The Land Girl Author: Allie Burns
War changes everything…
The Land Girl
Emily has always lived a life of privilege.
That is until the drums of World War One came beating. Her family may be
dramatically affected but it also offers her the freedom that she craves. Away
from the tight control of her mother she grabs every opportunity that the war
is giving to women like her, including love.
Working as a land girl Emily finds a new
lease of life but when the war is over, and life returns to normal, she has to
learn what to give up and what she must fight for.
Will life ever be
the same again?
Where
I get my writing inspiration
I am always getting new ideas for novels and
short stories which I become immediately obsessed with and want to write
straight away. So that I don’t get carried away, and to keep me focussed on one
writing project at a time, I write the new ones down in the Ideas Book that I keep by my bed. Most
of ideas are just that, an interesting person, or setting and the execution
will take a lot of planning and teasing out from that initial germ of an idea,
and that can take time, sometimes years.
Here are some of my common sources of
inspiration:
1.
Family history. Every family
has folkloric tales of drama and history. For the Land Girl, I was interested
in the story of my two German great-great grandfathers and what it must have
been like to live in Britain during the war.
Another book idea I have draws on a
family mystery that caused a lot of upset and left many unanswered questions.
By the time some of the truth emerged (some forty years later) the family
member shrouded in mystery had died and so no one could ask them why they did
what they did. In the future, I hope to attempt to imagine the answers and give
that relative a voice and a chance to explain themselves.
2.
Objects. I have started to work
on my third book and this story was inspired by a pair of evening gloves that
belonged to my great aunt. By finding out the story behind the gloves I’ve
discovered that the aunt enjoyed an interesting career which has inspired both
my setting and my protagonist.
3.
Photographs. When I’m at the
planning stage and I have developed the idea of a character’s personality, but
I can’t quite visualise them, I use photographs for inspiration. When writing
historical fiction, I find photographs so useful for helping me feel as though
I’m at an exciting event and they provide me with the little details and
touches that help to evoke the atmosphere.
4.
Reading. I read so many books, fiction and non,
newspaper archives and I also watch lots of films and listen to audio. For a
writer on a budget, books and films are the perfect way to travel anywhere, and
open me up to the experiences of others, without ever having to leave the
house.
5.
Relationships. We all read
fiction to help us to learn a little bit more about the world. Friendship is an
important and recurring theme for me in my writing and reading, and I’m often
inspired by the things my friends do and say, or the lifecycle of a particular
relationship. Family dynamics are interesting too. In The Land Girl the
mother-daughter relationship is challenging – for many young girls the war
presented them with opportunities, while the older generation hankered for a
return to normality. I read many first-hand accounts of mother-daughter
relationships to help me understand why Emily’s mother controls her in the way
she does.
This list of inspiration is by no means
exhaustive, and the wonderful thing about creativity is that we all find
inspiration in different ways. Hopefully it has given you an insight into my
own creative processes and it might give you some ideas to
use yourself.
About the
author:
Website: http://www.allie-burns.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/allieburns1
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/allieburnsauthor
This book was available on Netgalley but I was not chosen.
This book was available on Netgalley but I was not chosen.
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