Always. The biggest examples in Wellsville would be the chapters that involve video games. Me and my brother spent hours playing Halo together on co-op mode when the first Xbox came out. The chapter where the kids get stuck in Scourge Island is me trying to capture what it felt like to play a game cooperatively for the first time. Halloween Harry is also based on an old computer game called Hugo's House of Horrors, that me and my brother used to play when we were really young. Back then we were way too young and dumb to figure out all the puzzles, much like Mia and Priya were when they used to play it on the boardwalk.
I'm never short of ideas, but sometimes I struggle to figure out how they all fit into the bigger picture or how to flesh them out into proper story beats. My solution is usually to make a playlist of tracks that soundtrack the book. Then I put in my headphones and go for a long walk. I find the music helps me visualise everything a bit more cinematically. Chapters start playing out in my head like scenes in a movie and before I know it I can see the full picture. I also find that typing out my questions and thoughts into a word document really help me to process them. Usually by the time I have finished typing out a question the answer is already starting to formulate. Then I just keep typing out my inner monologue of questions, answers and concerns until I reach a solution. Somehow getting things out of my head and onto a page helps.
Reading inspired me to write from a young age. I used to love creative writing in English class and after getting a good reaction to one of my short stories from my 4th grade class I was drawn to storytelling. I tried to start writing a book series when I was around fourteen but didn't get much further than a very short first instalment. But years later when I decided to write a book for real I was able to go back to that first attempt to find inspiration. The idea of writing a novel seemed like an insurmountable mountain to climb, but once I remembered that I had already done it once before, back when I was a careless eighth grader who knew nothing about the world, I realised that I could most definitely do it again as a much wiser experienced twenty something year old. Since then I have managed to write three full length novels, one of which has just been published. Starting the next one still feels like I'm looking down the barrel of a long and arduous climb, but those mountains are starting to feel more like hills now.
