Genius Can Strike At Any Time And In Any Place

Once again we are featuring blogs by guest bloggers on a wide range of subjects related to reading and writing.

​All the opinions expressed are those of the blogger and are not endorsed by Selfishgenie Publishing.

Enjoy!

One of the questions most writers get asked is “where do you get your ideas from?”. While it’s a predictable enough question, It’s also one that’s easily answered.
 
Ideas are all around us, we just have to look and listen and then let our imaginations take over. One of my earlier books was “The Girl I Left Behind Me”.

​The title came first. It’s the last line of the chorus to a traditional song and was used in the soundtrack of three John Ford westerns about the US Cavalry, titled Fort Apache, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande. For some reason the tune popped into my head one day and I couldn’t shift it.

​But then it occurred to me that it would make a great title for a book. I quickly Googled it to make sure no one else had had the same idea (they appeared not to have) and then put it into my list of book ideas and let it ferment for a few weeks.

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It’s the fermentation that is important here.

​I had a title but no idea what to do with it, so I let my unconscious mind work on it. I also looked up the origins of the song and found that it was traditional, probably 17th or 18th century British or Irish and had been popular with both sides during the American Civil War. Its rhythm makes it very suitable as a marching song which is why it has come down to us via a military route.
 
Letting that information ferment alongside the title eventually gave me the idea of writing a story set in modern times about two young men who are born just a few streets apart but who go off to war to fight on opposite sides and who leave their "girls" behind them. The story is as much about the two women as it is about the men. I won’t give any more away, just in case you want to read it, but I’m sure you can see that once I had the basics mapped out, writing the story became something that was achievable. Not only that, but one of the characters I created for the book went on to feature in a sequel. 

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I have an ever-lengthening list of ideas for books that may, or may not, eventually see the light of day and they have come to me by a number of routes.
 
They say that everyone has a book inside of them. American author Jodi Picoult added the rider “the problem is winkling it out” while British writer Christopher Hitchens is credited with adding “and that’s where it should stay”.

​But it is true. Everyone has a story that can be told, even if they aren’t able to tell it themselves. The problem Hitchens alludes to is making the story interesting enough to make people want to read it, which is the author’s job.
 
For the author the only task in relation to coming up with new book ideas is to keep their eyes and ears open and the story ideas will come. At the moment I’m helping a fellow aspiring author by providing feedback on a book she is writing. I can’t give away the subject as that would be a breach of confidence, but the idea for it is straight off the front pages of the daily newspapers. She was so touched by what she was reading that the idea of not writing a story about it was probably more bizarre than the idea of writing it.

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Does that mean that anyone can write a book? Technically yes. If you can write your name you can write a book. However, there is no doubt that some people have an aptitude for it and some don’t.

​Thanks to the capability to self-publish books that’s available through the digital revolution there are many books that I’ve read in recent years that really shouldn’t have been written, at least not by the people that wrote them. They are living proof of Christopher Hitchens’ corollary. But that doesn’t mean that someone with more aptitude couldn’t write a very good book using the same plot and characters.
 
Do all my ideas become books? Most certainly not. The length of a novel may vary, but generally falls between 80,000 and 120,000 words. I have taken some ideas and barely made it to 10,000 words before I’ve run out of steam. That tells me that, for me, the story just hasn’t got any legs and there’s no point in wasting any more time with it.

​Of course I don’t delete it. I may have some sudden inspiration that will take it off in a completely new direction, but for the time being it goes into the file marked “not quite as good an idea as I thought”.

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As for suggesting your own book ideas to authors, please don’t. It’s not that they aren’t good ideas, it’s that there are legal implications.
 
Most big-name authors will tell you that at some point they have received letters or emails claiming that the idea for a book was stolen because they (the letter writer) once said or wrote down some of the words that are used in the book. The writer of the letter or email then goes on to try to claim money for suggesting the idea or, even worse, for plagiarism.
 
Terry Pratchett’s agent told me that he received an email threatening legal action from someone who had once suggested, in another email, that Terry Pratchett set one of his books in Australia.

​The threatening email arrived shortly after the publication of The Last Continent in 2008, where Pratchett sets the story in the country of Fourecks on his imaginary Discworld. Fourecks bore a passing resemblance to the country we call Australia. That was enough for the loony who wrote the email. And that’s why authors would prefer it if you didn’t suggest ideas for books. It’s nothing personal.
 
By the way, if that has given you an idea for making some easy money - forget it! Lawyers are expensive, they are happy to take your case because, win or lose, they will still get paid and proving plagiarism is a very difficult thing to do. If you don't believe me, just ask Sami Okri.
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So I took my idea that I had pitched to Terry Pratchett’s agent and wrote the book myself. It’s called The Inconvenience Store and is available (here comes the plug) on Amazon.

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​How did I come up with the idea? Easy.

​I had just been to a convenience store to buy something that they didn’t have on their shelves. When I asked the manager why they didn’t sell it (it was a common enough item) he told me that people often asked for that item, but they didn’t stock it because there was no demand for it.

The manager was a totally irony free zone.

​My response to the manager about his store being more inconvenient than convenient gave me the title for my book and the rest, as they say, is history.
 
So, where is your next book idea coming from? It could be closer than you think.

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