Ideas and inspiration for my stories generally comes from my imagination. I'm mostly just sitting around or doing something and I think it would be funny to turn it into a story.

My mind just wanders and if I think it could turn into something I write it down in case I wanna try it at some point.

Sometimes ideas come from other things such as fanart/animatics but most of it is just thinking about the characters and some dumb situation I can throw them into (such as maybe Wild Life but it was with the infinity dice from Gravity Falls)

Ideas for my OCs heavily relies on my life.

Most of my OCs aren't anyone interesting just some random everyday person, but they've been developing more personality overtime.

For example, James and Noah are two that I write about a lot now and their relationship and complicated feelings. A lot of what I use to build the character is stuff that's happened to me in my life.

Mr. Raymond is a nice mentor and teacher, always inspiring his students to keep pushing through and I based him off of my father who continuously encourages me to do what I love, even when he doesn't understand what the heck Minecraft is.

You'll see a lot of my high school AU's and some other stories I put a lot of angst that's happened to me into it.

I find that a story doesn't have to be over the top and super interesting, it just has to be comforting and get some laughs. Obviously, you do what you love, but I've always liked putting a little message in my stories.

Since I write fanfiction, most of the worlds are already built for me. What We Could Have, Where We Could Go had Afterlife laid out, my command game had Hermitcraft, The Corruption Within Us, The Festival; both had Empires SMP.

It's just a matter of adding your touch.

In all of those stories I put a little something that happened to me.

Maybe it's the fear of failure and truth, maybe it's the wish to find that safety, maybe it's the fear of losing someone close to you, or maybe it's the fear of commitment.

In the Afterlife fanfic, I reused the idea that avians lived in these giant treehouses which I came up with in Never Meant To Be. I just thought it was funny to think they lived in the forest with treehouses.

With my command game, I always just thought that Hermitcraft was this far out land you got to by train. I mostly developed this idea when on c.ai cause I didn't like how every bot mentioned it was just a game. If it was an AU, if you were in that world, it would make sense to me if it was like this far out paradise you get to by train after you get a scholarship for your building skills.

Just making sense to the little backstory you have really.

Motivation though, is hit and miss.

A big thing I want to tell you guys about is learning your limit.

I can only write, or at least have, five stories going on at the same time. The way I know what those five stories are?

I have a document titled 'Where Inspiration Lays' which is the starting point for every idea. Once that story gets more than five chapters, it moves to its own document and gets published.

If there is a story I am nervous about losing motivation halfway through, I'll wait until I'm comfortable with posting it (I think I was 20 chapters into The Corruption Within Us before posting it)

What I do if I have more ideas but am already doing five stories (but one is close to being done) I sit down and go into crunch mode.

Don't work on anything else just get it done. The best thing to do in this mode is look at everything from a different angle (or perspective) and figure out what you want to talk about.

Good luck!