The question was inevitable.

When I used to go into schools, I always started programs with my young readers by telling stories drawn from my childhood. Stories about the way the experiences, the challenges, the feelings from that time formed the foundation of my novels.

“This is where my ideas come from,” I would tell them, again and again.

Then I would turn the session over to questions. (“How old are you?” and “How much money do you make?” were the two always uppermost in the students’ minds . . . and sometimes, though they hid it better, the teachers’, too.)

Invariably, though, not far into our conversation, a hand would go up and a child would ask, “Where do your ideas come from?” Leaving me feeling like one of those invisible adults in the Charlie Brown comics. “Wa-wa-wa,” from outside the story’s frame.

And I would explain again. Patiently. Patiently.

I’m beginning to think, though, that the students may have kept asking because my answer, however often repeated, didn’t really explain. Where do my ideas come from? Where do any ideas come from?

Is imagination inherent, simply part of the human experience, or is it a gift parceled out here and there?

A woman I know, a retired pastor, has told me that her life would be complete if she could only have written Charlotte’s Web. A longing shared by many, certainly. But because I know from her sermons that this woman is a profound, heartfelt, and uniquely impactful storyteller, I was intrigued. “I’ll walk with you,” I told her, “while you write your own Charlotte’s Web.”

“But,” she said, “I have no imagination. I can tell other people’s stories, but I haven’t a single idea of my own.”

Which astonished me. Could that be true? Is it possible for anyone who has such a deep instinct for story to possess no stories of her own?

Not wanting to accept her reluctance, I sent her my book, What’s Your Story? A Young Person’s Guide to Writing Fiction, a guide that, though published for young writers many years ago, has often been used by adults creating stories for the young. Perhaps, I thought, if she has structure laid out in a way that would make conscious what she already does so instinctively, she will find her way to her own stories.

Even as I dropped the book into the mail, though, I wondered. Can structure possibly be a tool for exploring the heart?

That’s where our stories begin, of course. In our hearts. In a yearning that requires resolution as determinedly as our bodies demand food and sleep. As fiercely as our whole beings seek love.

The resolution our stories achieve will never be final, of course. Most of us go on writing the same story, reaching for the same answer, throughout our writing lives. All that matters is that there be a yearning to fuel us.

How could I dare hope that the mechanics of structure might give life to the desire to capture friendship, the struggle for survival, and even death on the page? Surely there must be a better door for my friend to walk through to find her story.

And surely, I told myself, someone who feels so deeply, understands so profoundly and presents others’ stories so adroitly can tell her own stories, too.

I have no this-is-how-I-do-it map to give her to follow. My stories come from sources too various for that. From a true event reported in a newspaper article. From something one of my pets did. From a moment glimpsed in another work of fiction. From events remembered from my childhood. From the very air.

I only know that once an idea occurs to me, I carry it around with me, sometimes for a long time. If other ideas fly to it like iron filings to a magnet, it becomes mine. I have never—never!—asked myself why the idea I was carrying had that kind of power, what connection it had to my own history, my own longing. (That’s something I recognize only after the story is done. If at all. Sometimes reviewers explain it to me.)

I simply take the energy from what has landed with all its gathering of supporting ideas and begin to write.

Where did the idea come from to start with? Everywhere and nowhere. A gift that made itself mine by burning inside me.

After all those years of standing in front of my readers answering that question, I wish I had a better answer. Or at least one I could offer someone who wants to bring to the world another story that will wound and heal as Charlotte’s Web has done for so many.

And who, I am convinced, is not without imagination.

Yet I suppose it is because the process of discovering story is so ineffable that, when one finally arrives, it can carry such power.

For the storyteller and for all whom the story touches.

I’m still waiting to see what my friend will bring into being.

Where Do Ideas Come From?

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