Kathleen asked Michelle Massaro:

Where do you find your ideas for your novels? Good ideas seem to elude me.

Michelle Massaro Hi Kathleen! Ideas for novels often elude me, too! First, I usually try to think of an emotion experience I can identify with and explore on the page. If I can feel it, I'm betting others will too. So I often go "mining" in my own past, not for plot but for emotional resonance. Then I ask myself what other circumstances might cause a person to feel this same emotion, perhaps on an even greater scale. I then play "what if" to come up with scenarios (usually "worst case" scenarios!) and go from there. And I remind myself that the idea will come into better focus through the writing and editing processes, so not to worry if it doesn't feel like pure gold. It might be a diamond in the rough.

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