Adaptability

It is amazing what sparks the imagination sometimes and sets me to thinking about myself and my characters. On this writing journey of mine I feel I am getting a better understanding of myself as well as them.

This week’s randomness was down to a seagull. As I was making the long drive to Uni from my home I spotted this seagull sitting on top of a lamp post in it’s nest.  It wasn’t far from the smoking dragon that is the steel works and it was exposed to all those joyous elements that I have come to know and love living in Wales (namely wind and rain).

As I continued my drive, I found myself thinking about that poor seagull, surely there are better places it could have made it’s nest? Perhaps it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Maybe it had no choice and is now making the best of it, the only way it knows how, by keeping it’s feet firmly planted, digging in and weathering the storm until it passes.

It got me thinking, we aren’t so dissimilar. Don’t we do this too? We never know what is around the corner, but somehow we deal with it, head down and carry on, hoping that around the next bend something good is waiting and if not…well then we plod on to the next and the next.

We adapt and we carry on just like that seagull, the world around us might change but the one constant in all this craziness we call life is ourselves. We adapt and carry on.

So I was thinking how would my characters adapt? How would they react to changes in their lives? How would I react if my world was turned upside down? Would I make my home beside the sleeping dragon, not knowing if today might be the day it spots me and my world ends. Or would I move deeper into the forest looking for escape but still not knowing what lies around the corner? I guess the saying “keep your friends close but your enemies closer” would certainly apply in the former instance and at least then you would see your demise coming!

It’s an interesting dilemma and one I am not sure I know how to answer right now, but it just goes to show that the world around us can make us think about those characters we’d thought left behind on the pages of our notebooks and set the mind to wondering about our own path too.