There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.

to write is human, to edit is divine.

Gaiman, Neil: American Gods

Díaz, Junot: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Child, Lee: The Jack Reacher novels, starting with Killing Floor

Atwood, Margaret: Oryx and Crake

Vonnegut, Kurt: Hocus Pocus

Smith, Dinitia: The Illusionist

Ondaatje, Michael: The English Patient