Are you frustrated with the lack of ideas and inspirations in your writing? Have you hit a wall? Inspiration doesn’t always come in fireworks and explosions of ideas, Eureka! moments, or even lightbulbs over the head. Sometimes it is in quiet random thoughts that you let roam in a quiet moment. It bounces around like a pinball and suddenly hits that middle ring that starts racking up the points…DING DING DING. Sometimes you listen in the quiet and like a leaf sliding by on a gentle stream, you simply have to reach out and dip it out of the flow and it’s yours.
Ideas can come at 8 a.m. or midnight, or oftentimes I find when I wake up in the dark of 4 a.m and can’t sleep. Then I am forced to listen to the quiet, and that is quite often when a random idea will hit me that I think may be worth trying out. At 4 a.m the TV is off, the cell phone is charging, the Kindle is plugged in and off, the dogs are sleeping, and hopefully no one is trying to call you or knock on your door. Distractions are at a minimum. I believe this environment makes it easier for us to hear those fleeting ideas that are just above the surface, skating quietly by. Ideas that we would normally miss with the chaos of life around us.
I suggest either keeping a notebook by your bed, or as I do, I keep my cell phone by my bed and send myself an email. Don’t try to remember it until morning. You will either forget or you won’t be able to get back to sleep because you are worried about forgetting it. It’s better to take the precaution and write it down. Then you can let your mind rest and get some real sleep.
When you awake, rested and ready for your day, then look at your notepad or your email or whatever you use to catch those ideas. See if it is something worth pursuing right away. If you don’t understand it or don’t know what it is you meant by the note you sent yourself while half asleep at 4 a.m, then simply put it in your idea file for later. It may come back to you at a later time or reappear in a subsequent sleepless time.
So don’t get frustrated if ideas don’t seem to be appearing around every corner. Simply relax, destress, and get some rest. And listen to the quiet. The ideas are everywhere. Happy writing!
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