Fancy

Here’s what happens: I have a good idea for a book and start to write it. Then I read someone else’s (better) book and think, Hmm… This story has some interesting elements, maybe something similar could work for mine. And so like a magpie I add this or that idea to the scrapalanche, this or that type of character or voice or structure or tense, and I put them all in an enormous idea-pile until whatever nugget I began with is buried in miscellany.