On Ideas

Even if I did say goodbye a couple of posts ago (till next year), I seem to be finding the energy to do just one more. It’s 11pm here and I have the house and the computer all to myself, a rare occurrence in this household, at this moment, as I’m outnumbered by grandchildren keen to surf the Net.

It’s marvellous isn’t it? One granddaughter has only just started school and already has the hang of it all. Pretty soon we’re going to set up an email account and slap a keyboard or an iphone into a newborn baby’s hands and let their fingers do the walking.
I’d like to tell you where my ideas come from, but I don’t really know. My guess is that my subconscious picks up on something and chews it over for a bit before offering it up to me as a fully blown idea.

You’ll have noticed that my ideas on this blog come from the same source: my grandchildren. But as I’ve mentioned before, the ideas aren’t any good without the rest of it. That’s the bit that takes a lot of hard work. I occasionally look out for ideas for a particular market or just to get myself started on the next project, sometimes an idea can foist itself on you when you’re not looking.

I’ve had this idea for a short story for years and it’s still tucked into the back of an old notebook. (Don’t you steal my idea.) I call it ‘Mistresses Galore.’ I noticed a truck pass me by one day that said: Mattresses Galore but I had misread it. I jotted it down in the notebook that I keep in my pocket for such occasions. Then I tried out different scenarios in my mind, one of them being that on the way to visit a woman in hospital, a man sees the van and misreads it. It was a Freudian slip. This man is on his way to visit one of his elderly mistresses. She was beautiful once, and exciting, now she’s old and sick and has become quite cantankerous. As he walks along, he remembers how each woman came into his life and how it was great until it all went wrong and how now he is stuck with a bunch of elderly, needy lovers. I’ve let this idea stew in the sub-conscious for years and am still waiting for inspiration to push itself to the forefront Another variation on it, is that these elderly, long gone lovers are in the van waiting for him to join them.

Talk to you next year. No, really. No more repeat performances. Really.