If I had to choose one short story as my favorite of all time, it would have to be “Nightfall” by Isaac Asimov. The story does a great job of capturing the individual’s fear of the unknown as well as the mass mentality of society which leads people to dismiss theories they don’t agree with or ideas that scare them (or both). It investigates the overlap of science and religion (facts versus beliefs) and the battle that exists between them–even when the two sides agree. Asimov paints a great picture of how individuals as well as the larger society respond to fear and uncertainty and he does so in a relatively few pages. I also like that he does not weigh the story down with what happens after “the disaster” strikes, leaving that to the reader to surmise.

Another favorite is the Spanish-language story by Rubén Darío called “El Nacimiento de la Col” (“The Birth of the Cabbage”). In this story, a beautiful rose is convinced by an evil spirit that although it is beautiful, it lacks usefulness. The rose, in turn, petitions God and asks that it be made useful like the trees. God grants the rose’s wish and thus cabbage is born. I have read several versions of this story, some of which include discussions between the rose and God in which God tries to convince the rose that its beauty is, in fact, useful; some versions just have God grant the rose’s wish immediately. In any form, this is a story that is rich and well written despite its very short length and has stuck with me since I first read it over twenty years ago

I am rarely ever certain specifically where I get the inspiration and ideas for my stories and characters. They just sort of appear to me, sometimes very briefly, sometimes with a loud, grand entrance complete with big bands, streamers and steaming mugs of coffee. Almost always the ideas come to me when it is inconvenient to write them down (in the shower, during an interview, while at the dentist, etc.).

I suppose inspiration comes from whatever is going on around me.  Sometimes it comes from the random squawking of my children.  Sometimes it comes from the newspaper (yes, I still read one).  One story came from reading about the melting of the polar ice caps and the fact that we can now get to vast areas of the sea floor that we couldn’t explore before.  I started writing about the strange, intelligent life forms that had lived there, undisturbed and unknown to us, for millions of years.  They were not happy to be disturbed.

Another came from a combination of reading about Roswell, New Mexico, seeing coverage about a UFO video from Ireland and watching the movie Men in Black. I was simply thinking about whether aliens that were in the mood to take over and enslave our population would make a big show out of it, or if they’d be patient about it (given the large amount of time it must have taken them to get here). If they were patient about it, they’d infiltrate our governments and bring the world down through the very mechanisms we’ve put in place to protect us.  I have to admit that this story may border on non-fiction, since clearly there is evidence that governments around the world have been taken over by these aliens.

Often inspiration comes from working in the garden, where I spend a large quantity of time in the spring and summer.  Plants sometimes look quite strange when they are first coming up.  Peonies come up red, straight, tall, scrawny and strange-looking, making them look unearthly.  Over time, they change color through various shades of red and green until they look like normal green plants with giant eyes.  When the ants arrive to care for them and then the flowers open into 4-inch wide puffballs… it gets thoroughly bizarre.  Ideas come from plants like this or from the clouds rolling in or the bees attacking me while I weed or even the blades of grass in the pathway.  One time a chirping bird sounded like a crying baby and a story came to me about a bird spontaneously hatching a human baby who was destined to save the world from an invasion of mutant, ninja space worms.

I never said the ideas were always good!

Well, first I’d tell myself to invest in waterproof, airtight boxes in which to store my handwritten masterpieces from childhood. So much of my writing has been lost to time due to fading pencil marks, water damage, etc. It doesn’t matter that the writing was likely not very good – it is the foundation of everything else I’ve written or will write and now, since my 18-year-old self was not smart enough to think ahead about it, it’s gone.

Most importantly, I’d tell my 18-year-old self to just keep writing. After I graduated from college, I went through a stretch of 13 or 14 years where I wrote a grand total of two poems—two, seven-stanza, four lines-per-stanza beasts. Even during college, all I wrote was a few poems and one short story. It was not for a lack of ideas or even a lack of time; it was a lack of prioritizing writing. So, I would tell myself to write. Just write. Bad poems, goofy diary entries, silly limericks, trashy novels, chord-less, simplistic rock tunes for the trumpet… even if it is about kittens… it doesn’t matter, just write it down!

With the, ahem, wisdom of my age now, I can look back and see that writing wasn’t just a hobby for me—it was a lifestyle. It was something I simply had to do even (and especially) on those days when I didn’t want to do it. I wrote nearly every day and if I went more than a day or two without writing my mood soured and I became easily distracted. Writing helped keep me stable when things were falling apart or when things were stressful. The 13+ years in which I did not write were filled with excuses as for why I didn’t need to write or couldn’t afford the time to write. Looking back, I see all the stories that didn’t get written, all the time that was wasted doing “more important things” or deciding that I could write “tomorrow”. Breaking this habit continues to be a struggle for me and I wish my 18-year-old self would have had the foresight to just put it all down on paper. It may not have changed the world, but it might have made it a tiny bit more interesting.

I never plan out my writing; instead I just let the story take me to wherever it needs to go. Sometimes this takes me to really bizarre places and genres, but typically it will keep me safely within the realms of science fiction, fantasy or comedy (or some combination of these).

I had actually never written fantasy until a few years ago when I started writing a novel which I thought was going to be a science fiction blockbuster, complete with evil humans blowing up alien spacecraft and invading bizarre worlds with purple skies and three suns… but I realized part of the way into the third chapter that I was writing an epic fantasy that contained no aliens or space battles but did have three suns, five moons and a race of clothes-eschewing, blind psychics. Having never written fantasy before, I was intrigued and went with it, enjoying it a lot!

What I enjoy about science fiction and fantasy writing is the fact that I am in complete control of them. Since no one has ever been to the planet Percivius Prime, no one can tell me that I got a detail wrong when I described the pink atmosphere that smells sweet and tastes like pickles. I can create essentially any world I want, I can define any rule I want within my world and I can create any technology or magical power to define away rules of physics that I don’t care for on any given day. Since it is unlikely that I will ever be able to actually travel to another planet, I like that within these genres I am able to bring another planet to me and totally immerse myself in it. I find it very exciting to build these exotic or boring places and then stick different kinds of people in them in search of health, happiness or simply a decent cup of coffee.

What I find challenging in these genres is actually pretty much the same things. This is because no matter how powerful I might be as the author and creator of the world in the story, I must, at all times, keep the rules of the world consistent. While some discrepancies are natural and allow for a more realistic experience for the reader (our natural laws in the real world have many exceptions that we see every day), even the exceptions must follow a specific set of acceptable rules and corollaries. Since I do not plan my writing ahead of time, keeping all of this straight can be difficult sometimes, leading to revisions after I contradict myself in Chapter 13 or get into a situation where there is no acceptable way to manipulate the world.

The other thing I find difficult, specifically with science fiction, is finding the right amount of ‘science’ to include. If I create a technology in the story, or give a specific ability to a character, it has to be plausible enough within our own understanding of our world, otherwise it can seem silly. The masters of science fiction, such as Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke, always seemed to find that mix and it is a skill I am striving for every time I write a new story.

I almost always have music playing.  Music is and always has been a huge part of my life.  I have played the trumpet since I was 10 years old and started writing music soon after I started playing. Naturally, it seems, I listen to music when I write.  But the reality is that the style of music varies based on the specifics of whatever it is I am trying to write.

If I am writing poetry, I will typically choose silence or classical music.  The classical music I choose depends on my mood but is often Fantasies & Delusions by Billy Joel and Richard Joo, Handel’s Water Music Suite or anything by Tchaikovsky.

If I am writing an essay or non-fiction such as research papers or performance reviews, it is always The Cars Greatest Hits by The Cars.  I don’t even particularly like The Cars, but I learned in high school that I could put this album on and write many, many pages of non-fiction for some reason!  I wore out a couple of cassette tapes of this album through high school and college, but now I have it on CD so I should be good for a while.

If I am writing stage plays, it will typically be raw jazz albums, especially those that feature trumpeters; Miles Davis is a favorite. Another favorite listen during time spent writing plays is the music of Fats Waller.

When writing short stories or novels, I’ll tend toward rock music, albums such as You Can Tune a Piano but You Can’t Tuna Fish by REO Speedwagon… well, anything by REO Speedwagon, really… or anything by Chicago.  More recently, Brand New Eyes, by Paramore, has been a frequently played album.  For “Out of the Darkness”, my story in The Red Book, I listened exclusively to the instrumental soundtrack album, Buffy the Vampire Slayer – the Score, by Christophe Beck.

As for what I am listening to right now… before I started writing these Take 5 answers I was listening to my Zune playing randomly across the entire catalogue of music by the band Paramore, a band which I am very likely too old to enjoy so much.   Since my answers to these questions are non-fiction, I have switched to The Cars Greatest Hits.