Every Cloud

I want to give this blog more of a purpose, and I think one of the ways I'm going to do that is to go a little more in depth with everything. Give you all a little more of an insight into the thought process behind what I'm writing, to give you an idea what goes on behind the scenes of my comic work, that sort of thing.

So, that bring me to this week's Elephant Words contribution. For those of you not familiar with Elephant Words, it's a burst fiction website, inpired by the old story of the blind men and the elephant. It explores how we all intepret and are inspired by the same image in different ways. At any one time there are six people contributing to the site, each week we take it in turns to post a new image on a Sunday, and then through the week we all post a short story, poem, or whatever, inspired by that image.

This week's image was photograph of a woman in a pub. Soemtimes I'll struggle to find inspiration in an image, or it will strongly suggest one story and one story only, but this week I found several ideas came to mind. For a while I considered doing a first person piece based on my experiences of being drunk, and the extreme mood swings that one experiences during inebration (from "I love you, you're all wonderful" to "my life's a piece of shit and I want to die" often in a matter of seconds...or maybe that's just me...heh...). I considered, and quickly rejected, some autobiographical tales of drinking experiences from various comic book conventions. Ultimately, though, once the first line "Yes...yes, officer, I have been drinking..." popped into my head, I was fairly locked in on what I was going to write...that kind of led me inevitably to the last line (I'm not going to spoil that for you though), and, although I feel the whole thing is a little predictable, I hope it's still effective.

Anyway, let me link you to this week's story now, before I discuss it a little further - Every Cloud.

The story, really, sprung from a recent conversation about drinking and driving that I had with my girlfriend. It's something that I feel quite strongly about, and really don't undeerstand why people do it. I suppose the challenge for me in writing this story was to try and get into the head of someone who'd do it, and try to understand why. The only time I've ever got behind the wheel of a car with alcohol in my system was after I'd had one small bottle of beer. I was still well under the legal limit and was merely moving my car around the corner to make sure I didn't get a parking fine, but I would NEVER do it again. Despite having had so little to drink, I found that my judgement was already clearly impaired and that so many of the little things one does automatically while driving suddenly needed my full concentration to achieve.

So, that's the story behind this week's story. Feel free to leave me feedback, either here or on the Elephant Words site.