Scary, exciting, challenging

A couple of months ago, a friend asked me to write a short story for his collection. Beautiful surprise. Usually it's me doing the asking.

Then, for about a month, I worried because I didn't have any ideas. I kicked through fallen leaves trying to uncover one. I listened to new music for one to shout itself to me. I even travelled to Switzerland with a notepad ready to house the Big Idea. But no. Nothing. The brief was good, fun, challenging. But I just couldn't respond.

The collection will focus on Time. Writers and other creative folk from around the country are writing stories, articles, illustrating and otherwise contributing to it. Each of us will create around the idea of time and time travel. Not necessarily science fiction, the editor told me. But time. What does it mean?

I couldn't get science fiction from my mind. And then travel. Until two weeks ago, when I listened to Jeremy Vine's lunchtime show on Radio 2. It was the week of Remembrance Day and Jeremy was speaking to mums who've lost sons to war. I stepped away from work and writing and enjoyed the softness, purity, heart, passion and love of the words spoken by these women. Each day, another mum chose a playlist: her son's favourite songs (the sorts that often led to Mum banging on the door, shouting, 'Turn it down').

The day I listened, a mum from Leeds said about the son she lost in Iraq:

"I'll see him again cos time goes on, don't it?"

There's the spark. That line. It's full of its own story and it's a story I think needs telling. It came when I wasn't looking for it - like all the best ideas.

I have just under two weeks to get it onto paper.