Where Do Story Ideas Come From?

There must be a stork for that.🤔

Next week I’ll be speaking to the English classes of sixth and eighth graders in my town. I was invited to talk to them about writing and specifically where ideas come from. So I’ve been thinking a lot about “where” my own stories were conceived and particularly if there is some common thread to the source of creative impulse and inspiration. Whether the idea came to me:

• in a dream while traveling in Europe about an old mute, blind man who spent his days creating stories (THE WORDSMITH)

• from the zeitgeist of early internet days as reported in the NYTimes article about people googling themselves and one of them discovering a personal horror (THE MEMORY BOX)

• drilling down on my own fears and insecurities about connection, a sense of belonging, police paranoia (ok, that one is irrational!) (FOLLOWING YOU)

• taking note of the changes people made in their lives as a result of Covid’s emotional turbulence, and how they came out the other side of it (new book alert!). Although this new book is not set during Covid, it gave me fresh perspectives on human behavior that ignited the ideas for this book (a witty romp about one woman’s midlife meltdown—and the unexpected turns of self-discovery).

Stephen King has said that writers should write about what scares them. In reflection, though I don’t intentionally set out to do that, I realize that I explore my conscious and subconscious fears through my characters.😳

How do we access our idea portal? These personal view-finders of inspiration? I believe that one of the following must be in play:

• a state of wonder/curiosity

• close observation of the world/human behavior

• daydreaming and/or tapping into subconscious thought

Some of these overlap of course. What’s a state of wonder without close observation of the world around us. All of these conditions, to me, share a common thread: one must be free of distractions.

It’s an occupational requirement for writers to daydream. In fact, if I ever need to figure out a direction for my story and instead of daydreaming about it, I “do some online research,” I can waste days “researching” and never find the creative direction thirty minutes of daydreaming would have elicited. Whether or not our creative impulses come from something we fear, they will indeed tap into a place of vulnerability. That’s what makes sharing our work so very scary. Because we know to share our work, our creativity, our ideas, is to expose our most vulnerable selves.

Recently I took a trip to Collioure, France for the Karbohemia Writers Retreat during which my main goal was to fill my creative tank and return home to write with fresh perspective. That would entail being awed by new, beautiful, strange, unfamiliar experiences and taking inspiration from other writers and teachers I met there. As author Janet Fitch often says in her YouTube series, Writing Wednesdays, “artists must keep adding oxygen to the water.” And did I! Here are some photos. Once all of my fellow writers returned home, a flurry of emails connected us again, from which a new writers group was formed—the best souvenir of all!

What am I reading? Glad you asked! I loved these two on audio:

About the changing roles for women in postwar America, and their secrets and loyalty put to the test.

Inspired by Fleetwood Mac, the Manson murders, and the infamous summer Percy & Mary Shelley spent with Lord Byron at a Lake Geneva castle––the birthplace of Frankenstein.

These two are up next!

Follow an enigmatic woman confronting her unknown past...

A tradwife murder mystery.

Thanks for stopping by! I’d love to know where your story ideas come from and please send me your book recs!

Until next time,

Eva