The latest newsletter from is so great. This is how I'd like to write, one day:

bad signal
WARREN ELLIS

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I still get asked with appalling regularity "where my ideas come from."

Here's the deal. I flood my poor ageing head with information. Any
information. Lots of it. And I let it all slosh around in the back of my
brain, in the part normal people use for remembering bills, thinking
about sex and making appointments to wash the dishes.

Eventually, you get a critical mass of information. Datum 1 plugs into
Datum 3 which connects to Datum 3 and Data 4 and 5 stick to it
and you've got a chain reaction. A bunch of stuff knits together and
lights up and you've got what's called "an idea".

And for that brief moment where it's all flaring and welding together,
you are Holy. You can't be touched. Something impossible and
brilliant has happened and suddenly you understand what it would
be like if Einstein's brain was placed into the body of a young
tyrannosaur, stuffed full of amphetamines and suffused with Sex Radiation.

That is what has happened to me tonight. I am beaming Sex Rays
across the world and my brain is all lit up with Holy Fire. If I felt
like it, I could shag a million nuns and destroy their faith in Christ.

FROM MY CHAIR.

See, this is the good bit about writing. It's what keeps you going.
It's the wild rush of "shit, did I think of that?" with all kinds of
weird chemicals shunting around your brain and ideas and images
and moments and storyforms all opening up snapsnapsnap in
your mind, a mass of new and unrealised possibilities.

It's ten past two in the morning, and I'm completely wired, caught
up in the new thing, shivering and laughing and glowing in the dark.
Just as well it's the middle of the night. No-one would be safe from
me right now. I could read their minds and take over their heartbeats
with a glare.

Faster than the speed of anyone.

That's how it works.

-- Warren