To write is to travel.

Bodrum castle in January

To write is to travel without leaving your seat. To write well is to populate your head with a never-ending stream of strangers. To write entertainingly is to listen to the strangers and determine which are leading you down fruitful roads and which are diverting you to dead ends.  A name is all that is needed to spark a train of thought that can take a family from birth to death, from Asia to Europe, from the Earth to the Moon. Everyone of us can hear the names but only the writer can take others on the journey. The strangers in your head may laugh, cry, shout or scream but the writer has the power to make the laugh bitter, the cry of surprise, the shout of triumph and the scream of delight.  I'm wondering if I've got the willpower to harness the strangers to take the journey from prologue to epilogue.  Probably not - I'm more suited to short bursts of prose inspired by the streets of my daily walk and inspiration is a bit thin today.  It must be the Lodos, the southerly wind that causes headaches and general lethargy until it builds into a massive storm that batters and floods. A warning has been issued telling us to batten down but walking through Bodrum today the sky behind the clouds is still blue and the air warm enough to abandon jacket for a cardigan.  Next week the North wind will blow cold crisp air across Bodrum which will, hopefully, concentrate the mind and galvanise creativity.