Writers find idea by theft

Yes, you are allowed to steal ideas. That’s because you can’t copyright an idea. And what I would do with an idea might be very different from what you would do with it. Now, there are some common sense boundaries. If I tell you I’m going to query a specific editor about an article on

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Writers find ideas by association

Have you ever had one thing remind you of another? Maybe it’s a smell that reminds you of a similar smell from the past. A person who makes you think of another person you know. A line from a poem or story that makes you recall an event that happened to you…. That happens to

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Writers find ideas by observation

Have you ever found yourself in a position where you could overhear things that were supposedly private? You might have been standing in a check-out line while a mother and her young son had a long, heated argument about buying a certain kind of candy. The mother may have been embarrassed, but so were you.

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Where do ideas come from?

I’ve been talking about how to organize your ideas. Now I want to talk about where those ideas originate. You might ask, “Don’t ideas just come?” For some of us, the answer is a loud, “Yes.” There are people who are overwhelmed by a constant flood of ideas. I’ll talk about that problem later. I

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