Two craft notes in one day–a record.

Asked where my ideas come from, I shrug, “I don’t know.” Asked whether I start with plot, or a character, or a setting, or a description, I usually respond, “None of the above.” What comes to me first is a line, a sentence. And from that line come other lines. If there are enough lines, I discover a voice and a work of short fiction. If there are a lot lines, I discover several voices and a novel. This is a line that impressed itself on me today. Will more lines follow? I suppose that depends on how badly I want to find out about the nature of Koestler’s crisis (and, for that matter, who the hell Koestler is).

Koestler plodded along, uncomfortably seated in the rank cockpit of middle age, face contorted by the foul odor of his own crisis.