Where to Find Writing Inspiration

As a writer, you will struggle with inspiration anywhere from once to 132 times a day. There will be days when the words just flow. Your muse is whispering in your ear, and the pen can do no wrong. Then there are all the other days. Hours spent staring at the computer screen, watching your cursor blink, mocking you. You take a walk to clear your head. You clean every surface in your house. You even start the quest for the missing socks that never make their way back to their mates. But nothing, nothing will come out of you.

This block, this frustration gets us all from time to time. There is no magic trick to get away from it. But there are places and ways to try to pull yourself out of your rut. I usually run down a list of things to keep me from becoming stale.

The pre-emptive strike

Carry a small notebook around with you. Whenever you see something that intrigues you, write it down. There’s a guy wearing legwarmers on a 90-degree day. What’s his story? Why legwarmers? Is he trying to cover something up? You overhear a snippet of a conversation that makes you laugh or triggers another memory. Write it down. Write down any little thing that intrigues you. Don’t write a novel. Write enough that you will remember why you wrote it down to begin with. Then, on those inevitable days when inspiration has taken a vacation, pull out your notebook. You’ll have a whole bank of ideas to get you through the day.

Exalt the mundane

A lot of the most intriguing story ideas can be passed right by if you don’t pay attention. From the eventualities that come from missing a bus to the feeling that a change in weather has on your mood or the mood of the city you live in, the mundane can provide some serious fodder for you mind. Lose the forest for the trees for a while and write about the little things. Write about the feeling you get from taking that first sip of coffee. Let the little things lead you to the bigger things.

Hop on the web

People are weird. Wonderfully weird. And there are a lot of stories out there. Blogs are a fascinating way to get some insight into other people’s minds. Read between the lines. I like to visit Post Secret and do an exercise by writing about one of the secrets posted. I also like indexed, a wonderful little blog. The news is another place you can pull story ideas from. People are always doing something interesting, terrifying, and unimaginable.

Finally, let yourself off the hook. Sometimes we just get in that writing funk because we believe we should be constantly inspired. I know I find myself endlessly fascinated by the people that have written 30 books while I struggle to come up with a single post. Don’t beat yourself up. You can’t force the good stuff. But you can help it along.