YES!!! Excellent piece on writing by Peter David–excerpts: Where do writers get ideas?

They don’t get ideas. Ideas come to them.

They come from the newspapers, or books, or TV shows. They come from movies, or friends. They come from happenstances that they witness or hear about second hand.

If I’m making it sound like ideas are a dime a dozen, well…they are. Probably less. It is so darned easy to get ideas if you just set your mind properly.

The key to writing fiction is remembering just how closely linked fiction and reality are. Fiction is just like reality, except it’s more elegant. …

Execution. That’s where it all is. You see, how you tell a story is more important than the idea. A hundred writers can have the same idea, and produce stories involving that idea that are wildly dissimilar. Look at the half-dozen movies that came out a couple years back involving a kid in the body of a man. The only one worth a damn was “Big.” Same concept. Better execution….

There’s also good stuff about the difference between “inspired by” and “plagiarized from,” and in general the piece is just fun to read. Go! Have fun!