I’m one of those people who converse with checkout operators—because why the heck not?—and recently one of those conversations canvassed the “what do you do?” question. When I replied that I was a writer, the next questions was, “Where do you get your ideas from?”

Like Ursula Le Guin, I am very much of the view that ideas are pretty much everywhere, and that my ideas for stories come from a subconscious processing of life’s giant database. However, as I said to my checkout interlocutor, “If anyone is ever short of an idea for a story, any sort of story really, all that need be done is look in the newspaper.”

Newspapers, radio, television news—they’re all chock full of stories.

However, even if we can’t read, or listen to the radio for any reason, we still don’t have to look far for stories. If we take a moment to pause in the midst of our busy-ness and just pay attention, we can see and hear the stories happening all around us: interactions on the street, things happening in our families and amongst our friends, a customer in a supermarket talking to the checkout operator about where stories come from… Ursula Le Guin is absolutely right, stories really are everywhere.

We just have to look out for them.

Emily Dickinson

Or to paraphrase Emily Dickenson, having observed the world going about it’s business all around us, just as it always does, we can then “tell it slant.” The “slant” is the part that draws on the real to make fiction, which in its turn slants a spotlight back onto the real, illuminating understanding of our human condition. (Or so I like to kid myself.)

The “slant” of fiction leads us to one more element in where stories come from. A few years back, I went with a friend to pick up her child, aged around 6 or 7 at that point, from school. I believe it would be fair to say that the kids exploded out of the classroom and the next hour comprised nonstop kinetic energy—accompanied by one key phrase.

“What if?” they cried to each other. “What if this? What if that? What if one hundred thousand different things all at once?”

Every “what if” was the genesis of a new story in their play. And I realised that is part of what authors do: we take events and situations and stories, both real and imagined, and ask “what if?” — which generates new stories.

And that, dear readers, is where ideas come from.

I may also have just proven that there really is at least a teaspoonful of magic in the world — but I will leave you to make up your own mind on that point.