I feel the urge to write about lighthouses.

This may appear to come entirely out of nowhere but I know exactly why: we took the kids at work to the theatre this week, to see a lovely little play called Tales From The Lighthouse. 2 actors, one of whom spent most of the time lurking offstage and playing the accordion, clever puppetry, good music and a nice simple message of ‘sometimes stuff gets overwhelming, but try to be kind’. If you’re in London I’d recommend it, honestly. I’m especially always a sucker for well-done puppetry and the like on a small stage; bring me your big blue sheets and model boats on a stick to evoke the endless ocean, show me those surprisingly elaborate water-horses. And most importantly, of course, the children had a good time in that little conjured world. I do love the theatre.

But I love… small stories, I think I’d call them. I love a sprawling, epic narrative as much as the next SF&F buff, and I read my fair share. I love action, I love high stakes, I love grand conspiracies, I love all the things that I often write – the things I’ve been writing lately, in short. I’ve been jumping between a cyberpunk mystery, a diamond heist and the conclusion to an RPG campaign that could very much still end in an entire city exploding if my players don’t get their act together sharpish. These are not small stories. They might not all be as grandiose as my last example but they don’t fit this bill.

I mean things like The Singer, things like my other ‘walking stories’, or like the old novella I dusted off the other week for a likely-looking submission. Slow stories, contemplative stories, stories that feel no need to rush or raise the stakes. There’s an emotional core to most of them, but it doesn’t have to be hard-hitting in the slightest. It can just be watching the world go by and loving it, if needs be. These are stories that evoke a kind of peace in me, when I read or write them – or watch them, as in the case of the aforementioned Tales From The Lighthouse. These are stories that build a world and just… let the reader sit there for a while.

I like doing that. I always do that in my writing, to some extent – but sometimes the building of the world is all the plot has time for. Sometimes my characters are busy. Sometimes there’s too much going on to simply sit back and smell the roses, or the sea breeze. But even then, sometimes one can start small and find stakes later – I’d count ‘A Vintage Atmosphere’ in this category even if stuff does start exploding in the second act. It’s still a story built on a slowly constructed landscape that I lavished a lot of detail – almost certainly too much – on describing. The story, in a way, is secondary to that setting. I wrote it because when I thought of it I wanted to feel like I was there. Same with The Singer. Same with a fair few others.

Not lately, though. I’ve been plotting and scheming and I really do need to get on with more plotting and scheming for a story that is anything but ‘small’. But sometimes one needs a break, and I find that as a writer I can make one for myself while still working. Sometimes I just need an escape. So I find a setting, and I write it, and sometimes something approximating a plot turns up along the way, but always there is the world, as rich and real as I can make it.

The play made me feel that way, while I was there, watching. So I think it’s time to see if I can conjure another world like that, someday soon. Maybe it’ll just be a lighthouse, maybe it’ll be in space, maybe it’ll be a ‘darkhouse’, which is purely a word and not even slightly a concept right now but it’s wearing a hole into the back of my brain with the weight of potential. Maybe it’ll be something entirely different.

Maybe you’ll see it. Maybe it’ll just be for me. We’ll see.