Where do you get your ideas?

This is, it would seem, the most com­mon ques­tion asked of all writ­ers. It cer­tain­ly has been asked many times of me. I used to think peo­ple were tru­ly ask­ing me that ques­tion. Then it dawned on me the ques­tion real­ly was, “Why don’t I get ideas?”

I think the way it works (at least for me) is this: From an ear­ly age I was read to a great deal, and rather quick­ly learned how to read—and did read—voraciously. As a boy I also lis­tened to the radio, which in those days was most­ly sto­ry­telling. (One of my favorite radio shows was Edward R. Morrow’s You are There. It recount­ed famous his­tor­i­cal events—say, The Bat­tle of Get­tys­burg, as if it was actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing.) Even the movies I saw were rather heavy-hand­ed nar­ra­tives. There was also a sto­ry-telling tra­di­tion in my family.

My point is, I was so sur­round­ed by sto­ry­telling I began to expe­ri­ence the world as a sto­ry. I still do. My sense of peo­ple, the world, things I see and expe­ri­ence, are sto­ries. Which is to say, I don’t get ideas for sto­ries, I see them.

An exam­ple.

A few years ago my wife and I were vis­it­ing San Fran­cis­co. We were walk­ing along the Embar­cadero, that part of the city which edges the great Bay. Along the walk were mul­ti­ple flag poles, from which flags were flut­ter­ing. Curi­ous­ly enough, the flags showed a pho­to of the Bay that once was, crowd­ed with what were obvi­ous­ly aban­doned sail­ing ships.

What, I won­der, was the sto­ry behind that?

It didn’t take long to dis­cov­er what those ships were. When the 1849 Gold Rush hap­pened, thou­sands of peo­ple flocked to San Fran­cis­co. A good many came in ships. When those ships reached the town (it was quick­ly becom­ing a city), pas­sen­gers and crew rushed off to the gold fields, leav­ing the ships to rot. At one point there were sev­en-hun­dred of these for­sak­en ves­sels. They even gained a name: Rot­ten Row.

As I learned about these ships, and what San Fran­cis­co was in those ear­ly days, I saw a sto­ry wait­ing to be told. I set to work, and that book, Gold Rush Girl, will be pub­lished in spring 2020.

The Play­er King had its ori­gins in a foot­note in a book about Eng­lish His­to­ry. The But­ton War is based on a sto­ry my late father-in-law told me about his youth in Europe. Crispin: The Cross of Lead, owes its incep­tion to some­thing I heard in a lec­ture about the mid­dle ages. Noth­ing but the Truth came about because of an account I read in a news­pa­per. And so forth.

In short, it was read­ing that shaped the way I see the world. The shape of my thoughts become my novels.

Again, I don’t get ideas for sto­ries. I see them everywhere.

Want ideas for sto­ries? Read. A lot.