Where do you get your ideas?
The ideas and concepts for stories that writers come up with are as mysterious to non-writers as the pyramids are to non-Egyptians. The most common question writers are posed with is, “Where do you get your ideas?”
Writer Lawrence Block’s knee-jerk response is usually a favorite: “At a warehouse in New Jersey.” Right next to, I imagine, the cat supplies.
But I think there’s a better and more honest response. “By being alive.”
Now, that might sound just as flippant as Block’s response, but think about it; as writers, we get most of our ideas by observing the world around us. We see a mom struggling to keep her three-year-old from pitching a fit in the Wal-Mart, or a couple arguing in a city park, obviously teetering on the edge of a break-up, and we start asking ourselves questions, filling in the blanks, and pretty soon we have a concept for at least a scene, or a good portion of a short story; string a few of those together and wrap them in an overall plot and there’s your novel.
So while it sounds just as dismissive, it’s really not; where do I get my ideas? By being alive.
Tags: cat supplies, story ideas
