I’ve had a lot of people ask me if I ever get writer’s block. The answer: Never.

I have way too many ideas floating around in my head. Because of that, I’ll never suffer from a lack of things to write about. The secret to never having writer’s block is simple: Combine two other things you like or that have made an impact on you. When I start out, I envision all of my books as a combination of two other stories. I’m also constantly coming up with new ideas of possible stories to tell based on combining two other books or movies I’ve enjoyed. If I suffer from any problem, it’s that I have too many things to write about and not enough time to write them all. For example,

The Man Who Watched The World End was my version of combining Cormac McCarthy’s The Road with The Diary of Anne Frank.

The Theta Timeline was what resulted when I combined ideas I liked from Orwell’s 1984 and Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.

The Green Knight came about from my love of Star Wars and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

This can be done an infinite amount of times, and because you’re adding your personal twist to each story and telling it the way you want, the end product never ends up resembling the two sources you used for inspiration. In fact, what you’ll find is that even if the initial premise starts off a combination of two stories you enjoyed, as your book progresses it moves further away from what inspired you to write it in the first place. The result is a story that winds up being something completely original and unique from the two stories you used as inspiration.

If you’re an aspiring writer looking for the idea for your first book, just think of two other books you love. If you’ve already written other books and are suffering from writer’s block, think of two stories that stuck with you after you read them. It’s that easy!