I find some of the most productive thinking times for me are when I‘m doing mindless repetitive work, like washing dishes or mowing the lawn. Also when I used to walk late at night, I did most of my actual writing then––you know, aside from the typing it up part. The commonality is that there’s nothing else to do but think. The mower is too loud for headphones. Walking at night you don’t tend to encounter neighbors, or if you do run into somebody you probably won’t stop to talk. Your mind is free to THINK. But it’s also important to get yourself started thinking productively, otherwise it’s all too easy to just mull over the daily garbage thoughts endlessly. I used to ride a bike a lot too, but I found it wasn’t really conducive to thinking, you need to concentrate too much on the road and what’s going on around you, same as for driving. How about you? What is it that puts you in deep thinking mode?
Walking is brilliant. It's meditative, gets the blood flowing, and not full of distractions. Perfect for brain work. Unfortunately by the time I sit down to use all those thoughts they either slip away, or my energy is gone.
1/2 coffee, 1/2 imagination, and 1/2 music. Given enough time, something will fall out of my brain and onto the page.
There's always room for music. I had tried to update this thread a day or 2 after starting it, but my internet was being malicious. When conceiving the ides for the story I'm working on now I took my sleeping bag out on the deck and sat looking into the dark woods for about an hour in below freezing weather, just peeking out the snorkel-hole. In winter the woods are defoliated, and you can see twinkling yard lights and glowing windows on the opposite hillside that look like Hobbit houses set right into the earth. Above it all the sky, grey with streaks of lighter grey cloud, and black skeletal trees towering over it all. Nothing to do but think, and once I got my mind in proper idea-generating mode it accelerated rapidly. The only problem is it can be hard to remember everything to write it down when you come back in. Wish I had a phone I could dictate to.
By not thinking about it, similar to you, @Xoic , but the difference is that my mind focuses only on the task at hand and doesn't wander off. Until it does and the juices start flowing. Probably sounds like horse shit, but really, some of my best creative moments come during some mundane doing where I'm completely involved in something unrelated. Music can somewhat help....sorta.
I have two answers, a short-term and a long-term. In the short-term, running or yard work is one of the best canvases upon which to scribble. I know my neighbors on the other side of the field (I have a farm) must think I'm not all there. In the long-term... I have hard copies of stories I wrote when I was in junior high back in the very early 1980's, and it's clear that while my writing has improved immensely over the span of time, certain ideas have stuck with me, reinventing themselves in different forms and presentations, but the core idea is there, the continuity. Those ideas evolve with me, clarifying, purifying, reducing (in the culinary sense). They tend to gravitate toward the middle of future stories, going from ancillary tidbit to core theme being explored. I think it's important to suckle those ideas, to feed them and let them continue to evolve, to care for them through their various instars, and to acknowledge that it's not repetition, but instead honing. I think anyone who has an author they particularly enjoy that has a wide body of work will notice this process of investigating certain ideas again and again, from different angles, from different ends of the literary spyglass.
Oh damn man! Now you've gone and done it!! Twice before I had to dig out my tattered copy of Bruno Schulz' book The Street of Crocodiles and copy over this amazing quote. I searched my computer and hard drives and looked up his quotes online, and I can't find it. I did find something that was almost it but not right, like some kind of weird alternate reality version, but it was missing all the best parts. So I need to type it up again. Here goes: "I do not know just how in childhood we arrive at certain images, images of crucial significance to us. They are like filaments in a solution around which the sense of the world crystalizes for us....They are meanings that seem predestined for us, ready and waiting at the very entrance of our life....Such images constitute a program, establish our soul's fixed fund of capital, which is allotted to us very early in the form of inklings and half-conscious feelings. It seems to me that the rest of our life passes in the interpretation of those insights, in the attempt to master them with all the wisdom we acquire, to draw them through all the range of intellect we have in our possession. These early images mark the boundaries of an artist's creativity. His creativity is a deduction from assumptions already made. He cannot now discover anything new; he learns only to understand more and more the secrets entrusted to him, and his art is a constant exegesis; a commentary on that single verse that was assigned him. But art will never unravel that secret completely. The secret remains insoluble. The knot in which the soul was bound is no trick knot, coming apart with a tug at its end. On the contrary, it grows tighter and tighter. We work at it, untying, tracing the path of the string, seeking the end, and out of this manipulating comes art."
No, not horse shit. Deer scat maybe. Cooking breakfast is a big one for me. I usually wake with ideas percolatin' and then when I start the simple mindless work of cooking I keep getting these big ideas and I pace all around the house (I do that if an idea is exciting). Sometimes I cogitate for 10 minutes and suddenly realize I need to get back to the cooking. And I might do that 6 or 8 times some days. I've literally taken an hour to fry up eggs and sausage many times. Well, I don't pace during the frying part, that would be disastrous—but I also have hash browns, and it's when I'm peeling and grating the potatoes it all happens. But I know exactly what you mean. Yes, the mind likes to solve things unconsciously while we're busy doing other things.
I do a lot of my brainstorming either when falling asleep or waking up. Which admittedly is not the best way to do things since I'll often forget details. However most of my ideas come from inspiration, usually through music. For instance one of the shows I'm watching had a song in its latest episode that really resonated with the themes I'm trying to convey. So I brainstormed on ways to include that kind of emotional weight, which led me to expand on a subplot that had just been abandoned. It's to the point where I even try to find theme songs for my characters so I can listen to those while trying to understand the character's emotional arcs. Most of the times it's not a perfect fit, but it still helps.
Trying to sleep is my most common one, though that tends to be more image based ideas. Sometimes inspired by people or things I see or experience. Other times by randomness that my mind creates, seemingly from nowhere.
In the shower, driving to work, or in the middle of a really busy job. Basically when I can't just drop everything and write it down. Thanks, brain. #sarcasm
I usually brainstorm when I'm hooked up to a dialysis machine. Not much else to do during that time except watch afternoon TV, which melts your brain. Did you know that watching one episode of an afternoon TV show is the same as smoking 10 cigarettes?
It's also probably equivalent to at least three blows to the head with a hammer, too. At least, that's how I felt the last time I was stupid enough to watch.
Hah! I remember when I brought my cable box back to the Charter office and canceled cable, the ladies working behind the desk were astonished. One of them had told me as soon as I could afford it, just come out and pick the box up, to which I replied that it wasn't a matter of money, I just don't want cable anymore. They seemed unable to process that. I was getting a strong Orwellian vibe from it, as if it's the broadcast beam that keeps everybody stupid and compliant, and I must be kept under control. Felt like Roddy Piper in They Live after he found the sunglasses.
Sometimes, I start with a question, "What can I do with...?" I have a very strong visual imagination, so it doesn't take me long to formulate a basic story from which to grow something wonderfully weird. I've actually become so immersed in my imaginings that I can lose track of time and presence, so I can be kind of spooky to look at in those moments, lol. But, those moments do help me generate my best ideas.
From other stories. By that I mean: news, twitter, youtube, and such. People share some really interesting things on the internet. Whenever I read something that got my attention, that made me laugh, or cry, or feeling sorry, I bookmark them. And later, when I am stuck with an empty brain, I revisit them with a question in mind-'how do I twist them into a novel-worthy subject'. Usually I start by asking a lot of what-ifs; like what if it wasn't a football player that saved the elderly women but the other way around, and it goes from there. edited for spelling.
You might be related to Stephen King, at least spiritually if not genetically. Or maybe Morticia Addams. Excellent!! Good way to avoid the standard cliches and hit close to home, at the level of life which at its best is strange—uncanny even.
