Where Do You Find Ideas?

So I was trolling jimhines friends-list and I stumbled upon this post by Stephen Leigh. He was running a writing workshop in Kentucky, and a gentleman approached him offering to collaborate on an idea.

This is the flip side of the common perception that the hard part of writing is coming up with ideas. The post above has 16 and counting comments on that, mostly by writer-types saying "I have more ideas then Carter has pills" or variants thereof.

Although there are some wannabe writers that truly don't have ideas, I think a more common problem (and one I had for a while) is that people reject the ideas they have.

For example - I have a rather well-thought-out (at least in my opinion) future history involving settlement of Mars. But for the longest time I felt it was only of interest to me. Therefore I needed to come up with another future history if I wanted to write.

More precisely - writers need to write what they dream. Some people (many people?) are embarrassed / scared / too shy to do so. Therefore, they wander around looking for "publishable" (or "acceptable") ideas instead. Once you give yourself permission to write your dreams, even the really weird ones, then the floodgates are open.

This is harder then it seems, especially for shy people. My characters do things I would never do, things that I would die of embarrassment if I attempted to do. (Also, things that are illegal and/or could result in a more literal death, but that's fiction.) What's even worse is the idea that when you actually finish this work and send it out into the world, people will read it and think you're some kind of pervert.

Writing is a lot like getting naked in public - you're really letting it all hang out. The hell of it is, no matter what, somebody won't like what you're doing and tell you so. But if you're not willing to do that, you can't be a writer. And for some people, that's the hardest part.