I keep a collection of my ideas on my computer. It seems that, no matter what on this planet I have to worry me, the risk of running out of concepts for fiction isn’t among my issues.

It’s not just my computer. It’s notepads and notebooks, my phone, anything that’s handy when the inspiration strikes. I scribble a line, or two lines, and there it is to be used later. Once in a while, when I’m stuck, I browse through to see if I can marry two concepts together; there have been times when I realized, with a bang, that disparate things were meant to go together all the time.

There’s probably not enough time on earth for me to see all of those ideas through to fruition. They’re not all whole, anyway. Some are fragments, details, bits of character, crumbs of situations.

Ideas are not the problem. It would be great if that was all that was needed, a quick concept, and the whole thing rises like bread dough in a warm oven. Wipe your hands on your apron, and it’s fresh slices in a few hours.

Of course, bread doesn’t work that way, it takes more than just yeast. Writing doesn’t work that way, either. Thinking of something, that’s easy. It’s building it out of nothing more than letters, that’s where it gets tricky.

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