When a story or character arrives suddenly and full-blown, it feels like a gift. The first time I experienced this was in the British Museum reading room, in London. I was researching the Lancashire Witch Trials. One woman told how she went begging, and then cursed the pedlar who wouldn't show her his goods. Another grumbled about not being provided with the promised and much needed spinning wheel that would have allowed her to earn a proper living.

The accuseds' voices called out guilt and innocence across the centuries. I was hooked.

It was my first play, with a huge cast. The BBC's Alfred Bradley said he'd commission it (a producer could say that then!) if I'd cut it down. I said no, thinking it was meanness on his part - an unwillingness to pay so many actors. Then I thought again. There was still a goodly cast in The Sun and the Devil, when it was produced - but not the full coven.

Some ideas come bashing down like a Monty Python foot, so that you wriggle out bruised from under the toes, shouting, That's mine! Then there's getting someone to agree that this is a terrific idea.

'The goal of a writer is to make other people buy what she wants to do; not to do what others want to buy,' said a Russian theatre director. The trouble with people who write about goals is that they never mention goal posts that move, or balls intercepted just as you were going for that penalty kick.

Occasionally I scan job vacancies in the Telegraph & Argus, our local newspaper, here in Bradford, Yorkshire, looking for a more sensible way to earn a living. One day, among the part-time cleaning jobs, I spotted an ad for a collector of Bradford people's peace stories, whose brief would be to produce a book and exhibition as part of the development of a national Peace Museum. Someone - a whole committee as it turned out - would pay a person to go out and be incredibly nosy. It had my name written all over it. I'd lived in Bradford for 16 years. During 12 months as story gatherer I got to know the city so well I could now give lessons to taxi drivers.

Story gathering took me into the Ukrainian Club to play bingo, the Polish Club and the Caribbean Elderly Federation for Christmas dinners, into schools, colleges and people's homes.

All I had to do was ask. People spoke from the heart about partings, expulsion from their land, separations, narrow escapes, racist abuse, forgiveness and healing. Listening, I sometimes forgot to breathe.

The stories give glimpses of ordinary people's experiences of life, loss, friendship, discrimination and the kindness of strangers.

The Lord Mayor gave us a publication launch party in City Hall. There were fifty plus contributors, aged 7 to over 80, with family and friends. I bought myself a gift, a corsage, as if it was my wedding day.

In German, Gift means poison, toxin, virus. I know this because intermittently I try to improve my German. My German teacher was at school in Vienna during the Anschluss in 1938. All pupils had to provide a family tree in order to obtain an Aryan certificate. Friedl's best friend since Kindergarten had a Jewish grandparent on either side of the family. Heidi might or might not have come through the nightmare that followed, but her parents didn't take the chance. Heidi left the country. Friedl always wondered what had happened to her and later tried to make contact. As a writer, it's impossible not to steal bits of people's lives and call it a gift.

That What if … ? always pops up. What if the separation wasn't between friends, but half sisters? What if, years later, the half sisters discover they really are sisters who had the same Jewish mother? What is it that keeps them apart, and how are they re-united? Another story. Another trail to follow, this one turning into Hanna, I'll Find You, a play for BBC Radio's Afternoon Theatre.

Almost a decade ago, the Writers' Guild Newsletter published Stephen Vizinczey's Ten Commandments for a writer in the nineties. Commandment 8 begins 'Thou shalt not worship London/New York/Paris'. Keeping Commandment 8 is never a problem. Because some of my best stories spring from close to home. Though I do miss the British Museum reading room in London, where the witches cast their spell. And that woman's complaint keeps coming back to me. If only she'd had a spinning wheel, she might have earned a proper living. No she wouldn't.

copyright Frances McNeil 2000

[This article appears here with the permission of the writer. A version of this article appeared originally in the Writers' Bulletin, the newsletter of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain.]