Where Do Ideas Come From?

I missed posting yesterday.  No excuses.  I mean, I don't celebrate Labor Day (don't get me started on that), so it wasn't like I was doing anything.  I basically just laid around watching TV.  In the afternoon, I made applesauce bars - which turned out really more like sheet cake.  Tasty but not exciting, so I won't make those again.  I also sent TTW to my Kindle so I could start editing, and I did a little of that.  Then late evening, we finished watching a true crime show and an idea hit me while we were out having our post-show smokes.  I finished my cigarette, marched right over to this desk and started typing.  881 words later it was time for bed and I had run myself out of steam.  

When people ask where ideas come from, it's basically that... something sparks an idea that I believe I can work into a book.  Sometimes, I fail at turning it into a story that I can complete, but usually with some effort, I succeed.  A book is born and all that.  At least that's how it works for me.  Your mileage may vary.

Song of Storm and Shroud started out as a dream.  It doesn't resemble the dream at all anymore, but I never would've written it if I hadn't had this really interesting fantasy-themed dream.  You know the kind with characters and plot and setting, etc.  That kind.  I woke up and wrote down the idea.  Like I said, the book didn't come out anything like the original idea, but sometimes it works like that.

The first book I finished (Fear Itself - not yet published) came alive after I watched a couple of 'space rock will destroy the world' movies.  I sat down at my computer and started writing, and nine months later TADA.

Accidental Death was born out of a fear I had sitting at home waiting for Hubs to come home from a meeting.  It combined with some other ideas I had and a storyline was born.

My brain likes to explore possibilities, even when I'm not trying to come up with story ideas.  It meanders all the paths.  I think this is why I have deja vu so often.  With my brain exploring all the possibilities, I'm bound to eventually actually experience one or something similar to one.  Anyway, that's probably where the majority of my book ideas come from.  What if...? and all that.  

What if a woman was so focused on all the imagined wrong in her past that when she is actually wronged, she decides to pay back everyone who ever hurt her?  What if the person assigned to hunt her down is terrified of the means she uses to commit these murders?  Voila... Dying Embers.

See?  

"Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any." - Orson Scott Card

I don't see five or six ideas every day.  Thank goodness for that or I'd probably go insane trying to write them all.  I'd never get anything done either.  I'm content with an idea here or there.  I'm happy when I can come up with one when I need it.  The others?  They get jotted down in my ideas document and they're there if I'm ever at a loss for what to write next.  That hasn't happened in a while, but like I said, they're there if I need them.

What about you?  Are you inundated with ideas?  If you're not a writer, what do you do with them?  Seriously.  I'm curious.  If you're a writer, I'm pretty sure I know what you do with yours.  Keep doing it.