How do you get your ideas?

Comment:

Hi, I love your Alice series. Someday I want to become an author and my question for you is: How do you come up with the amazing ideas for a book? Also what’s your advice for creating a book? I am sixteen years old and I have big dreams. Thanks and have a wonderful day,
Phyllis replied:

When I first started the series, I didn’t know there would be more than one book.  I just wanted to write about a motherless girl looking for a role model. And after I wrote the first book, so many people wanted to know what happens next with Alice that I agreed to write a series as long as Alice could grow older in each book.  The best books are created around deep feelings in a writer’s heart, and some of Alice’s experiences are things that happened to me or my friends.  Sometimes I suggest this to beginning writers:  Think about the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you, or the angriest you’ve ever been, or the most sad, or scared half out of your wits.  Choose one and write a short paragraph about it.  Then rewrite it, making it happen to someone else.  Change the way it begins, perhaps, or the way it ends.  Turn it over to your imagination and give it wings.  The more you write, the more you will study things around you–the way people talk, or sit, or walk, or react, and the more ideas you will get for stories.