The mechanics of inspiration - my Continuum 5 Guest of Honour speech

The following is an edited version of the Guest of Honour speech I gave at Continuum 5 in August 2009. It won’t be exact partly because, although I made notes for my speech, I do have a habit of wandering away from my notes to make ad hoc observations and comments. I have included the excerpt from various novels to demonstrate how I’ve used some of these ideas and observations in my work.

The reason I chose the topic -  Where do you get your ideas? – was largely because it struck me that...