Moving Forward

Following last week’s post, moving forward is the next stage. How do you do this? For me, it’s a case of following an idea I had ... sparked by something I saw or read, recently or way back. I so agree that once something is finished, it is vital to move on. Makes the waiting for acceptance much easier too!

So, what is next? I decided that I’d write something for People’s Friend for my next one. I was given a gift of a day as a zoo keeper at Newquay zoo last year. I had such a good day, trailing round from one keeper to the next. I started the day helping to make the meals. It was interesting to see what they were given to eat and reading the lists of who had what, was quite fascinating. Various stores provided some of the food and everything had to be of very good quality. I fed lemurs, petted monkeys spent time in the dark with the night creatures and went to the African section to meet up with various mammals.

One of the best bits was sitting with the other keepers for lunch. It was fascinating to hear them chatting about progress with different animals ... who did what and how they’d reacted. I definitely got the impression they were mostly happy people in the career of their choices.

The afternoon was spent feeding penguins, meerkats and standing inches away from a huge lion. He was gorgeous and one of my outstanding memories of a great day.

So, there we are, I have the setting. I can create characters from the beginning they gave me and suddenly, there is the start of my story. It won’t be too much zoo to begin with and there is a rival to the zoo keeper who I suspect will be my hero. But then, she has met someone else so the hero is definitely ‘in waiting’. And her friend’s mother has been taken ill so she is left to cope with everything for the wedding ...

It’s still early days in the process of a story developing but it could work!