How To Come Up With Ideas to Write About

The only thing you need to do.

Hey you. Yeah, you. I don’t know if you realized, but you are here. You are living a life, right now. You are spending time reading these words.

You are a living being dwelling in a world that lives and breathes. You can navigate this world. You do navigate this world, every day.

Ideas are everywhere. Something new happens every day that you can write about only if you attune your eyes, ears, and thoughts to look for them.

People always ask me how I come up with my ideas.

How do I come up with ideas for composing music? How do I come up with article ideas? How do I come up with new ways of doing things?

Up until now, I couldn’t give an exact answer. That’s because there isn’t really one. It’s always a different approach, every time. The only thing that is consistent is this:

Life. I get my ideas from life.

Understand this: Nothing you create is original. At least not anymore. Everything is a composite of something else you’ve experienced in life, whether indirectly or directly — it doesn’t matter.

My ideas can quite literally come from anything, and the more I’m looking for them, the more likely they are to come.

And I do mean anything.

You can get ideas from people, places, things, moods and emotions, your critique or support of other people’s ideas, your style inserted amongst other’s ideas to create new ideas, a combination of random ideas, your random thoughts that probably no one else is thinking about, your “what if this happened instead” ideas that spring into your head after a situation you were in or witnessed, situations themselves, anything!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that just because you can find ideas from anywhere they will be good ideas, but you have to exercise that idea muscle.

You have to challenge yourself to come up with ideas every day. The more you come up with, the more likely it is that one or two of them will be good ideas worth pursuing.

Get into the habit of writing down ideas as they come to you.

For the articles I write, I often come up with title/subtitle ideas throughout the day and I write them down instantly.

These ideas always spring up after some random thought that comes to mind as I’m observing the life I’m living around me or from some situation or conversation I’ve just experienced.

I tend to come up with ideas for other articles as I’m writing articles. When this happens, I stop what I’m doing, create a note about my new idea for a different article, and then continue with the one I’m writing.

Sometimes the best ideas spring up out of nowhere when you aren’t thinking about coming up with them. I know this sounds a little contradictory to me telling you to force yourself to look for them daily, but the idea of purposely seeking out ideas is that you are attuning your mind to look for them subconsciously when you’re too busy doing something else (I have no scientific evidence to back this up by the way, but I’m 99% sure this is true).

It’s kind of like when you hear a word that you spend however much of your time learning, and then you start to see it everywhere because you’re now aware of it. It’s not that the word just started appearing since you learned it. It’s more so that you just started to notice its existence.

This begs the question, how many ideas in this world are you unaware of simply because you haven’t experienced its existence yet? How many things are you missing out on because you fail to notice it daily?

Sometimes the best ideas come to you in the shower or late at night. If so, and if they are good, turn off the damn water or wake up for a few minutes and write that idea down.

The best ideas tend to come at the worst times and leave as fast as they came.

When great ideas come, stop what you’re doing for the sake of creativity. Stop what you’re doing as a celebration that you are still a thinking, living thing. Stop what you’re currently doing and write that idea down before it’s too late! Only after you write it down you can return to your shower or your slumber.

Every day you live, you learn something.

Why not write about it?

Each day you live this precious life of yours, you gain new experiences. Why not write about it?

Something interesting happens every day. Why not write about that?

To write is to live.

It’s not hard to come up with ideas if you’re looking for them. Same way how it’s not hard to find the time to do things if you make the time for them.

If you want to find ideas, go out into the world and create experiences. Go out into the world and live and think. Don’t stress about finding ideas, it’s not hard.

Hell, write about how you can’t think of any ideas. Write a book about someone struggling to write a book. Write a song about someone who can’t find inspiration to write a song. I don’t know, do something.

Don’t make life harder than it needs to be. Don’t give your problems more credit than they deserve.

Need something to write about? Write about how life isn’t meaningful without challenges to overcome. If you struggle to find ideas, smile and look for them anyway.