Ideas Are All Around...

Having an idea for a book can either be easy or difficult for a writer. It's also the question published authors seem to be asked the most. When once asked 'Where do you get your ideas?', children's author Morris Gleitzman said he got them in the supermarket, by the shelf with the Vegemite.

As for me, I often have the problem of too many ideas! I'm close to finishing the fifth draft of one novel, half-way through writing a second , have about four picture book texts on boil, and already have ideas for the next three at least. My ideas notebook is chockers with ideas: how I usually get them is the time-old way of 'What if?' Taking ordinary everyday objects or events in the real world, but putting a twist on it and looking at it from a different angle.

For an example, walking home the other day I saw a butterfly just ahead of me fluttering by a hedge. I rarely see butterflies and this particular one looked quite unusual. It was black, with what looked like white stripes on the lower part of their wings. It was fluttering around appearing confused. I looked across and saw two other butterflies in a nearby tree. Immediately my brain began turning, 'What an unusual looking butterfly. Why does it look like it is flying around so crazily? Is it scared? Is it a friend of those other two butterflies? Is it trying to run away from them? Or has it been banished by the other two butterflies?' Thanks to this butterfly I had an idea for a picture book story but a full plot has yet to develop.

All in all, the most common ways I get ideas is subconsciously. Things just 'drop' into my brain, whether it be a story title or character name, or a line of dialogue or just a kernel of an idea such as, "Kids start a war in the playground," or "Girl is teased for having glasses". This is not to say they develop straight away. I have unused ideas in notebooks from far back as 2007 and 2008. Sometimes I have an idea and years later have finally found it fits into a story and insert it then. At other times I may feel stuck with a story and then the 'other shoe drops' and I realise the idea I could use that would fit in the story is one I have had squirrelled away in my notebook.

The late filmmaker and screenwriter Nora Ephron (of You've Got Mail & When Harry Met Sally fame) used to refer to something her mother told her about writing in that, 'Everything is copy." Meaning everything you see or hear or everything that happens in your life can be used as an idea for a story. I often follow this, whether I consciously realise I have taken bits from my own experiences or not.

So, to quote this title of this post (and to parody the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme tune) "Ideas are all around ..."

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