It’s that time. It’s been brewing a while now, and I think I’m ready. See, there’s a question that writers get asked. A lot. A question you’re supposed to have an answer to when it comes your way, as it surely will. That question being, of course, ‘where do you get your ideas from?’?

* sigh *

As it happens, the best way to answer that question is to tell you a story. A story about a play I wrote, for radio. Years ago, when I had very little idea of how to do such a thing but knew it was what I wanted to do. And what happened was, I knew I wanted to write about the relationship of some people in a lifeboat. Maybe I wasn’t too coherent about the reasoning, but looking back I can see the sense of it. A lifeboat has got characters in jeapordy in a small environment that they can’t leave. And their lives are at stake. Perfect dramatic fodder. Except that I just couldn’t write the script.

Oh, I tried. Had all sorts of goes. But my writing was flat and I wasn’t excited by any of it. Until –

But let me tell you about the screenplay I’m working on now. Which had stalled when I reached a transforming point for my protagonist. I knew how he was up till then. But I didn’t know how to write him in his new guise. Something about it eluded me — until I saw the new version of Bad Lieutenant, and clicked that Nicolas Cage’s delightfully extreme performance offered me a way back into my own screenplay. Since when I’ve been putting the hours in and coming up with stuff I’m really happy about, that fulfils the promise I knew the story had. Phew.

– anyway. The lifeboat story. It all came alive when I realised that it could be cross-fertilised with another idea. I’d read that parrots can live 80 years or more. And I was fascinated by the idea of a parrot that had lived in a room all that time, learned the ways of its owners, been taught by them to speak. Not a lot, but a few key phrases, which in its semi-aware way the parrot knew could change the mood of the people it lived around. Wind them up. Put them down. Because nobody gets on their best behaviour for a parrot.

And that was it. Not only would there be a lifeboat in the play, there’d be a parrot. An evil scrawny bastard that knew just what to say to wind up one or more people on the lifeboat, who would be irritated by it beyond belief but unable to catch and throttle it as the wily bird flew beyond reach of the boat’s oars.

That was it. Bingo. Only it wasn’t of course, since I was still very much finding my way as a writer at that point and had neither the skill nor the discipline to realise the concept to its full potential, let alone send it to Radio 4. Shame. Maybe I’ll go back to it one day.

But I did learn something from that. Which is that inspiration happens when you keep some of your attention available for what’s happening outside. Sure, there’s all kinds of good stuff inside. But things get really interesting when you turn your gaze outwards, and combine parts of your internal world with the one that we share. That’s an enriching experience. Learning by any other name. And it’s what — even in the smallest ways — keeps a writer engaged with the world at large, rather than absorbed in their own navel. Which, when you think about it, means that the answer to ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ could most honestly be answered ‘From you’.