Why does anyone write? Aren’t there a thousand more productive (and certainly more lucrative) ways to spend hour upon hour tapping away at a keyboard? Probably the answer has to be: yes. But it makes no difference, because we will all still write. Not so much a choice then: more a compulsion.
But let’s go back a step.
Where do ideas come from? And how do you tell which of those ideas have ‘legs’?
I can’t answer for anyone else, though I suspect many writers have a similar experience.
For me, most of the stories I write begin with a question. My brain loves a good puzzle and finds them in the oddest places. Do not watch YouTube or any other ‘factual’ programme with me; I can be most irritating! Never mind the current economic situation. ‘Why has that house got so many windows?’ ‘Why is that woman smiling and wrapping her arms round a parcel?’ and ‘What if that guy was a spy?’
Strange objects and unusual pictures also provide good inspiration. Once again, it’s the ‘unimportant’ details: ‘What lies in the shadows beyond the door?’
I became a little obsessed with a statue of a young girl in a poster for the film Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Why was she so sad? What terrible event brought her to this place? She became the heroine of an, as yet, unpublished fantasy novel, the main character in one of my prize-winning stories (A Basket of Peonies) and appeared again as a weeping ghost in House of Wraiths (the second part of my Ross Ferris trilogy, due out later this year). And I’m not sure she’s finished with me yet!
Anything can provide the spark: a tree outside the window, a strange cloud, an overheard snatch of conversation; the more out of context, the better!
And yes, there are times when nothing strikes me. I want to write. I always want to write. But I am far from immune to those periods of silence when my brain is, presumably, either bored or too busy with less important things. Often, I take Stephen King’s advice (Do read his On Writing) and try to ‘write through’ the blanks; put down any old words, stream of consciousness, whatever. And it’s amazing how often, suddenly your fingers are flying!
If I’m completely stuck, I reach backwards and pull something from out of my memory, old inspiration being just as valid as new! Not to mention, once you start to write about past events, you discover how much you had forgotten.
So, for me the heart of every tale is a dilemma or a conundrum. And if I am lucky, more than that: a character I (and, hopefully, the reader) can care about and watch grow.
My advice is look around, keep your ears open, stay curious and never worry about the days when the world has nothing to offer. Because if you are a writer, it’s there in the blood: in the early morning or that late night revelation, when the solution comes sharp as summer lightning, when your fingers chase across the keyboard, trying to capture the excitement. As the hero whispers, the victim whimpers, and you, in the end, are the creator of both your own and their little world.
Denarii Peters. January 2026.
Denarii Peters is the prize winning author of the Ross Ferris trilogy, The Reluctant Reaper and House of Wraiths (available from the end of May 2026). Book three will be with us early 2027. Her first collection of short stories, Will You Walk Into My Parlour, was extremely well-received delighting fans and new readers alike.