How To Become An Idea Machine
One of the hardest parts of being a writer is coming up with new ideas.
When I first started writing, the ideas flowed out of me. I had more ideas than I knew what to do with.
Gradually, as the months wore on, I struggled to develop new ideas. Where once the well was full, now it was dry.
I found myself staring at an empty screen, clueless at what to write.
It was in these desolate moments where I began to reach inside of myself to find more inspiration. I realised ideas are everywhere. All around us.
The morning walk could be turned into an article. The stress of getting to work in the morning offers more inspiration. Anything and everything represents ideas worth writing about.
Without realising it, I stumbled across what the writer, Jorge Luis Borges, realised long before me.
"A writer - and I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art."
To become an idea machine, you have to treat what happens to you as a resource. A well from which ideas spring.
Ideas are everywhere. In the words we read, in the conversations we have and the steps we take. We live in a world full of ideas.
Once you realise this, you'll become an idea machine who can turn life into art.