I think sometimes the tricky thing about being a writer, at least for me, is not coming up with ideas, but, first of all, knowing when something is an idea, you know, knowing that that twinge or that bit of excitement that can be momentary is actually, oh, that’s the feeling of an idea. I think a lot of us get ideas all the time and we just don’t realize that they’re ideas.
And then the other thing is to know which ideas are good enough to spend time on. And that can be a tricky thing and an important thing for a writer to figure out. I spend a lot of time thinking about the idea for a story before I begin writing it, so I’ll be mulling it over for weeks, sometimes months, sometimes years before I start setting things down.
I’ll be writing actual sentences in my head and working them over and over, and I have a pretty good memory. Sometimes I’ll write them down or I’ll record myself speaking it. But a lot of times I’ll just be working it in my head. I keep a notebook with observations, things I hear, little things, but a sentence that could be part of a story, I can hold on to that, and it sort of tumbles around in my brain until it becomes the thing I want it to be.
And when I get enough of those sentences, it’s time to sit down and start writing, and that can be a very long time after the origin of that idea.