I have been exchanging emails with Paul Collins for next month's feature on him and The Trouble With Tom over at Bookslut and one of the most intriguing things I've learned is how he does his research. Everyone always wants to know where a writer gets their ideas from - it's that question they get asked a million times and sometimes, as a reviewer, you really can't resist it. (See my current interview with Jim Ottaviani for his answer to where a book on the gilded age of dinosaur hunting came from.) With Paul it is really interesting as he spends so much of his time reading and researching in search of ideas - and he finds stuff like nobody's business. The book he is putting together this year is about William Shakespeare's folios - and it started when he was sent the wrong book by a book dealer. As it wasn't worth much they let him keep it and he decided to give it a read and then....well, I'm sure he will explain the whole deal in his book but the fact that something could drop into your life by accident and the become the basis for a whole other fascinating book really makes me think. How many fateful moments do we ignore that we shouldn't? How many wonderful ideas get lost because we have blinders on?
The most obvious one for me is my book on AK flying. When I was in graduate school around 1995 or so I was desperate to write about anything other than flying. I had a degree in aviation, I had been working in the field for years and I was sick of it. But I was alsobusy working fulltime and when I had to churn out a paper for a class and could do it on some aspect of AK flying then I would - just because it was easier for me to get it done. (I do know how to fly but I was not a professional pilot - I ran Ops for a bush commuter.) But I kept fighting aviation as a thesis idea until I had to do a presentation for a class and decided to do it on the bush pilot myth. To finish off my speech I had my husband and a good friend - both of whom were professional pilots in AK - come to class and answer questions. My fellow students (all of them arrogant as only grad students can be) were like a bunch of kids at a rock concert. They asked the most inane questions, starting with "Have you ever been scared?" and going on to "Have you ever crashed?" and "Do you know anyone who died?" It was bizarre. I couldn't ignore how fascinated they all were and so I gave in and wrote my thesis on accidents among professional AK pilots. And after I left I wrote some articles for aviation magazines and then started writing the book.
I finally accepted what had been staring me in the face all along.
The point of all this is that because I ignored what was right in front of me it almost slipped me by. Paul Collins is clearly a master at seeing ideas as they appear- or at least for recognizing them as something to consider later. He takes notes and keeps files. He doesn't let them get away.
Smart man, don't you think?
And how about you - where do your ideas come from?
