Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

Where do you get your ideas?

That’s a question I’m often asked, especially when I talk to young people. It’s a question I may get asked tonight when I talk to friends and readers at the Henderson County Public Library. I’m so looking forward to being there and trying to come up with answers to whatever questions that might get thrown my way. The Q & A time is always my favorite time of a book talk.

The question about coming up with ideas is something most all writers are asked at one time or another. A few years ago I stumbled across this answer from Sarah Zette. I don’t know her and I’m not familiar with her writing, but I do love her sense of humor with this answer about where she finds her ideas.

My joking answer to this question is that I leave a bowl of milk out on the back porch every night for the Idea Fairy. In the morning, the milk is gone and there’s a brand-new shiny idea by the bowl. ~Sarah Zette

I might have to try that bowl of milk oout on the porch. Back years ago when I first wrote a similar blog about getting ideas and using Ms. Zette’s method, I said I might just  attract raccoons with that saucer of milk. But this year, I decided to try to attract one of the neighborhood stray cats to our shed near the garden and my strawberry patch to scare away the chipmunks. I put out cat food each night and in the morning it’s gone.

Well, of course, I wondered if I was attracting those raccoons. So, I set up my trail camera to see what was eating the cat food and was pleasantly surprised to see cats and not raccoons. There was one possum too, but that’s okay. Those possums eat ticks. That puts them on my favored animal list because ticks are definitely not on any favored list.  Anyway, I have yet to see the cat except on camera. It comes in the night and heads back to the neighbor’s house in the daytime. The neighbor down the road has little cat houses and more feed out on his porch for the neighborhood cats.

But this one cat does come around and whether it’s because of this “super” cat or not, this is the first year in several that we have harvested any corn from our garden. My son plants the seeds. It grows beautifully and in years past, as soon as it’s almost ready to pick, the raccoons come have a midnight party and eat it all. But not this year. This year no raccoons showed up. We picked the corn. It’s good to have a super cat around. 🙂

Anyway, back to the idea fairy. I’m thinking that a chocolate bar might work better than a saucer of milk. If I was an idea fairy, I’d fly in for the chocolate and fight off those raccoons. Or cats.

But all kidding aside, where do you get your ideas is a fair question. It’s a question I’m asking myself right now as I begin down a new story road. Where will the ideas for this story’s scenes come from? And will the ideas work and make the story fly? And to be totally truthful, it’s a question I sometimes ask myself when I’ve come to the end of a story road and reread what I’ve written. I think where in the world did that come from?

The imagination is an amazing thing. You mix it with all those memories and impressions that have buried themselves in your brain and out pop ideas. That can lead to an eureka “I’ve got it!!” moment.

So you have the initial idea and then you invite in characters to show up to make the idea become a story. If I can bring those characters to life in my imagination, then maybe, just maybe, they will show me what happens next when I get stuck on the story road. Because that beginning idea has to grow and expand and put out branches to bear the fruit of the story that the reader will harvest.

So the question about where do ideas come from is not an easy one to answer. Oh, I can say things like ideas come from all the things I’ve experienced and from all the experiences I’ve read in stories and newspapers. They come from things I’ve witnessed my friends and families doing or saying. And sometimes, they seem to come magically out of the blue.

Ideas can be like mosquitoes buzzing in your ears or butterflies floating by on a breeze. Sometimes they come like thunderclaps shaking your house or they might be a mere whisper in the wind. So many wonderful ways to have ideas awaken inside you.

One of the best ways for me to feed the idea mill is by reading. That’s what I do to help new ideas grow legs to be off and running. It’s while I’m researching that my ideas can deepen and grow. So I definitely can agree with the following quote.

A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life. ~Norman Cousins

So many of my stories owe much to the books I’ve found at libraries. So I love going to libraries to meet readers there and I know I’ll have a good time tonight at the Henderson County Public Library. The event starts at 6 CST. If you’re in the area, I’d love to see you.

Have you ever wondered about where writers get ideas? Or if you are a writer, how would you answer that question?