Where do you get your life stories?...

...Well from everywhere. From observing life and  participating in it. 

In the streets. 

On Twitter.

In my office. 

Under my bed.

Anything that crosses your mind could probably be a story, it just requires time and stamina to store the idea, retrieve it and then commit it to the page. 

That’s a discipline I acquired from my father, a lifelong journalist who recorded his thoughts, including banal tidbits, he heard on TV in copy books. At the time of his death he had  scores of such books in his bedroom. They are the only things I kept that I regard as sacred.

I am driven visually. I keep a story file and on weekends I pour through magazines and old books and clip and paste  photos, paragraphs, a headline, a fashion statement. It’s like an inspiration book that  I turn to  provoke ideas and turn on the creativity tap.

Stories are also generated from real life. Like this weekend when after my husband went to the cashier  to pay a $600 brunch bill at Crews Inn and grabbed a handful of mints, he was told he could have only two. 

The amount  of our bill and the cost of the mints didn’t compute and we walked out of the  restaurant with a bitter taste in our mouths. But  it immediately became a story we passed on about service to our friends Nikola and Jacks, who we met for drinks moments later.

I think stories become stories because you live them. The creation happens in your head but the best stories you take from your own life.

The trick is to keep curious. Ask questions. Look at trends. Explore. Laugh. Cry. Doubt. Scream.  The story creates the work. The work creates the story.