When I was in my early teens, I used to write fan letters to my favorite authors. In retrospect, I’m surprised at how many wrote back; some of them must have received hundreds of letters like mine on a regular basis. Here’s a letter that Stephen King sent to me, for example. I asked Michael Crichton where he got his ideas…proudly thinking at the time, I’m sure, that I was asking an incredibly interesting question he had never received before. To Crichton’s credit, he graciously responded with a handwritten note in which he also thanked me for my letter. His answer to my question about where he got his ideas: They just happen.
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