5 Places to Find Writing Ideas

If you've ever struggled in coming up with creative ideas, welcome to the club. For most writers, discovering new writing projects involves conscious pursuit of their thought trails. But where do start on our quest for inspiration? Here are a few places you can find new ideas for writing:

1. The world around you.
Just like a photographer, you must start looking at life through your own personal lens. You will get a tremendous amount of writing material if you start filtering your own experiences. Soon you will start noticing ideas everywhere around you. Very often the muse will come at strange times and from unusual sources, so be prepared. The world is full of surprises that can materialize in your next book or article.

2. Writers’ associations and networks.
If you are a professional writer, you probably belong to an association or writer's group. Generating new ideas will feel much easier after meeting other members or attending writing workshops and conferences. You can also generate new ideas from subscribing to newsletters and discussion groups for writers.

3. Community
Although writing is an activity that you undertake by yourself, balancing your solitary experiences with group ones will give you a lot of new topics for you to write about. All you need to do is get involved in community’s life -- perhaps by volunteering to care about the elders or counsel youngsters. Conversations usually have a lot of stories embedded in them, so one of the stories you hear may turn out to be that spark you need to get inspired.

4. Personal interests
Your own history as a person is certainly something worth writing about. Take a more personal approach and see what stories are embedded in your past experiences. For instance, if your life-long hobby has been looking at the stars, you can turn your passion into a book about watching the stars in a particular area. Or if you have had to adapt recipes daily because of a food allergy, you can focus on this topic and write about how you eat.

5. Family
People have weird things happening to them every day, you just need to pay attention to them. The adolescents in your family may get you thinking about anything from young love to social injustice once they start telling you about their experiences. You can also resort to pulling out the photographs at any time. Good times or sad times -- your writing ideas may simply pop out of some forgotten pictures of you as a child.

Certainly, you have more ideas than you imagine, but you need to learn to first notice them and then let them grow. Carrying a small notebook or pad with you will help you keep track of your ideas and before you know it, you will virtually be swamped with new creative projects.