A few weeks ago, I attended a delightful morning coffee with ladies from my neighborhood. I wasn't expecting to chat about my writing process, but someone asked where I get ideas for a novel.
Given my audience was a room full of people casually chatting and not a master class, I kept my answer short: I get ideas while driving. Specifically, while driving to see my out-of-town family. And it's true, if the radio's off and I turn my thoughts toward my current writing project, I always get great ideas. My mother must wonder what's happening every Saturday morning as I pull into her driveway and then sit for ten minutes dictating ideas into a gmail message to myself.
Later, I open the message and copy/paste the ideas into a Word doc. I bet if I searched my computer for "Car Notes" I'd see a list of 30-40 docs spanning the past seven or eight years, mostly ideas for Lio and Lamb. I don't use all the ideas, maybe just 20%, so this process functions like brainstorming.
That's the short answer.
The long answer is, well, longer.
I get ideas while reading books, watching movies and television shows, talking to friends, scrolling through Facebook, cleaning and cooking, listening to podcasts like Writing Excuses, weeding, having conversations with random strangers, listening to music, and mowing the yard. Well, not this year. It's so dry that I'm barely mowing. Anyway...
Here's an example of an inspirational image I saw on Facebook a few weeks ago.
I relate to many "tiny happy things" on this list, and it made me want my new main character to love some of them as well. I copied the image and pasted it into a Google doc. Then yesterday my main character started reading a novel... and realized she loved that feeling of realizing she loved the book.
This "collection of ideas" is constant. But it is heightened when I'm actively writing a project. My house fills with scraps of paper on which I've jotted random ideas. They accumulate on the kitchen counter until I move them to the chair by my desktop Mac's desk.
Here's a quick pic of the little notes on the chair today.
The mess on the pink-bordered note is strawberry juice. Apparently I think of ideas while snacking as well.
What I find, and probably all writers find, is that when I'm actively writing a project, I'm in "writer mode." I watch the world more closely. I listen more carefully. And I pay closer attention to the random thoughts that flitter at the edge of my mind.
