So where do the ideas come from?

     I get the question a lot.  I'll tell someone one of my ideas or the basic plot of one of my stories and it's usually the same expression.
     "How do you come up with this stuff?"  They ask with eyebrows drawn together and head shaking. 
     Well, usually it's a dream.  I'm sure a lot of writers say that.  I believe that's the major difference between artists and the rest of the world.  An artist never stops dreaming.  Like Edgar Allen Poe said:  Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream by night. 
     But to be honest though, I do have another outlet for ideas.  I'm a gamer.  A sit-at-the-table-with-a-character-sheet-and-bag-of-dice type of gamer.  This gives me characters to work with, which helps me build backgrounds and family trees, which leads to where they live and what they do.  Next thing I know, I've created a person that could be just as real and you or me. 

     The book I'm writing right now started out that way.  It was just a character.  I was playing a Warmage in a D&D 3.5 campaign.  She was militant and cold and would kill anyone her queen commanded her to, without question.  It was one of my favorite games. 
     Sometime after the campaign ended that I had horrible insomnia one night.  I laid awake for hours feeling like there was something in my head that needed out but all I had was a face in my mind. 
     When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of a bright eyed, bushy tailed young girl with a ready smile and a love of exploring.  A girl who's curiosity often got her in trouble, but also took her on adventures.
     I woke up late in the morning the next day to the irritating sound of a lawn mower just outside my bedroom window.  I flopped out of bed and growled at anyone who looked in my general direction until I found the coffee pot and made the coffee happen.  Then I started to write.
     I took that character back to the early days, before she became militant, cold and deadly.  I asked her what had happened to her and it’s like she started to tell me her story. 
     I wrote the first four chapters that day and fell asleep around the same time as the night before, but this time it wasn't insomnia.  My hand just refused to put down the pen.
     That went on for about a month until I realized that I had better come up with an end of the story or I would just keep writing and writing and there would be no real direction.  So I wrote the end.
     Then I floundered around for EVER trying to fill in the space between.  What was I doing wrong?  Ignoring my own learning style and personality type. 
     I'm a very tactile person.  I will walk out of a store and never go back in simply because I accidentally touched something made of corduroy (ugh!  My skin crawls just thinking of it!).  Likewise, I can sit and rub my hands over bricks and textured walls and silk....things, for hours.  I'm also very sensitive to sounds and smells.  Certain types of music, though I enjoy listening to them, chop holes in my brain and make creative thinking impossible.  Certain smells will have my skin crawling in seconds.  Others will massage my brain to happy putty.
     Then there's people.  I work with people and am constantly surrounded by many, many people while on the job.  By the time I'm off work, I want nothing to do with people.  But I find that I'm more creative when I'm around people, and trying to ignore them, then when I'm alone and trying to be creative. 
     So what did I do?  I got a huge piece of paper and tacked to my wall (I got this idea from my favorite writer, Jim Butcher).  On that paper, I drew a time line.  For each chapter I finish, I write a brief description on a post-it and slap it up there.  I also have character descriptions and drawings as well as little maps that I've doodled up and scene ideas. 
     It's the first thing I look at when I wake up and it's the last thing I see when I go to bed and seeing this physical manifestation of my story and my characters puts my brain on the creative track for the rest of the day.  This way, while I'm at work, I can write.  Since I work with people, I get to assign them to projects or activities when the lessons deem it nessessary and during that time, I write.  You wouldn't believe how many pages a day I can pound out on the job, and still work at the same time.  Maybe it's because I'm dreaming of being somewhere else....

     Well, I wrote 11 pages tonight and most of those were while I was at work.  I'm 19 chapters in and the gab between the beginning and the end is getting smaller and smaller.