thoughtful9. Music. I have an entire YA series that was inspired, without irony, by listening to the Counting Crows song "Have You Seen Me Lately?" while half-asleep. I hit the line "I was out on the radio, starting to change/Somewhere out in America, it's starting to rain," and suddenly I had this whole complicated story in my head. It was pretty awesome.
8. Biology. I like to read books about parasites and diseases and the weird new discoveries we're making in the cloud forests of Borneo, and all these things lead to new concepts that will inevitably appear in my writing. Almost all the cryptid biology you're going to encounter in InCryptid comes from this particular exercise.
7. Travel. I love finding new places and new environments to set things in. It's a rare trip where I don't come away with at least one new concept gnawing on the back of my brain, going "oh, oh, no, really, come on, let's destroy Melbourne!" Or, you know. Something like that. Travel broadens your list of available things to smash.
6. Listening to my friends talk to each other. If I have a conversation with Kate, barring unexpected disconnects, I know roughly how we'll both react. If I listen while Kate has a conversation with Vixy, anything goes. I find that listening to conflicting viewpoints from people I know well can make me write a lot of interesting things.
5. Movies. No, I'm not saying "I go see a movie about robots and then I write a robot book." I'm saying "I go see a movie about robots, and there's this interesting moment in the middle where someone wants some pudding, and I start thinking about it, and then it's twenty minutes later and something's exploding and I have no idea what's going on."
4. Sociological constructs. I often think "wouldn't it be nice if society did..." for values of "did" that can involve damn near anything. And then I construct worlds to justify society doing whatever it is I've said "wouldn't it be nice" about. Sometimes this requires trilogies.
3. Dreams. Like almost every other author I've ever met, sometimes things come to me in dreams. I am not ashamed of this. My dreams kick ass.
2. Irritation. Haven't we all thought "sure, but I could do it better" about something? With me, the "something" is often a story or a concept or even a real-world event, and the result is often unnerving.
1. Paying attention. I walk a lot. I look around me a lot while I walk. The number of stories this has caused is legion.
