Where the Hell Do You Come Up With This Stuff?

By Andrew E. Kaufman

A question people ask me a lot is, “Where the hell do you come up with this stuff?” The short answer is severe head trauma at a very young age, but the long one is… well, kind of long.

As a kid, my teachers used to yell at me a lot for being in my own little world. See, I had this imagination, and no matter where I was or what I was doing, there always seemed to be a Party of One going on inside Drew’s head. I liked it there, but my teachers, well, not so much.

The proof of that came when I'd get my report card. Year after year, the comments always seemed to be the same. They went something like this: Andrew is a bright young man, but he has a difficult time paying attention in class.

Problem? I didn't see one.

After reading this, my mother would ask me what exactly I was doing all that time, to which I’d shrug and say, “Just thinking about stuff.”

What none of them knew—and I doubt I realized it at the time, either—was that there was a storyteller inside me, one who was desperately trying to punch his way out, and that “stuff” was likely the beginning of my life as a writer.

I think as authors, that storyteller is what drives us, inspires us, and is likely the source of all our ideas. I know that’s where mine come from. Some like to call it “The Muse” while others refer to it as their “Inner Voice.” But whatever name we attach to it hardy matters because really, it's whether or not we choose to listen to it that counts. The ideas are always within us. We just have to grab hold of them.

Want proof? My first novel, While the Savage Sleeps came to me one night in a dream. Seriously. I literally woke up one morning and had a working novel ready to go, then I wrote it. Where did it come from?

Inside Drew's Party of One.