I have been a writer since that moment. My first short story was sold when I was nineteen and, again, a teacher played a vital role. Miss Florence Conlon, one of my college teachers, typed up one of my short stories without my knowledge, sent it to a national magazine and sold it, making me a professional writer.
Ideas are everywhere, easy to find and develop into stories.
But the idea that works for me must be linked to an emotion. In fact, the emotion comes first. Something happens that affects me emotionally, and sends me to the typewriter where I devise a character and set the plot in motion. Read all the time. Every successful writer I've met has been a devoted reader.