Yesterday a very nice man came to repair the meeting table in our office as one of the legs had lost a screw. For several months we have been putting the screw back in, tightening it with various articles of office equipment, including the corner of a plastic ruler (doesn't work), a letter opener, the handle of a spoon (this now has a nice twisty end on it) and a plastic pen top. Not surprisingly, the hole got progressively larger and the screw fell out and disappeared. When the nice man came, he had a look, nodded and said: "This is just a five minute job. I'll get my screwdriver."
He ended up having to get his whole tool kit, redrill the hole and then spend ages finding the right size screw - it took him most of the afternoon.
In the Terry Pratchett discworld novel Reaperman, when Death goes on holiday there is so much spare magic sloshing around that supernatural beings spring spontaneously into existence when someone mentions them (my particular favourites being the Oh God of Hangovers and the Verucca Fairy). I often think that certain phrases do something similar in this world. Here are some examples from my plane of existence..
"Don't worry, I've done this before." - A friend who had just asked me to put the bar on a small jump up three inches or so. She might have done it before but her pony wasn't so sure. It was the first time I ever called an ambulance.
"No one will notice." - Of course they will, whether it's a spot on the end of your nose, a hole in your tights or a small but significant chip you have just made on a very valuable piece of china.
"I'll only be a few minutes." - Strange one this as 'a few' is not a quantifiable amount, however, despite this it is invariably wrong.
"Oh, it doesn't usually do that." - Always entertaining at presentations when learning new pieces of software.
The thing is, we make statements like this a lot and according to the law of averages there is a fifty/fifty chance of us being right, only in my experience we are usually wrong. But, the best bit about all of the above is that I've used them as springboards for story ideas. The stories didn't always pan out, but the idea was there, a seed planted by a small, insignificant phrase uttered in a second or two. If they turn out to be true then there isn't really much of a story (although thinking about it, wouldn't it would be a freak occurence, which might make for an interesting tale?). Lucky for us that an awful lot of the time they are revealed as lies.
The world is filled with story seeds and it is up to us writers to gather and plant as many as we can.
So today the answer to the question: "Where do you get your ideas from?" must be "Everywhere."
Penny
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