How I have super varied ideas despite a monotonous environment
My days are all the same in the traditional sense of activity. I wake up, eat, take a shower, read books, eat, read books, eat, write, read, go to sleep. Sometimes I don't read books and spend my days writing, chatting, drawing or programming, or simply solving dull problems at home. I barely ever go out. I'm scared of crime and walking long distances under the sun.
However, I have many ideas every day. So much so, that I can't find time to write them all and prefer to let some die in order to have time for other things. When I used to write most of the ideas that crossed my mind, I would spend more than four hours a day filling up pages of online and offline journals. I have more than seven thick notebooks filled from cover to cover. Sometimes I go back through them and read them and am glad that I did it.
However, I'm frustrated at how fleeting time is. Therefore, I have been using less and less time in productive activities and more and more time in "consuming" activities. I wanted to make a post about this topic but I've thrown it aside. The reason why I don't post or comment that often is because my time has been distributed more toward the consumption of content. I have been reading novels and watching movies almost compulsively for a few weeks, and though it brings me pleasure, it takes a toll on my social interactions and my productive activities.
However, given my monotonous circumstances, I'm still very happy about being able to have myriads of ideas to write about. The reasons for this are plenty, but I want to explore a few.
Previous activities
Even though nowadays and for the last couple years I have not left my home a lot, long before this period of time, I used to spend at least one day a week hiking mountains, playing games and doing various activities with the Scouts and Guides. I think that they are one of my main sources of creativity.
I've travelled to a few countries and what I've seen there has stimulated me so much that it's really hard to convince myself to come back home.
Reading varied things
What I love the most about fantasy is the creation of different realities with different rules. In these worlds, however, many things are consistent with our world and this allows me to synthesise both realities and analyse our own real life in regards to the fictitious circumstances in the books I read (and the movies I watch).
These books, together with the games I've played and the hypothetical scenarios that I design in my head, both alone and together with my brother, play an important role in the ease of generation of varied ideas. It is like creativity training, and even though I am not the best writer out there and I'm not at all satisfied with my long stories and my writing style, I am still one of the most creative people I know.
What it feels like
There are a few subreddits that deal with creativity and there are very, very often writers who suffer from what is called "creative blocks". A few examples:
- https://old.reddit.com/r/writing/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/SimplePrompts/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/KeepWriting/
One of the main problems that I've seen is that people simply don't know what to write about. I've had people ask me to write a little song for them. Some songwriters prefer a tiny poem that I write in 2 minutes than a well-crafted piece of their own that fits their desired rhythm. Why is this? I believe that this problem consists of a mixture of mental misdirection and an obsessive consideration of quality that simply stops people from brainstorming and simply throwing their words around into shape.
When I make creative decisions, I feel as if I were throwing dice. I don't think many times about my next sentence, about the idea that I'm going to write about. I simply write it and as it comes, it stays. I may erase a few words, but it's very rare for me to do that kind of editing. Most of the time, what you read is what I wrote. Without thinking much, without rationalising at all, I just put my fingers on the keyboard or my pencil on the piece of paper and as my fingers move, my mind thinks "what's next?", and before I've even consciously decided it, the words are already there.
This is why it seems so absurd to me that people might have trouble deciding what to write about sometimes. Not in the sense of "what would be better to write about" (which is my case) but "what can I even write about? I haven't thought of anything new in these three days". This idea feels so foreign that even trying to conceive it properly is like trying to explain the colour red to a person who was born blind. I can't remember a time when I was without ideas. I can remember idea overdoses, times when I had so many ideas that it was really hard to decide, or that it was hard to condense them into something readable (instead of magnificent word clusters that only I could understand because they were in my mind first)
We have the same mostly indoor, scared of too much time outdoor personality 😂. Thanks for the tips on overcoming writer's block..... I get that alot
:) Just let yourself go! Write first, judge the quality later.
I'll do that. Thanks Sharon
Yeah, I have experienced this one too. I have been wanting to write about a lot of things, some of them just die before even I can start writing about it. Anyway good read!
:) Sometimes I would like to get a tiny notepad tied around my neck to write the titles of the ideas without much description. That way I could have an index to consult later. So many ideas have died due to my imperfect memory!
A very nice side is that I never run out of things to write. If I want to write, it's as easy as sitting down, opening an editor and writing.
Interesting viewpoint. I rarely get stuck as I always have an idea and act upon it, but I think this technique of throwing the dice and just writing whatever comes to mind is a great one and can make you be much more creative with your work. Thanks for sharing :)
A veces el problema para escribir o pensar en que escribir es que nos sumergimos tanto en los problemas que nos olvidamos de nuestra creatividad pues esta solo esta enfocada en resolver a aquellos problemas.
Lo digo por mi experiencia pues aunque soy blogger desde hace mas de un año y luego me metí a Steemit, para continuar con mi gusto por escribir, sin embargo los problemas de la vida hacían que mi tiempo y mente se enfocaran en otra cosa y dejaba de lado el seguir posteando.
Ahora despues de mucho tiempo he regresado para poder hacer este gusto por escribir de lo que me gusta y creo que otra vez tengo muchas ideas para escribir ya olvidandome de los problemas de la vida.
Incluso usando la escritura como una forma de olvidarme de la vida misma
:))) Ya quiero leer tus postcitos. En cuando tenga un rato me paso por tu blog a ver si has escrito cosillas lindas.
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With 7 pages of ideas back to back wouldn't it be fun to create an idea service where people click a button and a website spits out a small snippet of a random location in your idea tome? I wonder what's inside.....
I sometimes get an idea faucet like state as well and I can write down the idea, but when I revisit the idea, I no longer like the idea and can't write about it. So weird.
Things like that happen to me too, but what I do is develop the ideas as much as I can because I know that I won't be doing it later. I just write a lot and then it's available to read. I don't read much of my previous ideas, but when I do, I like them. :)
And that would be cool indeed, but since most of my brainstorms are on physical notebooks, I'd have to scan them and upload them to a server. I'll think about it but it sounds like a lot of work O.O (so probably not doing it :D)
One of the best ways to beat writers block is to read. So many ideas will spark from reading a wide variety of things.
All writers should read a lot, anyway :)
Hahaha, I do this too much! I want to write a lot, but I spend all my time reading and barely ever write. I need discipline!
Raises hand Guilty! True story- us readers must discipline ourselves! What I started doing was to "reward" myself for writing that day by reading that night. Lol, it worked!