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Like a right shoulder from Andrew Symonds, the idea strikes me. I’m floored on my ass.

I had been thinking in my sleep, as my highly overactive brain is want to do to me (which is either really cool or totally sucks balls…), about my lack of new ideas. In fact, a new idea has not really struck me in this, the year of our Lord, 2008. Sure, I have probably churned out a few hundred pages of Grade A script in the last 2 months, but a new idea, a shiny black pearl fresh from the deep had been eluding me. Until today.

I was sitting in a class, in a purely supervisory role, and letting my mind wander. I was not in my room so I had nothing that I could do constructively for work so I let my thoughts turn to the dark creative side. I wondered if I had any thoughts left in me. A great fear of mine is that I will simply run dry one day. Or a psychic will saunter by and steal them from me; they’ll drink my milkshake, drink it up! So I was thinking if an idea would ever come to me. Now, I have been in this situation before, it usually comes towards the end of a project; it’s just like when a relationship ends and you wonder if there is ever going to be a girl for you again. This is a silly train of thought as there is always another girl, and there will always be others. Always. But in that moment, as your mind wanders, and delusions of austerity plague you it becomes real that it could happen. The hand under your bed becomes all too real. But then the light is turned on and reality, in all its glory, floods to your rescue.

Do I have a space story in me? That was all I asked myself. Instantly one came to me. Just like that. It’s like walking into a club and wondering if there is a girl out there for you and then two jump out either side and hop on a hand. My brain is like the James Bond of the thinking world, the ideas are the girls that jump out. It’s then up to me to get in my flash car, a VL will do, activate my laser watch and cut through the task of getting the girls sorted into different beds.

I took notes furiously into my work diary. I came up with the two main characters, I came up with the setting (space…duh, weren’t you listening?), I even came up with a convoluted political history between us and the aliens from across the universe. But most impressively I came up with the perfect hook that had me at hello.

Q. What is the coolest thing from the Star Wars trilogy (if you have to ask which trilogy then you really are lost on this site, aren’t you?) that you would love to have in real life?

A. If you said the Millennium Falcon (and pronounce it properly, please) then award yourself 4 stinkbrown points, they will add up in the end. The Falcon was the absolute coolest thing I had ever seen, and 20 years later possibly still is. It has a wicked shape, can take care of itself in a scrape and, as everyone knows, flew the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. It’s been personally modified by everyone’s life guide, Han Solo, it has enough gun pods for everyone, you can smuggle yourself in it, not just Glitterstim spice, and it has the coolest chess board I have ever seen. So with all that in mind I decided that my characters had to have the coolest space ship to ever fly out of an asteroid slug’s mouth. I cannot wait to write some stories on this baby, once I get the right name for it. So with that in mind, I am completely prepared to settle into making notes and planning stories about my little space people.

Back in the saddle again.

PS. For those wondering, the answers that only earn you one stinkbrown point: Han’s gun (always shoot low on the hip), a lightsaber, a tusken raider (you know they can’t be house trained), Jabba’s skiff, R2D2 (he’d get annoying in about 5 minutes with all the beeping, squeaking and blabbing), an AT-AT, a speeder bike (I lost enough skin off my BMX, I don’t need more speed) and a tauntaun sleeping blanket. Thanks for playing.

Posted on March 5th, 2008 by ryan
Filed under: Writing, life