As a writer of pic­ture books, this is the ques­tion I am most fre­quent­ly asked: “Where do you get your ideas?”

I used to flip­pant­ly reply, “Where do you get yours?”

But late­ly I’ve recon­sid­ered my answer. I no longer believe peo­ple are ask­ing the obvi­ous. No, I think they are inquir­ing about some­thing much big­ger. I think they are ask­ing about the mys­te­ri­ous process of cre­ation; that elu­sive mix of inspi­ra­tion, imag­i­na­tion, frus­tra­tion, per­spi­ra­tion, con­ster­na­tion, and revi­sion… revi­sion… revision.

They want me to explain that thing that hap­pens when I’m work­ing on a book. So today, I’ll attempt to explain.

Every­thing starts with inspi­ra­tion and imag­i­na­tion. To my mind they can’t be sep­a­rat­ed. The two go hand-in-hand. That’s because sto­ry­tellers pay atten­tion to the world. Being a writer means look­ing and see­ing first and fore­most. Or to put it dif­fer­ent­ly, I’m a col­lec­tor. A sto­ry seed col­lec­tor. I walk through my life notic­ing and gath­er­ing and squir­rel­ing away ideas and thoughts. That’s the inspi­ra­tion. Every­thing is inspi­ra­tion.

But some­times, to make things sound bet­ter, I change them. That’s the imag­i­na­tion. Let me give you an example.

When I was grow­ing up my moth­er had a half-dozen often told standards—wonderful sto­ries about her child­hood grow­ing up in the 1930s and 40s. Even though she told these sto­ries in the same way every time, using the same descrip­tions, the same dia­logue, even the same inflec­tions and paus­es, I nev­er tired of hear­ing them. “Tell me the one about the run­away kite,” I’d beg. Or, “Tell me about the sand dune fort.” Or, most often, “Tell me the one about the box­es to Holland.”

My mother—who real­ly should have been a pro­fes­sion­al sto­ry­teller, or maybe an actress—always agreed. This gist of her tale went like this: In May 1945 my moth­er sent a small box to Europe. Inside was a tube of tooth­paste, a pair of socks, a bar of soap and a note. The note, writ­ten in my mother’s hard to read scrawl, sent good wish­es and includ­ed her address.

Her box was just one of thou­sands that poured into Europe from Amer­i­ca that spring. Under the direc­tion of char­i­ties like the Catholic Aid Soci­ety, Amer­i­cans all across the coun­try were pack­ing bad­ly need­ed items into box­es and mail­ing them to des­per­ate­ly needy Europeans.

My mother’s box found its way to a Dutch fam­i­ly whose old­est daugh­ter was named Kat­je. In was Katje’s father who wrote back, ask­ing if my moth­er could spare a box of pow­dered milk for the baby, or an old coat, or per­haps a few cans of meat.

The press­ing needs of Katje’s fam­i­ly tore at my mother’s heart. What began as one woman and one small box grew into a church wide effort to sup­port Kat­je and her fam­i­ly through the win­ter of 1945–46.

I can just imag­ine it.

I love imag­in­ing it.

Box­es filled with sug­ar, milk, warm cloth­ing trav­el­ing in a steady stream between Michi­gan City, Indi­ana and Olst, Holland.

Katje’s fam­i­ly sur­vived, and when they got back on their feet, they sent a box to their Amer­i­can friends—a box of tulip bulbs that my moth­er and oth­er women from her church plant­ed all over town.

Now, in the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure, I feel com­pelled to tell the absolute truth here. In the real-life ver­sions, Mrs. Ullrich—the most greedy mem­ber of the church—stole ful­ly half the bulbs for her own back­yard, and in a com­man­do style type raid, my moth­er and oth­er mem­bers of the Women’s Guild took them back. But that’s anoth­er story.

So, there’s the truth—the inspiration.

Now comes the imagination—those parts I made up to make the sto­ry sound better.

First, I reluc­tant­ly elim­i­nat­ed the evil Mrs. Ulrich. After all, I want­ed my sto­ry to be a book about car­ing and shar­ing, not hoard­ing and stealing.

Next, I made my moth­er younger— some­thing she was thrilled about. I knew my read­ers would be more inter­est­ed in a ten-year old girl than a twen­ty-year old woman.

And I made the sto­ry even big­ger. Instead of an Indi­ana church sup­port­ing one Dutch fam­i­ly, I expand­ed those events into an entire Indi­ana town sup­port­ing an entire Dutch village.

Now, I have a sto­ry born of inspi­ra­tion and imagination.