Today's hashtag is #HowIStaySaneInMyWorkspace
Luckily for authors this really isn't an issue. The workspace of an author is usually how they stay sane in the first place. Or at least how they manage to keep their particular brand of insanity down to socially acceptable levels. 

If an author needs to write a small sassy character there is almost no better place to look than the diminutive and indomitable hummingbird. January brings the first hints of spring to the Pacific Northwest small living gems began to return to the temperate rainforests. They are the only bird that is known to truly hover and are capable of building intricate nests. They are the smallest bird known to science and one of the most likely to attack humans. While a hummingbird dive bomb assault is more entertaining than dangerous their furious chattering can actually be a bit intimidating. So step outside and face the uplifted beak of the tiny terror of the flower bed, if you dare. 

By any other name...

Imagine if you will...
​Dawn breaking over the spires of a thriving city.  Every building is the same pattern of brilliant yellow and the jet black inhabitants scale the twinning structures as the light rousts them from slumber. There is no ground as such. The city itself is a grown thing. A fungus of incredible size and complexity. The roads follow the branching contours up, over, and around. It is rooted in the crook of a giant tree, anchoring to the dead wood that still holds the strength of stone. It is both food and shelter to its inhabitants. It is poison to every other species on the world offering protection as well. For as long as the species can remember these living cities have provided everything they have needed. But they wonder what exists outside. For word has come in from those hardy souls driven to explore. There is an end to the seemingly endless forest. Impossibly large beasts roam  the terrifyingly open surfaces outside. And there is something else. Something that exists at the edge of their perception and understanding. A gleaming vessel that released something giant, bipedal, confined to the flat plane of the ground. Something...alien. 

Three old British toughs sit around their favorite pub reminiscing about the days of old. The youngest of the friends is over six decades old. One pulls out his diabetes medication and they bemoan the price of living and their decaying state. One wistfully relcalls their younger days when they could bring home the bacon even if the law wasn't on thier side.
"Well why not once more than?" demands one.
The biggest heist in recent history is born and planned. Millions will go missing. 
It is....
"The Senior Discount"

A little too far fetched? Not plausible enough to be a good story? 
Well actually it is just today's headline over in Great Britain. 
​Tell wild stories friends! 

Many authors have entire worlds growing in their heads. The stories that are written down are simply the tip of the iceberg. The most solid points that show in a swirling ocean of ideas and concepts. Even for a single story there is a great mass that exists below the level of a single book. With the way the internet has connected the world this can lead to fascinating moments. An idea or a concept that has existed for years in an author's mind suddenly appears for a brief moment in the outside world. The idea has never been spoken, or written. There it is someone had the same strange fancy.
 This author had one of those moments today. 

The latest hashtag going around the internet is about #ExtremeWaysToAvoidPeople. This is pretty much the hashtag for authors. Also anyone who decides they want to work in a  remote desert like the one pictured. For this author between remote "day job" locations and holeing up to write "new people" might as well be a mythological species. 

"Come here and listen to this!"
The girl reluctantly put her science fiction novel down and walked over to where her dad was holding some thick tome with a picture of a man looking very intense on the cover. She knew what was coming. The biography must have touched on some central nerve of wisdom that her Dad found profound enough to share with the entire house. 
"During this time period I quickly learned to always carry around a small notebook and pencil in my right breast pocket." her Dad read clearly. 
She nodded along to show she was listening as her Dad read the explanation of how important note taking was. It wasn't that she doubted him precisely. It was just that that sort of thing was for the dour faced military men that decorated the covers of old biographies. It wasn't like she was ever going to forget anything important.

Fast-forward a few  decades. 

The author howls in frustration as she stares at the blank computer screen. The faint memory of the feeling that comes from a really good idea being all that remains of the story idea that came to her when her right breast pocket was distinctly empty of pencils and notebooks. 

Every author knows the horrible sensation of an idea slipping out of their mind never to return. (If any author does not know, none of the rest want to hear it.) There are many ways to preserve these fleeting thoughts but far and away the most common is a simple notepad.
General ideas can be written down but sometimes specific images need to be drawn. It can be easy to forget what main characters look like when focusing on behaviour and dialogue. If an author has drawing ability they can sketch out their own designs. However some authors can't draw much above a first grade level. They then depend on friends and hired artists to generate the place holding pictures for them. 

To show off a character to their best advantage it is often good to have contrast. Would Spock's calm dignity have had such a profound effect on the fandom without McCoy's emotional tirades and Kirk's rash actions to contrast it?
​

Any given culture is constantly generating stories. Some die out and some survive into near immortality. Some, like "The Epic of Gilgamesh" only survive in a dusty script in some buried library; patiently awaiting the day that they will be discovered whole and entire. Some are passed down word of mouth changing and growing like a living thing.
One of the latter is the story of Mt. Mazama. This respectable Cascade mountain blew its top thousands of year ago and the locals still tell of how their ancestors had to dive into the lake seventy miles away to escape the heat. The land was devastated for miles around the thousands of years later the lake still bubbles with remembered heat. 
Now the old stories are being collected, pulled for the ether of the spoken word, and written down. Maybe some day an adventurer will find the story of the formation of Crater Lake tucked into some dusty knoll and once again remember.