here. Marks and Spencer! No, they don’t take Internet orders. That won’t work. Oh wait! Marks and Spencer! That’s our stop.

Come on, come on! You go first. Don’t dawdle.

I’ve always liked Marks and Sparks. My mother could never afford their prices and neither can I. But shopping here opens up a whole new vista. And you’d better believe that we can find subversive here as easily as out there on the streets. It’s just better packaged.

So, what did I need? Ah, milk, bread and kievs. Through the revolving door—I wonder if someone could live in there?—then veer right by ladies lingerie; the food hall is over there at the back.
 
And here’s the milk. Organic—must do my bit for my bovine sisters—and two loaves of wholemeal. Then let’s rush the freezer, liberate the kievs and head home, where I can turn some of this into a first draft for Imperial Eggbeater who are “looking for fiction between 1500 and 3000 words centering on the motif of 'Castigation and Fast Food Fetishism. Submission by December 13th. Note: WE DO NOT READ BETWEEN MAY AND SEPTEMBER!'"

What do you reckon to that man, the one rummaging in the freezer? He in the wool suit and motorcycle boots. I wonder if he’s a castigator? Who or what might he castigate? Would he flay himself with a scourge a la Dimmesdale? Admonish the family dog, a shell-shocked creature his wife recently adopted from the local shelter?

Does a scourge have to be made of leather? Do beef burgers count as fast food?

Does that answer your question?


About the Author
B.A. Goodjohn, originally from the UK, now resides in Forest, Virginia. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in The Texas Review, The Cortland Review, Wind Magazine, Literary Pot Pourri, Flashquake and other journals. Her short story, "Cubed," appeared in Blue Cubicle Press's 2005 anthology, Workers, Unite! Contact: bagoodjohn@ispwest.com.