I recently took part in an online roundtable with other novelists on the International Thriller Writer’s association Website http://t.co/XeEvdVgn discussing the topic of “Where Do Story Ideas Come From?”

I’m not even sure it’s possible to explain that exactly.  We all seemed to agree that we knew when we had a good one.  When you strike gold, idea-wise, those plots tend to grab hold of a writer and not let go.  Maybe the idea sprang from a newspaper headline or a person we met or a situation we witnessed.

But what about the writer who sits down at her/his desk and just starts thinking?  And comes up with a great idea.  How do you really explain that, except by calling it the Creative Process, whatever that means?

Once upon a time writers spoke of have a “Muse,” and while that word did come up once in the roundtable discussion, it was glossed over.

Here is a definition of “muse” from the answers.com wiki answers website:

The term refers to a source of inspiration, accessible by artists and generally restricted to artists (artists in a broad sense). The muse is not in itself a delusion, or hallucination, but rather a myth to which writers, musicians, painters and more are able to credit the conception of their art to – those times when the artist has not been actively designing a piece, but spontaneously has an idea for one.

In Greek mythology, Muse referred to any one of the nine daughters of Mnemosyne and Zeus, each of whom presided over a different art or science. Muse in modern day terms refers to a guiding spirit or a source of inspiration.

Please don’t hate me, but I personally feel that needing to rely on inspiration in order to write is the mark of an amateur.  I’ve heard some would-be writers say, “Oh, I just couldn’t write today because I wasn’t inspired.”

 Inspiration is a wonderful thing, and I always welcome it.  We can even argue that is exactly that which makes a good story idea grab us, as authors, but we shouldn’t confuse inspiration with the everyday execution of the craft.

Anyway, the notion of something—a spirit?—outside of ourselves being responsible for our creativity makes, I think, most us a bit uncomfortable. 

Still, when we get some lightning bolt idea, or when we suddenly blurt out something hilarious that we hadn’t “thought” of and laugh as we hear it for the first time as does everyone else in the room, it’s curious to wonder just where exactly did That come from?

From our brilliance, obviously! 

Certain scientific materialists and neuroscientists—the types who would ascribe a person’s religious experience to the existence of the “God module” in the human brain–can no doubt explain away creativity as a chemical reaction or brain synapses firing, etc etc.

Funny, but many Nobel Prize-winning scientists explained their breakthroughs as having transpired due to a “gut-hunch.”  (Inspiration?)

Which, rounaboutly, brings me to the following story:

In late summer of 2009, after attending the Pusan International Film Festival in Korea, I found myself sitting next to one of the biggest movie producers in Asia as we embarked on a long drive back to Seoul.  After schmoozing a bit it struck me that I had a unique opportunity to pitch a project since I had a captive audience!  I knew generally the kind of story the guy was looking for, but didn’t have anything on my mental project shelf that I could throw at him.

I spent fifteen minutes pretending to look at scenery while trying to come up with a story idea.  I remembered reading about “Astronauts”—Asian businesspeople who constantly flew back and forth between Asia and the US.  What if one of these astronauts was seemingly a Peter Pan type playboy, and what if he had a prim, practical 10 year old daughter in private school in Los Angeles living by herself…?  In fifteen minutes I had a romantic comedy called TEACHER’S PET.  I pitched it to him, and got hired to write it.

Where did that story idea come from?  Rendered on demand, in a very short period of time.  Part sponge of memory, part pure creative imagination?  Were my biorhythms up, had I entered “The zone” to use a term from sports?  Was my mental acuity particularly sharp? (Probably not, considering how much drinking had taken place previously with those hard-partying Koreans!)  Had the “Muse” paid a visit?  Can there really be Divine Inspiration that comes into the mix? 

 Hard to say, but after all these years, the creative process is just as exciting to me as it was in the beginning.