There is a wonderful line in the third Harry Potter movie. It’s when the Fat Lady has been attacked, and all the Gryffindors have been sent to the Great Hall for the night.

Dumbledore tells Snape, when asked if Harry should be told more about Black, “Let him sleep, for in dreams we enter a world that is entirely our own.” I love this line. This is what we do as writers, we create our own worlds. We’re essentially dreaming all the time. Every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

We are the great imaginers, and for every new dream that occurs to us, we are given a new story to tell. That’s not necessarily to be taken literally. If I wrote about all of my dreams, my stories would be rather strange and incoherent. Sounds like a plan for day nine. But my point is, that inspiration is all around us, and if we have the mind to see it, then we can harvest the world’s ideas.

After all, every great writer, every Tolkien, King or Asimov, all got their ideas somewhere.