“Talking is the first voice of a writer. I always heard it, I just didn’t know you could write it. I write the voices you hear every day—it’s just that people don’t recognize how wonderfully people talk. I think every time a person tells the truth, that person is speaking beautifully.” – Grace Paley
As a writer you’re probably always on red alert looking for story ideas. Maybe you use the world around you, seeking locations and characters and situations, listening in to conversations on buses or trains or in cafes. Changing your daily routine is a way to stimulate the imagination. Drive or walk to a different part of your suburb or home town and look for different places to write. Writing in cafes is my thing. Challenge yourself to move out of your comfort zone in order to find new ideas. It helps to stay out of routine’s boring rut. I need to be physically comfortable and relaxed when I call on the muse. Early in my writing career, I wrote sitting up in bed. The ultimate cosy comfort zone. Now a comfy couch in a cafe is my preferred relax place. And when I sit in a cafe to write I always have a printout beside me of the previous day’s writing session. So I’m never staring at a blank page. Helps with the panic, What the hell will I write next?
There’s no better way to find out where to get our story ideas than by hearing from the experts. Check out some of my favorite authorial quotes below:
“Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.”— Virginia Woolf
“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”― Sylvia Plath
“Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.” – Orson Scott
“I want to tell a story, in the old-fashioned way – what happens to somebody – but I want that ‘what happens’ to be delivered with quite a bit of interruption, turnarounds, and strangeness. I want the reader to feel something is astonishing – not the ‘what happens’ but the way everything happens.” –– Alice Munro
“If you haven’t got an idea, write a story anyway.” – William Campbell Gault
Some people keep a container filled with single words and draw out a word each day and write from it. That’s a good way to exercise the writing muscle and to get into the right (rather than left) side of the brain.
Good luck on your search for story ideas. I like to tell people I use anything that moves or makes a noise 🙂
Wonderful and uplifting post. I feel inspired this early hour.
Your quotes are keepsake, each one of them.
miriam
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thank you so much delphini. much appreciated.
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Well I’m inspired for the day. Which is perfect. I have nothing planned except for writing!
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that’s great Jacqui. thanks for letting me know. it’s funny with you and me living on different sides of the world and the time difference. i blog early evening on a Sunday night in Australia and it’s during the day Sunday your time. hope you had an excellent reading and writing day.
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Inspiring post and quotes, Libby! 😀 It is not a matter of being short of writing material, rather bombarded with it and making sure that ‘enemy to creativity’ doesn’t get a chance to appear!
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wow! your’re bombarded with writing ideas! i envy you. i’m always scratching around trying to find the next story, but things do seem to unfold in fits and starts once i put pen to paper 🙂
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Love this! ♥️
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