Where do you get your ideas?

Every profession has its pitfalls. Doctors are always being asked for free medical advice, lawyers are asked for legal information, witches for puncturing someone’s life and writers are asked where we get our ideas from. (I proudly pronounce myself as a thinker and a writer.)

In the beginning, I used to tell people the not very funny answers, the flip ones: 'From some past incidence or from something where I was remotely connected or from a dusty old book full of ideas or I stole it.

Then I got tired of the not very funny answers, and these days I tell people the truth:

'I make them up,' I tell them. 'Out of my head.'

Folks don't like this answer. I don't know why not. They look unhappy, as if I'm trying to slip a fast one past them. As if there's a huge secret, and, for reasons of my own, I'm not telling them how it's done. Not letting them penetrate inside my mind or my sad looser life kind of.