These words didn’t amount to an idea, they were just a time, a place and a profession, but I sensed that I had found the right starting point. In one file, I found a scrap of paper upon which I’d scribbled a few words: artist, Glasgow, nineteenth century. When the time came to embark upon a second book, I went back to these same old stories. This is one of the paintings that helped me imagine scenes between the women in the story when writing ‘Gillespie and I’. One such fragment, much expanded and revised, eventually grew into my first novel, The Observations. Years later, searching for inspiration, I hauled out this box and read through its contents: my notes and fragments of abandoned narratives. I put the remaining unfinished stories in a box, in the attic. I did complete several tales and some were published in anthologies, but in the end, the project never came together. Many years ago, I hatched a crafty plan for what I thought would be a ‘simple’ novel to write: a dozen or so linked short stories, all on a Scottish theme. Walton, Joseph Crawhall, George Walton, James Guthrie, Whitelaw Hamilton. A group of “Glasgow Boys” pictured at Cockburnspath, 1883.
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