Episode 9: Where do you get your ideas? With Mo Willems — Kids Ask Authors

I still have to look after it. I still have to protect it from interference while it becomes sure of itself and settles on the form it wants.

I wish I had a secret I could let you in on, some formula my father passed on to me in a whisper just before he died, some code word that has enabled me to sit at my desk and land flights of creative inspiration like an air-traffic controller. But I don’t. All I know is that the process is pretty much the same for almost everyone I know. The good n

When I’m in the thick of a project ideas come all the time, but they’re more likely to strike in the middle of the supermarket, or on a walk, than at my desk. So now I’ll stop, wherever I am – under a tree, beside Frozen Goods, at a bus shelter – and note the thought down on any scrap of paper I can find in my bag – a receipt, the back of a ticket,

Ideas mostly come from the slow, quiet accumulation of seemingly banal and obvious habits. It’s just doing the right things to make sure your mind and your life are brimming with hearty compost.