We think we're in charge of our lives and our books. We're not.

During the worst time of my life (redundancy, divorce, depression) I was introduced to meditation. After about two weeks of meditating, I got a sentence in my head that wouldn't go away ... till I wrote it down. Then another phrase turned up and then another till, after a few weeks, I realised I'd written about 20,000 words of a story. I finally read that evolving story and it was about a chap called George Sanderson. But it was my story! I was later told all writers need to, first, write their own story and someone did it for me - giving me the words and moving my pen over the paper. Simples!

How do writers find their stories?

People ask writers how they come up with their stories, how they pluck characters and stories from thin air, how the ideas come to them. I can’t speak for other writers and I really have no idea how the ideas, plots, people and places bring themselves together for my pen to describe. However, I don’t how a car works but know what I need to do to make it work. Similarly, I know what I need to do to have the writing happen – here is one of those things and more are shared in the book, Write That Book Now:

1. Get out of your own way

We know not whence our ideas come from.

“Ripple on still waters, where there is no pebble tossed, nor wind to blow,” wrote and sang Gerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead. The ripples (ideas) come when there is nothing to disturb them.

I know that the ideas come when I still my mind, when I let the world, its disturbances and expectations go … when my pond is left to settle, to be still and smooth.

That is when my ideas come.

And then my mind gets in the way and asks – how did I think that? Where did that thought come from? Why am I thinking this? What should I write next? – the thoughts tail off.

And when I judge – that’s weird, what a silly idea, that’s a great idea – they tail off.

Left to themselves – unquestioned and unjudged – they flow through my pen and go where I could not expect.

It’s worth pond-ering, don’t you think!