Where Do We Get Our Ideas

Juggling the changes that need to be made in my "finished" novel and putting the details into a biography I"m working on, seem to be more than enough to think about. However, there are those ideas out there, intruding like some computer virus - ideas about a children's bok based on a funny incident with a dog in front of our local deli, or the amazing story of a woman I talked to who uses public transportation to travel the city in a wheel chair, a group of giggling Japanese girls who brought back memories of my three years in their country, and, of course, the daily papers and their stories of the state of the world. Those articles send me into essay mode even though many of them seem more like fiction. It's sorting out all the images, conversations and memories that become the challenge and the joy of writing it down.