I was all set to talk about the road less travelled and so on this week, but it was a bit unclear exactly where I was going with it and it was all a bit philosophical! So instead I thought I’d talk about walkways…
I love it when the trees get their green on and winter’s bleak grey sticks become the scaffolding for emerald-tinted tunnels. There is something romantic about them, to me; walking through them you are in another world.
This sense of walking into another world is something we discussed in my second writing course: tunnels, gates, passages, doorways and so on are a common literary tool to get the reader from one mindset, one world, to another.
Some examples literally take you into a different reality, such as the wardrobe in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe opening a portal into Narnia, or the brick wall that opens into Diagon Alley in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. It is a device used in more realist books too – the mountain pass into Kukuanaland in King Solomon’s Mines for example.
The idea that there’s something ‘Out There’, something hazily shimmering just beyond the horizon, is engaging for me as a reader, and is enjoyable to explore as a writer. The idea of otherness is enticing and having a physical change between here and there summarises every difference through a simple technique.
But even before I thought of the world as a palette with which to paint another reality, I loved these tunnels of trees. The possibilities they seemed to offer me, the chance to see the vibrancy of nature, feel the muted sunlight through the leaves, and wonder what I would find at the end all fed into my sense of wonder.
Looking at the world as a writer and trying to find the literary possibilities in things is all very well, but sometimes we all just need to admire and enjoy the beauty around us for what it is, not what we could write about it.
Even writers deserve a break now and then!
Have a great few days, I’ll be back on Sunday,
EJ
🙂
Becoming a writer 
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