Story Ideas

It's a question that's been asked a million times but I always like to know where story ideas come from.

For me, so far anyway, there has always been a basis of fact in my ideas. For example, the story I'm working on now (a recent idea but I've been going to town on it, so to speak) came from an event that happened a week ago - at the baseball game. Since most everyone who reads this blog has access to my other one, I'll be brief in the description but it came from the kiss cam proposal that happened at the baseball game I went to. The woman had a deer-in-headlights look throughout the entire episode and the man was giddy with excitement. I never saw him ASK a question and I didn't see her give an ANSWER so what if there was a miscommunication there? Maybe the question is only implied and something she does (which actually happened), albeit inadvertently, causes him to jump to the conclusion that she's accepting the implied question. (Well, not so much implied since it was in big letters on the big screen but not actually verbalized.)

Aside from the fact that I witnessed a proposal like this recently, I've incorporated some other incidents from my personal life. Like, it's their third date and they haven't so much as kissed (or even held hands) and he's proposing. (That actually happened to me a few years back.)

But this brings me to my big question of the day. How much of your personal life / experiences do you bring to the table when forming your ideas? How much of your heroine is actually you?

Inquiring minds want to know. :-)