How To Have an Endless Flow of Creative Ideas

One of the biggest struggles that creative writers - and in fact, many creative people - complain of, is a lack of good ideas. Ideas are the raw material from which creation comes; they're our lifeblood, our oxygen. Without ideas, there is no creating; the writer is completely redundant.

Each of us is capable of having an endless flow of creative ideas. The problem is we don't capture enough of them, forget we had them, then claim we never have ANY ideas.

How many times in your life have you had an idea, thought, "That's a great idea, I'll remember to jot that down later," then days or weeks later remembered that you HAD a good idea, but haven't got a clue what it was about?!

Here's a proven 5-step technique that'll give you an endless flow of creative ideas:

1. Start an ideas journal. This is simply a journal, sketchbook or notebook you use to capture and store all your writing ideas. It doesn't need to be fancy or expensive. Its main requirements are that it's compact enough for you to take with you wherever you go, and that it's so easy to use, you won't think twice about scribbling down ideas at a moment's notice.
2. Open yourself up to your natural flow of ideas. You're having ideas all the time; it's simply impossible not to. Try for 30 seconds to completely stop thinking. It's not possible! Imagine you're listening to a 24 -hour radio station, called IdeasFlow FM. Then you tune into another station. Just because you're not tuned into IdeasFlow FM anymore doesn't mean they've stopped broadcasting! You've simply got to tune back in.
3. Capture each idea without judgment. More often than not, we simply dismiss an idea at its birth, thinking it's not good enough, not smart enough or not original enough. Ideas need time to develop. Capture EVERY idea you have in your Ideas Journal. Jot them down in as much vivid detail as you can. Then close your Journal and continue with what you were doing before.
4. Ideas breed ideas. Once you start to have a few ideas in your journal, you'll find they start to breed and grow. This happens in 2 ways. First, the ideas you've captured - delighted to be acknowledged and placed in a friendly, cozy new home in your journal - start to explore, expand and become more bold. Second, because you've begun to realize that yes, you DO have a steady flow of ideas; this encourages you to see more and more inspiration for ideas, and to capture more and more.
5. Developing your ideas. A few weeks in (maybe even a few days in), you'll have a significant collection of new ideas in your journal. Now, when you come to do something with these ideas, DON'T fall into the trap that so many people do and try to develop them one by one in the chronological order you wrote them. Instead, scan through your ideas until you see the first one that sparks off a little excitement or interest, then go with that one and shut your journal! Listen and feel where the natural creative energy and momentum is and use it to your full advantage.

Use this 5-step plan as outlined above and in just a few weeks, you'll have an endless flow of new creative ideas...