I was muddling through my day when my brain became lost in some dialog for a story which had popped into my head. It wasn’t memorable, I’ve already forgotten it, but it led me to ponder.

From whence do these stories come?

Most days, in fact, I’ll find myself lost in one imaginary conversation after another. Battles are fought, lost causes are pursued, mercy is shown, and justice done. Over and over and over these stories come into my brain. Most are just random visions of would-be worlds which fly through my consciousness and are gone again. Others stick around in the back of mind, churning through my mental landscape as I pass through my days. One of these became In The Land Of The Penny Gnomes, but I have others still boiling up to the surface of my imagination.

A few of these latter dreamscapes have even iterated through generations over the course of my life. I’ve watched the technology evolve, society unfold, collapses happen, and rebirth achieved – all via daydreams in the back of my skull. In all likelihood I’ll never share most of these tales ¹, they seem to exist to stir my soul up to dream and imagine and write. Some might coalesce into something I feel would like to be shared, and now that I’ve allowed one story out more might follow. Who knows?

But what is the source?

Inspiration can be just about anything. Pens, television remotes, razors, and even smart phones filter through my imagination and are transformed into spaceships ². A Minecraft world becomes the exploration of a lost civilization ³. A tuft of grass becomes a city, built on organic technology. As my vision coalesces I wonder what the people who live there are like. What is their history? What is the political landscape? What struggles are they facing? Are they religious, and what do they worship? And on and on and on. But inspiration is more a conduit than a source, and so I’m left wondering at the very nature of human imagination itself.

I wonder if this is why my sub-conscious created The Realm. It’s nice to think there is a place of thoughts and dreams, feeding our minds with visions of the fantastic and interesting.

If you tend to daydream, and maybe even write, what sparks your imagination? Do the daydreams float on the surface of your thoughts, or are they more like a piece of gum your mind is chewing? Let me know!