I have an odd problem.
A mouse has moved into my car.
Yesterday, in an effort to get rid of said mouse, I spent a good portion of my afternoon cleaning my car, vacuuming, taking out all the detritus that had built up since I last cleaned it, which was, let’s be honest here, a good while ago.
I spent the earlier part of yesterday researching my second novel and it was rather blissful. I scouted out locations, took a zillion photos and wandered around Taunton looking at people and the way in which they interact with each other and their surroundings, trying to bring life and purpose to my characters. I was feeding that spark of creativity.
Every time I returned to my car I found the mouse had been at work. A corner of my son’s car seat had been nibbled. A sponge had been chewed (why do I have a sponge in my car? I honestly have no idea. None at all.) At one point the mouse, um, no polite way to say this, it had pooed. It had pooed right on my chair and that was the last straw; the mouse had to go.
I am also rather worried that it might chew through my break wires and turn my Yaris into an un-slowdown-able battering ram.
As I dragged out all the car seats, children’s toys, books, more books, notepads, scraps of paper, old orange peel and all the other stuff that had built up in my car over recent weeks, I realised how similar the task of hunting for the mouse and hunting for the spark really are. I’m trying to clear away the junk from my mind, work out which new ideas are worth keeping and which need clearing away in the hope that, by doing so, I will find that one tiny nugget that will make everything else click into place.
I never saw the mouse, but as the (humane) mousetrap I put in my car is currently empty, and there have been no further little presents left in my footwell, I can surmise that mousey has found a new place to nest. Hopefully, this is not the case for the creative spark. That chap can stay, nest away in my brain as long as it likes.
Which will hopefully be for a long, long time.
Rebecca Tinnelly 