Where My Writing Ideas Come From
The how, what, when, and why behind my crazy ideas
I get asked, how do you get your ideas to write about? How far do you have your writing planned out? The irony in this is people say to write about what others ask you about. People ask me how I get ideas so, I’m going to follow that advice.
Sometimes coming up with ideas is a daunting task, where there’s a blank space on what I want to write about, or other times, I have multiple pieces planned out at once. Writing is a muscle. It must be worked consistently. With building a muscle, gradual effort is how it gets strong. You combine some good work with some good rest, and you get improvement. The rest is important. It’s how I avoid getting burnt out and how I have been able to post a piece for 70+ straight weeks.
Resting prioritizes longevity. The more you write, the better you become, and the more ideas will find you. Reading also falls in the same category, but I find it important to not overdo it. In the end, this is all supposed to be fun.
I don’t constantly force my mind to come up with ideas. I am not always writing. Never do I sit down and have a brainstorming session. It feels too forced. The best ideas come naturally, literally. It’s amazing what a walk, run, car ride, or even a lifting session can do for you. Those times allow the mind to wander aimlessly, which isn’t always a bad thing. In between sets while lifting, I try to avoid getting on my phone for many reasons. One thing this does is it allows me to focus and lock in during my workout. Other times, it allows me to think clearly with no distractions. A big part of why I love lifting is it is therapeutic. It does wonders for mental health.
Lifting clears the mind of any distractions and allows it to go down paths without being influenced by technology or cheap dopamine. The same can be said for any physical activity such as walking, running, biking, etc. Inevitably, while I’m waiting for my rest time to be up, I recall something I read, wrote, watched, or heard earlier and the mind begins to unravel and the idea begins to grow. I might quickly jot some ideas down in the Notes app on my phone if it calls for it.
This allows me to not force an idea either. I have found you must write about what you are interested in, not what pleases a search engine. By prioritizing the former over the latter, it allows for longevity. When you let ideas come naturally, you are going to think of things that you are interested in, stressed about, pleased by, etc. Things you truly care about and things that naturally consume your mind. C.S. Lewis says,
“Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.”
And to add to this, do things you find interesting because, in the end, we love to talk and write about these things. It makes the writing process that much easier.
When I do interesting things or venture out of my normal day-to-day life, I have found my writing is much better. We love to talk about the novel things we do in life. However, this must be on your accord. It can’t be what is interesting to the world, it must be what is interesting to you.
Never did I think getting a tattoo would be a perfect example of life being more than what your budget may say, but it was. I did not get the tattoo as a way to have a cool story idea. That would be quite insane. I got it because it was something I wanted to do and it just so happened to be a great story afterward. I have found that getting out and doing things in the world is a great way to raise your surface area of luck for ideas, but I never want to do something with the idea of it being a great writing topic.
I gravitate towards things that support the ideas and attitudes I write about. I don’t just want to write about it, I want to be about it. I should probably note that these attitudes are constant work. I write for myself, as much as anyone else, to try and learn who I want to be. Your life can become a way to express the messages and thoughts you are trying to tell the world. It is hard to beat real-world examples and simply experiencing the world is one way to a million ideas.
And if I do find an idea from a book, podcast, YouTube, random encounter, etc. that I resonate with or that I like, I write it down on a notecard. I love Ryan Holiday’s notecard system. On the front of the notecard, I write the quote or idea, date it, give it a title so I can quickly remember what it is about, and then below everything, I write my quick thoughts.
On the back, I write where the idea came from, who it was from, and maybe, how it could be part of a bigger piece. I then have a box of notecards, which is slowly growing, that houses everything chronologically.
I also use my likes on Twitter as almost its own timeline of things I really liked, but maybe didn’t write down. Likes are a sacred currency in the Twitter world. It is very easy to go back and scroll through your likes and with me having a high bar for the things I like, I can very easily go back and find something I am interested in or resonate with.
Lastly, I have a running list in the notes app on my phone of writing ideas, and below the idea there might be certain examples or quotes that may help the idea grow.
This could be something copied and pasted from a book, a quote, a tweet, or anything in between. Inspiration is everywhere and this allows me to easily house a ton of ideas. In short, the big sources of my inspiration for my ideas:
Notecards
Likes on Twitter
The notes app on my phone (sometimes I may just start writing a piece here)
Doing things in life I find interesting
I have found the more ideas, the better. You can never have enough and if you find something remotely interesting, write it down somewhere. It is very hard to remember the web of ideas. And if it ends up being a terrible idea, so be it.
Bach had over 1,000 pieces
Edison had 1,093 patents
Mozart had over 600 pieces
Beethoven had more than 650 pieces
Picasso had over 1,800 paintings
They have hundreds of pieces and patents we don’t know about. But this is the only way they were able to produce their great work. It is having tons and tons of ideas.
Then it is all about taking those moments or ideas and writing about them, which can be much easier said than done. I am not here to seem like the master of ideas who can easily turn them into a piece. I have to be somewhat delusional. Delusional about what you can do and what you want to do. Delusional that you can maybe tie two seemingly different ideas together.
This is still very much a work in progress for me. I was telling my sister this past weekend how last week I excluded some finer details of my journaling process out of fear of how it would be received. It’s always a work in progress and probably, will forever be. But that doesn’t stop my processes from continually getting better because it will never be perfect. But that is natural. You just can’t let the fear consume you. From the Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness,
“Fear is a demon that devours the soul of a company: it diminishes the quality of our imagination, it dulls our appetite for adventure, it sucks away our youth.”
But fear not, ideas are everywhere. We just have to go looking. Rick Ludwin, the man who made Seinfeld happen, says,
“You never know where the next big hit is coming from. It can come from left field. If you think, ‘That can’t possibly work because that producer doesn’t have enough experience, or no idea like that has ever worked’ if you have these kinds of roadblocks in your head, you’re going to miss something. One of the best things I ever had going for me was the fact that I had never developed a primetime situation comedy, but I was accustomed to offbeat, off-kilter ideas. I could see what worked, and what didn’t work. The time I spent reading Saturday Night Live scripts made me even more open to the offbeat storylines that are now legendary on Seinfeld.”
And maybe just by writing this piece, I found an idea in itself. Writing a good bit has definitely helped me to see things this way. Perhaps there is a piece in the future about conquering your fears by letting the world know how you think and how you operate by creating writing ideas. Another idea could be about the need to not let fear conquer your soul and include the finer details of a personal process. Ideas are everywhere if you go looking.
In the end, I seek to make it an enjoyable process for finding ideas. It should be that way because I have freedom. We have freedom. Freedom to write about whatever ideas pleases us. I think of this for myself. Currently, this is not my job, my career, or livelihood. It is something I do for fun. I have freedom because there is nothing left to lose and I’m sure you do too. We might see an idea as too crazy. Too offbeat. Make the jump. Crazy ideas are everywhere, and it is never as crazy as we think.
“Indeed, if you think about it, a good new idea has to seem bad to most people, or someone would have already explored it. So what you’re looking for is ideas that seem crazy, but the right kind of crazy.”
Phil Knight, the creator of Nike, also says,
“At twenty-four I did have a Crazy Idea, and somehow, despite being dizzy with existential angst, and fears about the future, and donuts about myself as all young men and women in their mid twenties are, I did decide that the world is made up of crazy ideas. History is one big processional of crazy ideas.”
Hopefully, my process helped. Here’s to us finding those crazy ideas.
Appreciate you reading.
-Scantron
Taking from your piece and "liking" this post 😉
The notes app is a must for those ideas / thoughts that come at you fast (but I like the notecard idea even better).