Idea Gremilins

I have started to ask myself where in the world I get ideas from. As I understand the story: published, successful author types get sick, real quick of the question. I have had some good ideas, but I cannot even start to catalog where they come from. The story I am working on now came to me on the john going number 2. Now that I recall, the last really good idea before that came on the can... Going number 2 as well. Hm?
It's crude, very crude. The jokes write themselves too: maybe I should have flushed them with the rest of the shit. Ha Fucking Ha.

*

I have often come to a story idea by asking myself "what is scary?" That question is often left unasked yet answered as something comes up and creeps me out or unsettles me.
Being scared eats at my insides as it happens. As soon as it is over I find myself wanting it all again, dreading it at the same time. When it happens, I want to get at the heart of it and show it to someone else.
There it is, the reason I write.
Still, what scares is not an idea for a story. The closer you get to the root of what the "scare" is, the less of a story you have. Deep emotional loss is scary, not a plot. It is a seed that I plant in dark wet soil. Then it grows. How it grows is the question.
I get the scare, then find a vehicle for it to drive. The characters, the locales, the scenery, trappings, events, plots, and the twists. They ride like a convoy, the scare at the head of it. They all need to help give it weight, momentum. They push it home.
I have found the vehicle first a few times, which works, but I have to remember to ask the question in reverse. "What is scary about this?" A convoy without a driver goes nowhere.
I have never come by it mechanically. Never laid out the plans of what kind of story I was going to write.
"Today I am telling the tale of three sisters going through midlife trouble."
More often a notion hits, I plant, it grows, and a tale is told. Sometimes it is broad concepts that get filled in through careful consideration. Other times that notion is a full blown idea with characters (named or unnamed) and plot all laid out.
Those big movies, that blurt out in the theater behind my eyes, are the ones that lead to these questions. Where the hell did all that come from?
I feel as if there is a little gremlin sitting at a writing desk in my head, churning out pages, and bouncing his ideas off me like a pitch man.
"The next great gremlin novel!" He assures me, every time. "Huge seller."

*

Reading what I have written here, I wonder if any of this is getting me any closer to an answer? Don't know.
My ideas just come. Does it really matter how? Being truthful with myself I am saying no. It does not matter.
Well, then fuck it.
Looking at yourself, as a writer, and delving into what makes you work is always good for something. Now, whenever writer's block comes I have got the solution. A good idea is right around the corner, after a trip to Taco Hell and a nice long sit on the crapper. That always gets the gremlin working.