As a writer, like people who perform breast enhancement surgery blind-folded, I am apparently a thing of interest to some people who don’t write and wish to unlock all the secrets to what it is we do. That’s right, I said a thing, not a human. It’s my opinion that some people don’t think of writers as living breathing people. And that’s fair enough. We are a bit weird and so it makes perfect sense.

Now, as a society us writers put up with an awful lot. OK, we bring it all on ourselves, but this is my piece so leave it. One of the worst things we have to deal with is when people who nothing about writing attempt to infiltrate our mysterious world. “Tell us”, they say all innocent to the insult they are about to cast forth: “how do you come up with all your wicked ideas?”

It’s seriously a wonder that nobody has been killed!

So here it is. For all you out there who beg the answer to this ridiculous question, here is a definitive answer: we just get them and we don’t know how, stupid.

You wouldn’t ask a mechanic how he mends an oil leak, would you? Not unless you had an oil leak and wanted to coax information out of him so you could fix it on your own, I mean. No, he just does it, and it’s the same with ideas. If you write and you write a lot you also think. And here’s the thing: thinking brings ideas, that’s just the way the world works.