Everything you do, everywhere you go, you can gather ideas. Train yourself to keep your eyes and ears open at all times. Tune in your sense of smell, your sense of taste. Keep all your sense acute and listening. Write all the time. As artists, you must train yourselves. The more you write, the more you paint, the more you practice your instrument, the more you live constantly this double way. You keep asking yourself: How do I write it? How do I paint it? How do I put it into music? You are constantly, in small ways, getting ideas.
– Madeleine L’Engle, Writers’ Workshop, Session I. 25 January 1983
