Of the authors’ interviews that I have watched and the talks I have given, “where do you get your ideas?” is almost always asked. I’m going to have to borrow a page from Orson Scott Card’s talk at the West Virginia Book Festival. “The idea tree.”
If you have ever actually had an idea spring up from thin air (I’m serious), The Idea Tree is fucking brilliant.
Pictures. Songs. Something some random person said that you happened to witness as you were walking to the bathroom. All of these things can spark “an idea”.
For example, the cryo-freezer that sat in the spline at my place of side-hustle for a few months at the beginning of this year. Why was there a cryo-freezer with a key-lock at my said place of work? No clue!?
Ice cream?
Probably not, Paul.
But it sparked a story.
That, combined with some random, wine-induced rambling from my Dad and BAM! Story idea!
Half of a Pair was written in less than a week.
Yes, it rolled around in The Drawer for probably three months before I drafted.
Circling back around. Where do ideas come from? Anywhere. Or… The Idea Tree.
Julie M Anderson 