Where do my ideas come from?

I get this question a lot. In fact, I even wanted to ask this of my favourite authors when I was in my "dreaming of being an author, but never writing" phase. I found that ideas came very slowly when my brain was out of practice. These days, however, I cannot even contain the amount of ideas that bombard my mind.

I've always been a daydreamer. There is a rare moment that I'm in "the moment." I have never had a thoughtless second in my life. In fact, rare has there been only one thought in my mind. Normally, I have dozens of thoughts in my mind at any given time.

One helpful skill that I've developed in the last couple of years is the ability to tell the difference between a short story, novella, and a novel in just a passing thought. I often get a scene in my mind, as opposed to a specific plot. Then, I take that scene (which is generally a mid-story idea) and massage it until there is a story for how things arrived at that point, and the consequences of that scene.

I keep a notebook full of these ideas, both raw and developed. I make note of what I suspect will be their word count, too. For novels, I let those ideas sit a lot longer, since I often get other ideas and scenes popping up that allow me to combine and massage into one book, as opposed to several.

So, where do the ideas come from? Everywhere! Here is today:

I saw a video clip of a sandstorm in Kuwait and thought about having a neolithic nomad tribe in the desert.
I was flipping through one of my old history books from university, and considered the effect of the Corn Laws if moved to a fantasy setting.
I cleaned my book shelf, saw a copy of "Pride and Prejudice" and pondered the idea of rewriting the story in a Neolithic period (again, combining that thought with the nomadic tribe).
I saw a news article on cyberwar and had three different ideas for a SF series on cyberwar.
I saw a pair of neon socks and realized I don't use enough colour in my stories.

Now, will I write any of these stories? Doubtful. What is more likely is that they'll get massaged and manipulated and show up in one form or another over the years.

Today's "Spread the Word" suggestion: Share the amazon link to "Harvest Moon" with your Facebook friends! The short link is:

http://amzn.to/fbTzuW