"I'm just going to write because I can't help it."- Charlotte Brontë


Sunday, May 13, 2012

Waiting to Happen

Ideas, ideas, ideas. Where do they come from? That is no mystery as far as I'm concerned. How can people can NOT have them? Now that's a concept that stumps me.

My leisurely Sunday morning read of a standard publication revealed that there's an upcoming movie called Safety Not Guaranteed about three magazine employees who answer an advertisement seeking a time-travel companion. It is, no doubt, based on this ad which was doing the rounds a few years ago and which was no doubt filed away in many writerly notebooks and hard drives, including, obviously, mine. There'll be a lot of folk now raising a clenched fist to the heavens and moaning Curses, I was too slow. Not me - I hadn't started on anything yet, but the fact remains that it was there on my hard drive waiting, waiting, waiting for the right cross-fertilization. Mind you, I was going with a title more along the lines of Bring Your Own Weapons.


In the same publication they wrote about the upcoming Napoleon exhibition, which will focus on the emperor's antipodean connections. In that article there was the solid foundation for an alternative time-line story - Napoleon wanted to send an explorer to claim Australia's south coast and call it Terre Napoleon. There was the interesting fact that the last book that Marie Antoinette was said to have read was Captain James Cook's account of his voyages - how can you not see the seeds of a sad story in that? And apparently Josephine established  a 70 acre estate called Malmaison which had a greenhouse full of Australian plants and a private zoo with kangaroos, emus and a black swan. Another cool set up.

All you have to do is observe, you've got to read, you've got to note down, hoard ingredients, constantly stir them, stick it in your brain-oven, wait (sometimes for years) and see what happens. Then the hard work begins.

Now, I'm off for coffee and a Sunday morning chat - another good source of ideas.

7 comments:

parlance said...

What an interesting set of ideas. Now I guess you'll be waiting for a character to enter you dreams and ask to be in a story set in that reality.

Gitte Christensen said...

I wish! Usually it's start with a skeleton and then work and work to add layers of flesh until they suddenly come alive.

Anonymous said...

I believe Lee Battersby has written that Napoleon idea. (Attn. publishersw: hurry up and buy "Napoleone's Land" so I can read it).

Saw the ads for it in Sydney on the weekend (where it won't be making an appearance). Stupid Melbourne getting all the good international exhibitions ;)

Thoraiya

Gitte Christensen said...

Yeah, I thought it was WAY too good a premise not to have been snapped up already. Still, you can never have too many Napoleon stories. And I second the motion that someone publish Lee's book, for it sounds both bon and très intéressant.

On a harsher note, another bad word about Melbourne and it'll be you and me behind the shelter shed insulting each other's cultural icons until one of us drops :)

Anonymous said...

Hahahaha

Let me tell you, it was way easier hating on Melbourne before I actually went there for Aussiecon 4. But one does what one can. So what if the delicious food made me swoon, the gardens made my spirits lift and the funky buildings made me forget you have an ugly old swamp instead of a harbour. You still smell ;)

(You know my husband was born and raised in the Latrobe Valley, right? SURF'S UP, GIPPSLAND! Err...no...wait... it's really not. MUAHAHA!)

Thoraiya

Gitte Christensen said...

Hey, one of my brothers was born in the Latrobe Valley! And my sister was born in Sydney, so you have the advantage over me - I cannot bag the place too much lest I incur her everlasting wrath. Also, alas, you may be correct about the occasional smelliness of the Yarra and the prettiness of your harbour. But those things aside, Sydney sucks and everyone knows it, so there! :)

Anonymous said...

:D :D :D

Thoraiya