Goodreads asked Phil Cain:

How do you get inspired to write?

Phil Cain Having written for a living for quite a few years it is rarely a question of whether I write something today. It is more a question of what it is going to be? Now, for instance, I had a few choices and settled on answering this question. If it wasn’t this it would be something else, perhaps delving into a news story. Something I have seen on my walk to work might be the trigger too. It may not be obvious but it will usually be connected to my previous work or to my next one. This answer, for instance, is related to my answer to the earlier one about writers' block and a chance to take a breather from my next project. So inspiration for me is generally a matter of keeping an eye out for a chance to hop to a nearby stepping stone, rather than waiting for an imaginative thunderbolt. Of course sometimes extraordinary things happen in the real world and ideas do sometimes suddenly click into place. In these cases I tend to write a few notes in case I miss it. But really significant things will usually still be there to record and explore later.

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