This week on the Wednesday Writing Spot, I am delighted to welcome writer, Patsy Collins, who is talking about where she gets her ideas from and her fabulous new short story collection, which is called Up The Garden Path. It’s lovely to have you here, Patsy. Now it’s over to you…

As writers we are often asked where we get our ideas from. It seems such a reasonable question but it’s very hard to give a satisfactory answer. Each writer will get their inspiration in a different way to that of their colleagues and they’ll probably draw on a number of resources. Ideas are everywhere you see. That’s both good and bad. We don’t have to wait for the ideas shop to open, but those little story sparks don’t come neatly labelled ‘romance novel suggestion’ or ‘ghost story premise’ so we need to train ourselves to spot them.

My new short story collection contains twenty four short stories and each is the result of a different stimulus. It’s a bit like picking wild mushrooms, really. If you want nice, safe mushrooms you need to know what they look like or you’ll end up with something toxic, or hallucinogenic or bitter. Of course if you actually want to poison someone you’ll need to be on the lookout for something different (pale gills and skinny stalks are a good sign in this case). ‘Write what you know’ is good advice. That’s what I did for ‘A Piece of Pink Ribbon’ which is set on a farm and ‘Coming Home’ which is about separation when someone is away at sea. It also explains why all the stories in the collection have a horticultural theme – I’m nearly as keen on gardening as eating cake. Real life events can be a great source of story ideas, but the truth often needs adapting. Weirdly when we write something strange, funny or touching that really happened it often doesn’t feel believable. ‘Watchdog’ is based on a real event (although not one which happened to me) but to make it work I had to change reality. Whenever I come across an unusual name eg ‘Mrs Dalrymple’ overhear an interesting comment such as ‘Your Granddad is Stuck Up a Tree Again’ or want revenge on an annoying boss (‘Blooming Talent’) I make a note in a computer file. Sometimes the prompt is as simple as the smell of ‘Strawberry Jam’ and at others it’s as complex as family politics (I’m admitting nothing!). It doesn’t matter where the ideas come from, it’s what you do with them that counts. I hope you like what I’ve done with those which resulted in ‘Up the Garden Path’. The book is available here – or here.