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Today

Diana pick up.

                                    19.05

Diana what are you playing at?

                                                19.06

Singing for your dinner will make sure you starve. Get real. Get your deluded self back here and get your life on track.

                                                                        19.07

Diana stop being so bloody selfish. We didn’t knacker ourselves for you to throw it all away on some stupid holiday fling. I’ve called in favours – answer Jessop’s email.

                                                                                                19.08

 Holiday fling. A whole year is hardly a holiday fling.

Diana’s phone vibrates against her palm. Not now, Dad. Her legs tremble, the white glare of the sun sears her eyes, reflecting off the tufa stone of the Temple of Diana’s columns, the makeshift stage in front of them so bare. The techies tuning up. She can’t do it.  

Already a few tourists sit in the Roman Arena, ice-creams in their hands. And even worse, locals are arriving too. Ana from the café with her friends. Rámon’s mum and grandma.

She can’t do it. She can’t walk out there and sing in Spanish. The words will get stuck and that damn stutter will come back. Her blood surges in her ears and the phone seeps heat into her palm, which is sweaty enough as it is.

The dressing room is hot as an oven. Ramón’s hazel eyes survey her. Laying his guitar on the bench as carefully as if it were his firstborn. His arms around her, he smells of lemon shampoo, sweat and coffee. The tattoo of a Spanish guitar on his forearm stares up at her. Underneath are the words: La vida es corta. Life is short.

Her thoughts are in binary these days. English: Spanish.  

Life is short.

Heat from Ramón’s forehead seeps into her neck.

“Mi alma. You can do it.”

Mi alma. My soulmate.

Life is short, mi alma, my soulmate: bloody selfish, deluded self.

Her fingers smudge the screen with sweat.

Mum please get Dad to lay off. He’s been guilt tripping me as usual.

                                                                                                            19.10

Diana, We care about you. Busking is hardly a career. The singing’s done its job. But don’t confuse a useful tool with life. Just check out Anna Jessop’s offer. We both love you lots, Mum XXX

                                                                                                            19.15

Her stomach somersaults, her head pounds, but has to smile. Mum is the only person who perfectly punctuates her WhatsApp and signs off ‘Mum’ as if her name doesn’t pop up on the screen. Dad’s only looking out for her, like he’s always done. Mum’s always so rational. Maybe they’re right?

Singing. Don’t confuse it with life.

She can’t do it. She can’t walk out there. The words will stick in her throat. The Roman amphitheatre’s stone benches are full now, chatter rising up like the chirruping of so many birds. There must be a couple of hundred people out there. This is a first. What a fool she is. Sweat slicks the nape of her neck, slips down the side of her face. Air. She needs air.

The atrium’s cool marble soaks into her back as she presses on the email. The photograph of a young woman heads the document: fair hair pulled back tight from her face, pearl studs in her ears, grey suit, beige cashmere jumper, the slightest hint of pink on her lips – Anna Jessop, Investment Portfolio Director….  There it is, that little phrase…invite you to interview. In a week’s time. Her feet refuse to move.

Suddenly she’s there before her. The goddess Diana, the oak statue seems to vibrate. How come she’s never noticed the wild curling hair before, the branches, acorns hanging from goddess ears? The statue moves her head, or maybe it’s just the heat haze vibrating?

The sound of Spanish guitar sweeps up from the stage below. Rámon’s dark head bends over the guitar below her. It’s up to her.  The oak wood throbs against her palm in time with the music.

The sun is setting as she steps onto the stage. A stork flies high above, there’s a hush from the packed stalls. Breathe in. Out. Please, please don’t stutter. As the stork swoops across the sky, her voice soars up and out, strong and free, swooping like the stork, Rámon following her lead.

How I did it:

This story didn’t reveal itself to me until I forced myself to sit down and write. Lots of stories were swarming round in my head as we explored Spain’s Mérida, a Roman city, with so many Roman remains. For ages, I thought I’d do a story set in Ancient Rome, in Mérida, so I explored the idea of a Roman charioteer, a romantic tangle ensuing between a Pleb and a Patrician. It just didn’t work in my head. I didn’t have the passion for it. So, as happens with writing, my mind blanked out. Nothing. No stories came to mind.

When I experience this vacuum, I feel a little lost and avoid sitting down to write, but here’s where my 10-minute a Day Rule came to the rescue. I have a time-slot where I have to write for ten minutes in any day. Because it is such a short time, I can always face it – I’m not committing myself to hours of work. And because this time constraint is such a liberating idea, I usually end up writing for far longer than ten minutes. In this case I made myself start writing and my sub-conscious brought the Temple of Diana, in Mérida, to mind and the wonderful singer and Spanish guitarist we heard playing in front of the temple.

Again, my I wish…game came to the fore. I have a voice like a blocked drain and would love to be able to sing. But I am destined to spend my life miming Aretha Franklin’s dulcet tones into the mirror in the bathroom. This wish gave me Diana, a girl with a stutter, which disappears when she sings.

Of course, I had to do a little research on the goddess Diana and found she was a woodland goddess – Artemis, the huntress, and herself became one. My rambles back home in West Sussex offered me the oak statue of Diana, in the form of a Green Woman, as near Binsted Village, there’s a Green Man carved in oak, with acorns and oak leaves twined around him.

The message from this account is that we all experience moments of blankness as writers, but the 10-minute a Day Rule can offer us up all kinds of surprises from our sub-conscious and because it’s a short window out of our day, it helps us to just sit down and write.

If you want to have a go:

• Choose a God or a Goddess from ancient myth.
• Blend them with an item from the present day. In my case I used WhatsApp messages.
• Confine the action to an hour out of your protagonist’s day.
• Choose a place that captures your imagination.
• Off you go…