Where Do Your Story Ideas Come From?

I was at a work luncheon yesterday afternoon, and I was telling several of my coworkers about my books, my new release in December, and my writing. The question came up, "How do you come up with your story ideas?"

I couldn't answer. The question stumped me.

It's like asking me how I make my heart beat or how I learned to breathe. My heart just does. My lungs just do.

There have always been stories inside my head for as long as I could remember. Voices. Characters. Plots. They're just there.

How can I explain where the story ideas come from, how I develop characters and twists and turns, when I don't even understand it myself? It would be like me asking a non-writer, why DON'T you have stories in your head to tell?

For me, it just is. But that's not a very satisfactory answer. It's also not one that makes me look any less strange either. Neil Gaiman explains it this way, "I make them up. Out of my head." That's pretty much it. Really.

How to artists paint what they do? How to composers create music and lyrics? It's the same thing. You have an idea, a feeling, a scene, or a question that needs answered and you go from there. It's easy to have the ideas--heck, I have plenty--but it's the act of sitting down, writing, and fleshing out those ideas that makes a writer a writer. Sometimes the stories come easy. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes the story you thought it would be turns out to be something else entirely.

But where do the ideas come from? I don't know. From all around me and from nowhere. How's that for an answer? I guess it starts with a glimmer of an idea then I brainstorm it until the story is written. Is that answer any better?

See what I mean? I can't explain it. But even though I can't explain it, and only other writers will understand, I'm extremely grateful my brain works the way it does. I love the voices. I love the ideas. I love creating a world out of nothing.

So where so I get my story ideas from? I don't know.

But I love it.