Snippets
Where do ideas come from?
Ideas come from all sorts of weird and wonderful places.
As well as lots of ordinary places too. I like to tune in to other people’s conversations when I’m out. It is a bad habit I’ve developed but it can really help spark off my imagination.
Take last night for instance. I was at a gig when a voice behind me said:‘Her invitation (to dinner) was totally random. She is Scottish and a model.’
My friend Alison and I like to go out for afternoon tea (theatre cafés are best for this) and tune in on conversations and whisper what we think the people are really thinking or would like to say.
‘A fungus grows on my collected Dickens’ is one of my all time favourite snippets. It was a piece of graffiti for years on a wall at the Elephant and Castle. At first it made me snigger because the fungus and Dickens made it sound rude but then it made me think about all the books I had that I hadn’t read. All the opportunities I’d wasted. Then it reminded me that Charles Dickens had lived and worked as a child in this area in very traumatic circumstances and that pain had most probably fuelled his writing. Then it became the first line of a poem I’m working on about the Elephant and how the developers are moving in and bulldozing the past.
Do you have a snippet to share?
If you have overheard something strange and wonderful - tell me about it by sending a message on my Get in Touch form. Send me your snippets and let me know how they inspired you. I'll select one of the most interesting/ inspiring/ entertaining every so often and post it on this page.