When people find out I’m a writer, the question always comes quickly: “Where do your ideas come from?”
And I get it.
It’s a fair question, an obvious one most people who aren’t writers want to know the answer to.
Or if they don’t care about the answer, it’s something to ask a writer that won’t offend them.
But if I’m being honest, I’ve always fumbled the answer. Not because I don’t know, but because the truth is complicated.
I don’t write autobiographies. I’ve never tried to chronicle my life exactly as it happened.
To be honest, I find my actual life, at least on the surface, kind of boring.
But I do write stories that start with my life. The house where I used to live and grew up. The tension between me and my former best friends. The people I’ve loved, slept with and ultimately parted ways with.
My experiences are the bones. And the rest?
Well, the fiction is the flesh.
Take 1 Lovelock Drive, for example, my self-published novel. The story isn’t “true” despite the tongue-in-cheek…