When inspiration strikes!

I've had a couple of moments of inspiration over the last few days.

The first was when I was reading one of last week's Flash Fiction Friday entries.   The writer is using story challenges to write a continuous story, which I thought was a) very ambitious and b) very interesting.   My very first FFF story (which seems to have disappeared - really must chase that up) gave the characters from last year's Nanonovel an outing - almost fanfiction for my own characters :D   But the point is that there are lots of ways to approach the use of story challenges.   I'm wondering whether I could produce enough short stories that way to count as a publishable collection?   What would be the legal implications?   I mean, they're my stories but inspired elsewhere...

Then I had the second blast of inspiration last night watching X Factor of all things.   Specifically, it was listening to Kye's performance and the line 'I love the way it hurts'.   I've always been a fan of song fanfics - a total of 5 out of 13 of my fanfics are song-related in some way.   Now, there I would have to careful about copyright, obviously - if I reproduced the song lyrics in something I wanted to make money out of.

I'm really liking the idea of producing a collection of short stories that has some coherent theme, though.   For all sorts of reasons, short stories feel easier to handle than a full-sized novel.   Of course, it would also allow me to procrastinate on the novel for a little while longer!

I've never been the type to carry a notebook around to jot ideas in but maybe I need to start?   Some ideas need to be captured as they happen or they are lost forever.   I think I shall look out for something suitable on my travels next week.