The Hague Online's 'Writer in Residence' Jo Parfitt is musing about . . .

Why daydreaming is a good thing for the writer

January column 2011

Isn’t it funny how one thought leads to another? We spot something by chance and the sight of it sparks a train of thought that takes us to some places and memories we had not had in years. If those memories are good I’m grateful that they came along and take a few moments to enjoy them, probe deeper in the memory and even write them down.

Take my writing class today, for example. We were reading a piece from the book, Taxi, written by recent ASH student, Anika Smit, about the day she went to buy fish when she was living in China. Anika described how she went to the market with her ayee, Susan, on Susan’s scooter and ended up having to drive home with the huge, bloody, live fish in a plastic carrier bag, wedged between the two of them. The fish, still squirming, fell off the scooter into a filthy puddle that was dangerously close to a toilet. It was Anika’s job to trap the beast and get it back in the bag and home to be scaled, still alive, by Susan, who used her long nails to do the job.

When I asked my students to write about a story from their own lives it was no surprise that two of them proceeded to write their own food stories. One wrote about the day, hungry and jetlagged, that she bought a chicken to roast for her family’s dinner in Miri. When she unwrapped it from the cellophane, she was so shocked at the sight of the head and claws that were still attached and flopped out onto the counter top that she could not bear to eat it. An Italian student wrote of her own experience with fish, this time from the finest fishmonger in town. Only as the family sat down to eat, and were salivating at the beauty of dish before them, someone sniffed suspiciously and declared the fish was bad and therefore inedible. It was Christmas Eve and the disgruntled gathering was forced to eat ham sandwiches instead of delicious, lemony, fritto misto.

The way my students’ minds had acted upon the inspiration from Anika’s fish story is typical of the way a writer should think. In fact, this is exactly the right way to act like a real writer. The reason that my students were so inspired was because Anika’s story had resonated with them and had, in turn, reminded them of a story of their own.

Now, if this happened to you while you were at school, and something the teacher said triggered a thought process that made your eyes glaze over and stare out of the window, you would surely be admonished and accused of daydreaming. But when this happens to a writer, I think it is a good thing. This is exactly how stories are created, when one random thought leads to another.

Try making yourself aware of what you think about and watch the journey your thoughts make. If a good story pops in to your mind, then hold it there, focus on it for a moment, and then, when you have time, write it down.

So, writers - get daydreaming!

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