A writing prompt can take any number of forms – it doesn’t have to be words, it can be auditory or visual. I remember one day looking out of the window and watching the raindrops racing each other down the glass. I was inside, 13 years before anyone had heard of COVID-19, having my own personal lockdown. Too ill to do much, certainly not well enough to go out, and with an immune system brought low by being cut, poisoned and burned – otherwise known as lumpectomy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
Part of my support system was the Breast Cancer Care website and its forums. Here I discovered that though we were all battling the same enemy, our experiences could be very different. There were the women who kept their diagnosis secret and tried to carry on as normal, the joggers who continued running throughout their treatment, the unlucky few for whom the anti-sickness drugs didn’t work and vomited their way through their chemo cycles. Most of us were lucky enough to have someone to support us but some were alone and some were in relationships that were shockingly unsupportive. I remember one women whose husband claimed he was more ill than she was – because she only felt sick from the treatment for her disease, while he felt ill from his actual condition – and who still expected her to put the dinner on the table every night.
As I looked out of the window at the rain I thought of these women and wondered whether their diagnosis and subsequent experience would change them, and my first ever drama – “Rainwatching” emerged.
I eventually submitted it to a competition and it was chosen to be performed at the Carriageworks in Leeds. I’ll never forget the thrill of that first performance and I was hooked.
While I was able to make my character create herself anew I do wonder what happened to that woman on the forum and whether she escaped, at some point, like the version I envisioned.
Cucumber Writers 
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