My usual glib answer is ‘No idea,’ but I also occasionally expand on that a little and talk about things … all sorts of things, because my ideas come from everywhere.  The news, books, magazines, conversations overheard, random ideas, dreams, and last week I had a story idea whilst watching my dog run beneath a viaduct.

But when people ask me where I get my inspiration from, that’s a different question entirely.  Inspiration and sources of ideas are two very different things.  Sometimes I’ll nod to my wife and kids and mumble something about ‘real horror stories’, and then I’ll trail off into something else because this is a much difficult question to answer.

Ideas are tangible things, inspiration is something much more obscure and, I think, intensely personal.

Today I felt lacking in inspiration.  The project I’m working on taunted me from the screen, telling me I was crap and had no ideas and it would defeat me.  So I decided to leave it alone for a while stewing in its own juices, take the dog for a walk, and see what came.  Here you can see a couple of photo’s of where we walk our dog.  And this, for me, is one answer.

How can I walk here and not feel inspired?

I came home and wrote.