Beginnings and endings…

“Tomorrow I shall smell a red rose; shall gently surge across the lawn, take my writing board on my knee; and let myself down, like a diver, very cautiously into the last sentence I wrote yesterday,” once said Virginia Woolf. I wonder if one of Britain’s most celebrated authors ever suffered from bouts of writers block? 

I’m sure she did but I can’t imagine it. Instead I picture Woolf in her garden, quietly observing the birds and the butterflies flit about her. I imagine the writing flowing easily and effortlessly, while Woolf intermittently attends to her blooms and plants for a little distraction. I wonder if Woolf chose to regularly write outside when the weather permitted to get the creative juices flowing;? To be inspired amidst all that greenery and natural beauty? 

I’ve been working on completing my second novel but have struggled to reach a suitable ending. No eureka moment. No grand idea. Just a big question mark. How to tie up this tale into a satisfying conclusion? Writer’s block had reared its ugly head at a most inconvenient time. The thing is, I had given myself a deadline. But whether I was going to meet it or not, I couldn’t be sure. 

I won’t be taking my writing board outside for inspiration and placing it on my knee Virginia Woolf style any time soon. But I do take myself into nature when I can, and Kew Gardens is one of my favourite places to spend time. During a recent visit with a friend one cold and foggy January afternoon, we wandered into Kew’s Temperate House - the world’s largest Victorian greenhouse. Described as ‘the cathedral of plants’ and home to 1,200 species, it really is a special place. We strolled about, chatted about this and that, while admiring plants from Asia, Australasia, The Americas and Africa. And there, gazing up at the majestic palms towering over me in all their verdant lushness, it came to me. I had my ending right there. Right there. Why hadn’t I thought of it before, I wondered, making a mental note of my eureka moment. And where was my notebook when I needed it? Of course, I’d left it at home. 

My answer, of course, lies in the unexpectedness of it all. I’d ceased struggling for my search for an ending. I ceased thinking about it incessantly, obsessively; wondering if it would ever come to me. And in the most unexpected  of places - a Victorian glasshouse - it revealed itself while I admired a Chilean wine palm.  

I turned to my friend and told her I had an idea for my novel’s ending. She smiled. “Of all the places,” she said. “A glasshouse!” I laughed, thinking how Virginia Woolf would have surely approved.