Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

This scenario should sound familiar. You’re at a cocktail party with a group of people who are not your closest friends, and someone asks you what you do for a living. You decide to say “author,” because your day-job is something boring like bookkeeping. Saying author gets a much more positive response.

When I tell people I’m an author they immediately want to know about my books, my pen name, and then they almost always ask the question: “Where do you get your ideas?”

I used to scoff at this q...