Writing For Fun

So where do these ideas come from?  Is there some magical muse jumping from one writers head to another on a continual basis so we can all have things to write about?  How does this muse know that I like to write murder/mysteries and the next fellow likes to write scifi?  This question, to me anyway, brings up the next logical one, how do we know the idea fairy, as I prefer to call him(yes I said him, call me sexist, but he's my damn fairy) isn't dropping off the story ideas to the wrong people.  My god, what if my fame and fortune hasn't been achieved yet, all because this little, overworked(because I'm sure there isn't enough of them) fairy dropped the preverbial ball and sent my 600 page novel to the wrong person.  Man what if Kellerman is only famous because he got my idea by mistake?  Could this be, could this have happened?  In the immortal words of Dr. Evil, "How about No! you freak!"

I've given this train of thought lots of, well, um, thought and I think our ideas come from our everyday life.  Now that's not to say if you are writing a story about a serial killer that you are unbalanced(but check just the same) but maybe characters in your story reflect people you have met, or are a mesh of characters you have seen before, as long as you are not plagarizing them it's fine.  The story ideas, mine at least come from my idle fantasizing.  Sometimes we'll be sitting down to dinner and my wife will ask me something and it flies right past me as I am in another place.  I can't help these moments and, God love her, she has learned to accept them from me.  My wife is also quite supportive in my writing, which I think is important of any partner, and is constantly checking out what I have accomplished since she logged onto my computer last.  I couldn't imagine if she was constantly on me about the time I spend, uhem, writing, really, no solitaire here, no way.  Okay, so there's a little solitaire, but come on they put it on the computer so it's meant to be played, the last thing I want to do is upset my computer, if I do that it would surely delete all the stories that the muse just delivered.

Write what you know, write what you love and always love what you write.

Thanks for reading my ramblings.

Wayne MacLean