Goodreads asked Renee Darcy:

How do you get inspired to write?

Renee Darcy This feels like kind of a trick question. To me, writing books isn't really about inspiration. I have a million interesting ideas, but ideas alone are relatively meaningless. In fact, I have files and files of interesting story ideas, scenes I've written about characters I may never meet again, half-finished stories, barely started outlines, and all the detritus of a creative mind unfocused.

The trick - and the difference between someone who has written books and someone who has a lot of great ideas - is the discipline to sit down and write. You have to *finish* something. And that requires you to make slow and steady progress (or fast progress, if you're one of those lucky people!) - but mostly, it requires working at it.

Routine helps. Writing every day gets you into the habit of being able to sit down and just let the words flow. Some days, the writing seems effortless and every word feels like gold. Other days, the writing is leaden and heavy, and it's like a good bread - you'll have to knead it and work it to shape it properly in order to release the delicious potential locked within. But if you don't put the work in, it just turns out heavy and doughy and underdone.

(Sorry, can you tell I'm on a bread-making kick right now?)

Inspiration helps with the ideas, and it comes from all around me. A lot of my story ideas start as interesting dreams I have, believe it or not. But inspiration comes from the people I interact with, the books I read, the TV shows I watch and my hobbies. A lot of Della's Diary, for example, comes directly from my life. But I'll leave a bit of mystery and won't tell you which parts ;)

One of my friends got me a T-shirt for Christmas years ago that says: "Careful, or you'll end up in my novel." It's totally true. Every character in my stories comes from someone I know, either directly or as an amalgam of people. A character in a story could be based on someone I have a random, chance encounter with - or someone I know well.

When I'm actually working on a story, the next steps will hit me at the most random times. I'll work through a scene while I'm washing dishes. Or I'll lie in bed at night and just think about what happens next, instead of sleeping. Or a snippet of conversation will come to me while I'm walking the dogs, or cooking dinner, and that becomes my starting point when I sit down to write again next. When I'm working on a story, the project is never far from my mind - my subconscious is chewing on it while I'm doing other things - and then, when I sit down to write, the words are there.

I believe it was Edison who said: "Genius is one-percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration." Writing is the same. It's one teensy kernel of inspiration, and the rest is just the work of putting it down on paper, and working through it, and revising it - until eventually, it's a book!

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