Do you have a magic wand? I’d like to write (fiction) but can’t think of WHAT to write.

I agree that writers should read, but I also agree with Drachen's original point though, which seemed to be

Drachen Jager said:

If you want to be creative, the best way is to shut all those outside influences away. Go isolate yourself from everything for a good long session every day. Go on a long walk, or sit on a park bench. Even just sitting on the couch with a coffee in hand and nothing to distract you can be very helpful.

Good ideas will come from within your head, not the pages of a newspaper. It's good to stay informed, but you also need to make sure you have creative mind-space to turn that information into a great story.

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A lot of successful writers do this. Stephen King reads a lot, obviously, but he's also known for taking long walks. The problem is that people can get so plugged into different entertainment sources in our modern world that it gets harder to take a moment alone to digest what you've taken in and actually think about it, to take a step away from studying someone else's vision and create your own. It's not a matter of never reading. It's a matter of not reading (or watching TV or listening to the radio or surfing the net) all the time.

You might be approaching idea creation in a way that doesn't suit you.

Some prefer to be top-down and concept-centric. They pull the big picture, some initial premise, out of nothing. They ask, "What if X?" and an idea plops out of the literary womb.

Others are bottom-up--particular- and image-centric. They glimpse into a tiny snapshot of a vivid world and yank from it grand premises and possibilities you wouldn't have thought were there.

You might be the latter. Try sitting down and writing detailed 200-250-word-long passages. Don't worry if nothing happens in those passages and the characters don't do much. Just have fun with the details and create interesting worlds--a slice of life. You might be able to pull nice ideas from these passages. Best of all, not a single word will go to waste. Even a passage yields nothing more, you'll have written fiction.

Drachen Jager said:

A lot of research is going into this area recently and it all seems to indicate that the more you swamp your mind with outside stimuli the less creative your thinking will be.

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Drachen, could you link to some articles about this? It's an interesting topic. I've seen some research saying roughly the opposite too, e.g. this study linking video gaming and creativity.

Edit: Oh, sorry, I see you already linked to a podcast. Missed it first time round.

tmesis said:

Drachen, could you link to some articles about this? It's an interesting topic. I've seen some research saying roughly the opposite too, e.g. this study linking video gaming and creativity.

Edit: Oh, sorry, I see you already linked to a podcast. Missed it first time round.

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From what I gather it's not what you do for mental distraction, it's the amount of time you spend without those distractions. The science is still quite new, so of course they're discovering new things all the time, but it appears that human brains need several hours a day of down-time to work at their optimum efficiency. Without that time, one of the first things people begin to lose is their creativity.

Drachen Jager said:

If you want to be creative, the best way is to shut all those outside influences away. Go isolate yourself from everything for a good long session every day. Go on a long walk, or sit on a park bench. Even just sitting on the couch with a coffee in hand and nothing to distract you can be very helpful.

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Just to be contrary, I have to say I've found the opposite to be true for me. Certain media can be plain and simply distracting--like The Internet, for example--but I do some of my best brainstorming while listening to music, or doing a jigsaw puzzle, or even watching a movie or TV show I somewhat dislike. (The "dislike" is important. I wind up rolling my eyes at Idiot Plot moments and thinking of what I would have done differently, if I were in charge of the script, and then go off on hundreds of tangents from there. This also applies to being horribly misled by movie trailers--if the story I thought I was going to see doesn't happen, I may write it myself.)

To the Backward Ox: How do you feel about writing prompts? If your biggest problem is generating ideas, there are ways around that.

Charlie Horse said:

You cannot be a writer without being a reader. Period. .

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Expanding on being alone with your mind, I would suggest meditation. Yeah, some might think it's silly, but it can actually help clear your mind and leave room for creativity to flow. I also get my best ideas while taking showers and when I lay down to sleep (which doesn't actually help with the whole sleep thing.)

MJNL and Drachen - I like that. Charlie Horse, I totally agree with you too.