If you don't do something with it, it’s not your idea.

Once upon a time, a high school English teacher had an idea for a book about a girl who could move things with her mind. Needless to say, if Stephen King never actually sat down and wrote “Carrie”, the idea would have floated around in the ether until someone else thought of it and actually sat down and wrote Victoria or Charlotte or Margo.

We think ideas are things we conjure up from somewhere in our brains. But other than The Big Bang— and even then, there are a lot of scientists who are starting to wonder if this whole big bang thing might be suspect— I know of no way something can come from nothing.

I come down on the side of Stephen King who argues, "Stories are found things, like fossils in the ground. Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. Writers should be like archaeologists, excavating for as much of the story as they can find.”