Working holiday

I’ve just enjoyed a wonderful week in Yorkshire. I promised myself a complete break from writing, so I left the laptop at home, but I did take my camera, sketchbook and a small notebook (for small, essential notes only).

I came back with:

• 260 photos, some of which I’m hoping will be good enough to use for illustrating travel articles.

•  a collection of guide books/ information leaflets to help me check the facts for those articles.

•  a sketch map of the fictional village that is the setting for the adult novel I’m currently working on – it’s important I know exactly where the main characters live in relation to each other, what they can see from their windows, which routes they’ll take to the pub/ newsagents/ bus stop etc.

•  floor plans of the main characters’ houses – is Graham’s study at the front or back?

•  3 sketchbook pages filled with an outline, notes and the beginning of the first chapter of the third book in a series for children. (Okay, I know I haven’t finished the first book yet but this idea was too good to risk forgetting!)

•  small notebook filled with: 

              dates, place names and brief descriptions of those places to help me label photos
              correctly.

              random thoughts and observations.

              article ideas prompted by quirky, puzzling, funny, inspiring things encountered.

              snatches of overheard conversations/ glimpses of other people’s lives that I might
              be able to weave into a story one day …

              a rhyming couplet that popped into my head one morning. (I don’t do poetry so
              have no idea where this came from or what I’m going to do with it!?)    

For most people a holiday means an escape from work, but for me it’s been a great source of fresh inspiration. If you are a writer, do you ever manage to ‘switch off’?