By Bacopa Literary Review 2024 Fiction Honorable Mention K. S. Dearsley
Wile E. Coyote has more chance of catching the Road Runner than I have of catching a good idea if I chase after it. The more I try to force a story into my head, the more likely I am to end up with nothing but a headache.
When I had the idea for 'Waking the Legend', which was awarded an Honorable Mention in the Bacopa Literary Review 2024, I was posing for an art group with nothing to do except stare at a blank wall for half an hour. I could not get on with chores, nor scroll through the internet, and conversation would not have been welcome. I soon gave up trying to remember lists of German verbs and planned activities. Here was an opportunity to let my thoughts drift and to daydream without 'oughts' or 'shoulds' to stop me.
I had imaginary conversations, heard snatches of music, and remembered walking that morning through the disused quarry which is my nearest park. The sandstone has a fault in it that children call the Bear Hole in which someone lost their Yorkshire terrier when it was scared by fireworks–according to local legend.
I did not realise I had the beginning of an idea then, which was just as well. Try to catch an idea too quickly and it is likely to slip out of your hands like a bar of wet soap. Had I attempted to fix the idea too soon, I would have tried to construct a logical story, and discovered when I wrote it down that I only had half of it. As it was, my thoughts continued to drift from one random snippet to another. It was only later, when my conscious mind caught up with where daydreaming had led that I realised how these snippets combined, and that I had a tale to tell.
Life usually buzzes with a constant stream of information and activity. Without an opportunity to be still and to daydream, the imagination gets crushed under all that stimulation. Perhaps if Wile E. Coyote gave up setting traps and concocting dastardly plans for a while, the Road Runner would come to him.
Beep! Beep!
K. S. Dearsley's fiction, plays and poetry have appeared in various publications. She lives with her husband in the middle of England, and when she is not writing they borrow other people's dogs to take for walks. Her novel, Discord's Shadow, the third in the Exiles of Ondd series, was nominated for Best Novel in the British Science Fiction Association Awards 2021. Find out more at http://www.ksdearsley.com or follow her @ksdearsley.bsky.social
