So where do story ideas come from?

[John Dean]

Just lately, I’ve been doing a lot of teaching, and giving a number of talks, on the idea of ideas and during my research I came across these excellent quotes:

• People always want to know: Where do I get my ideas? They're everywhere. I'm inspired by people and things around me. (Gwendolyn Brooks, American poet)
• My standard answer is "I don't know where they come from, but I know where they come to, they come to my desk." If I'm not there, they go away again, so you've got to sit and think. (Philip Pullman, English writer)
• Ideas come to a writer, a writer does not search for them. "Ideas come to me like birds that I see in the corner of my eye," I say to journalists, "and I may try, or may not, to get a closer fix on those birds." (Patricia Highsmith, American crime writer)
• It's very blurred, it's not clear. The plan is something which gradually evolves. Usually, I'll just start with one particular idea or certain image or even just a mood and gradually it'll kind of grow when other things attach themselves to it. (Jane Rogers, British novelist, editor, and teacher)
• Anything can set things going--an encounter, a recollection. I think writers are great rememberers. (Gore Vidal, American novelist, playwright, essayist)
• You can write about anything, and if you write well enough, even the reader with no intrinsic interest in the subject will become involved. (Tracy Kidder, literary journalist)
• "From you," I say. The crowd laughs. I look at the woman asking the question; she seems innocent enough. I continue. "I get them from looking at the world we live in, from reading the paper, watching the news. It seems as though what I write is often extreme, but in truth it happens every day." (A. M. Homes, American novelist and short story writer)
• My usual, perfectly honest reply is, "I don't get them; they get me." (Robertson Davies, Canadian novelist, playwright, and critic)

My ideas find me as well - a place may inspire, a person may spark an idea, a past experience may find a home in a story I am developing. You just never know when they are going to strike!