Dreaming It Up
Some stories come to you out of nowhere, demanding to be committed to paper. Some characters just drop in on you like unexpected house guests and take up residence in your skull until you agree to tell their tale. I think that every writer has probably experienced this kind of inspiration. It's what moves many to embrace the calling. Later, at times when the writer sits down to consciously create something, it can be maddeningly frustrating that similar inspiration isn't on the same timetable. But those flashes of ideas aren't really from nowhere. Although the concepts may seem new to you, they are really the product of your own brain working without your conscious direction. It's a feat of ordinary magic that your mind takes in disparate elements from your life and your environment, mixes them together and presents you with something you didn't even realize you were thinking about. We all do this, writer or not, and call it dreaming. The chief d