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"Where do you get your ideas from?"

"A small mail-order firm in Checkoslovakia."

This is a short exchange from a real question and answer session with a writer, who was clearly being facetious in his reply. The interesting thing is that, although the answer was silly, it adequately demonstrated the writer using his imagination and throwing out an idea there and then. Imagine if there really were catalogues and websites that dispensed ideas for a small fee - take that idea far enough and you have an entire story.

Writers get their ideas from the exact same places everyone else gets them. The difference is that they train themselves to notice and store their ideas so they always have a lot to work with when they come to putting somthing down on paper. Many writers find that they don't struggle to find inspiration and ideas, they actually have a hard time writing them all up into something an audience might want to pay for.

If this leaves you feeling daunted, don't worry. The first rule of writing is that you should write, write and write some more, but the second rule ought to be "record your ideas". Getting into these habits is all about practice. You might think that you've got no ideas but if you do then you're selling yourself short. Everybody has an occasional conversation with a family member or colleague where one says to the other "what do you suppose...?" and everything that stems from that is an idea. It's very common to find inspiration from dreams and there are hundreds of writers who base their output on having the insight to keep a notepad at their bedside.

Those who write factual pieces tend to draw their ideas from writing that has come before theirs. Most journalists will have a clippings folder in which they cut out news stories of interest and file them away for later. Everybody has ideas, it's just recognising them that matters if you want to pick them up, label them "inspiration" and make use of them. What have you been thinking as you've read this article? And the one before it? Perhaps you have thought of things I've overlooked, or perhaps you're noticing some stylistic feature of my writing that others don't use. Write about it!

What were you doing before you sat down to browse articles on the internet? Was there anything about that experience that you plan to tell a partner or friend about later? No? Well how about the last time you went for a walk? What about the things around you?

Sometimes you'll be fired up by an idea, perhaps a movie or

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