Where do you get your ideas from?

Writing Tips 6 from a professional author...

It's probably the one question most often asked of any writer ... of any artist, indeed, whose stock-in-trade is the expression of ideas and the human experience. The answer I think is quite simply stated ... though in reality it’s far more difficult to practice successfully or to convince others of its truth.

Yet the fact is that ideas for stories are all around us. In an interesting name you hear: Barnaby Rudge, say. In a word. I once came across the phrase 'spindrift of the past'. Spindrift. A good title for a book ... what does it mean? In an anecdote somebody tells you. Henry James made his living from such dinner table gossip. In an incidental line from a book. My novel about Admiral Isaac Manley came from half a sentence in Beaglehole's Life of Captain James Cook...

Ideas are everywhere. In a remembered landscape. A dream. A love that was found and lost. A 'What if...?’ In childhood – a very deep well of tales to be drawn to the surface. In a colour. In the faint drift of perfume...

The only thing that matters for the writer is a mind that is receptive to the idea when it comes into the consciousness. An imagination that is open to the suggestion ... that can respond to the dart with an exclamation – usually silent but sometimes quite openly cried out loud, 'There's a book in that!'

And – to revert to the theme of the last two posts – is able to scribble that idea down quickly in the writer's notebook that of course is always conveniently to hand.