I am regularly asked, “Where do you get your ideas from?”* and I get eye-rolls when I provide my dull-but-true answer [usually: “I don’t know”, “life”, or “my head”].

Because I want to be able to regurgitate a wholly modern yet fabricated response next time I am so accosted and my response is disbelieved, I compiled a list of sites on writerly inspiration. The bonus: these links are super fun.

Three quirky sites.

1. I’ll induct you slowly with the Seventh Sanctum Name Generators. The “Quick Character Namers” link has the potential to be especially cool.
2. Every Writer‘s 11 Cool Sites is one link featuring no less than ten excellent links. Yes, you read that right — and they are numbered from 11 to 21. You can not buy quirk like that. From giving you fifty-word head starts to fake characters complete with dossiers, this is one incredible, all-in resource designed to bypass any level of blockage.
3. So if the last link provided you with everything, what’s left? zoomquilt.org/, that’s what! This site is a zoomed-in loop of observations folded in on itself. It’s Alice falling deeper than the bottom of the rabbit hole. It’s one very strange ride indeed. Check it out — and don’t stop watching, or you might miss the image that gives you the ekphrastic inspiration you were seeking when you didn’t know it.

*I seem to recall that Neil Gaiman presented a talk on this very topic…

[time passes]

And after a not-so-hefty search, here it is — Neil Gaiman’s wonderful response at a 2011 Wheeler Centre talk:
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/-C48jAkVlI0?rel=0