The One Habit That Helps Me Come up With New Writing Ideas

Why you should always write down your ideas

Photo by Ameen Fahmy on Unsplash

I used to sit down at my desk to write, but then have no clue what I wanted to write about. I didn’t keep a notebook of ideas, and the one idea I was thinking about earlier just wasn’t inspiring anymore.

Then, when I tried to come up with something new, I’d have the same thoughts over and over because there just wasn’t any space left for new ideas. I would fixate on this one idea as I tried to perfect it in my imagination.

Capture everything

These days, I write down my ideas — all of them. I could be walking in the forest, and suddenly think of an interesting quote or idea that could be the basis for a new story. I could be watching a movie, and a character will say a line that is the perfect conclusion for a Medium article.

Almost everything I’ve ever written or done was born from an idea that I wrote down immediately. When I have a notebook or my phone on me, I write down so much more. I regularly remove ideas I no longer want to write about and still have over 100 usable topic ideas.

As Seth Godin put it, “the key to having lots of good ideas is to have lots of bad ones.” 80% of my notes are worthless; they’re not going to move the…