Developing stories, short or long, takes work.  All this nonsense about inspiration on the one hand and writers’ block on the other has only the smallest element of truth.  Certainly, there are days when you don’t feel comfortable sitting at your keyboard or pen poised, certainly sometimes an idea comes out of the blue.

However, for the great majority of our time, we have to work if you want to produce something worthwhile.  This is a law that is immutable, and it is a law that very many people try to ignore.  That ignorance is known as laziness.  We are all guilty of it.

So what do we do if we want to write a story or a novel or whatever?  Well, don’t sit there staring into space waiting for inspiration.  Work at it.  What is it I want to share?   What’s an idea that would interest my reader group?  Who are my reader group?  We need to work at all these things, think and think hard.

I feel the best way to stimulate thinking is three fold, reading, writing, and travel which sounds pretty basic.  By reading I mean expanding one’s data bank of knowledge, by writing I mean developing ideas and expressing them as well as you can, and if you can travel and take in the wider world and its peoples so much the better.  But these things don’t just happen you have to make them happen and that takes work.

So when you next sit down at your place of work, remember that is what it is a place of WORK.