I’m often asked where I get my ideas for books, which is an understandable but impossible question to answer.
There is no well of ideas. There is no secret formula. There is no one answer to that question, as much as fledgling writers seem to want there to be.
Simply put, I hear something. I read something. I see something. The flicker of an idea is born.
Something Missing was born from a conversation with a friend over dinner about a missing earring.
Unexpectedly, Milo began with a memory from my fourth-grade classroom.
Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend was born from a conversation with a friend and colleague while monitoring students at recess.
My upcoming novel, The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs, originated from a story my wife told me about her childhood just before she fell asleep.
My unpublished novel, Chicken Shack, began with a dare.
All of these are simplifications of the actual origins of these novels. There are more complex stories behind the origin of each book. In all cases, additional ideas were grafted onto the original idea to create a more complex story.
But as for the initial spark, that was how each story began.
Which leads me to a poster displayed in the Yawgoog Heritage Museum at Yawgoog Scout Reservation, the camp where I spent many of my boyhood summers, which described a visit by nuns to the camp many years ago.
I suspect that someday this poster will be added to the list of initial sparks for one of my novels.
A nun’s day at a Scout camp? How could this not be the basis for a novel?
