3 Best times and places to get inspired

1. I found the #1 place and time is when I sit at the computer and type.

2. Second best place is when I'm thinking using 3x5 cards. I don't know what it is about 3x5 cards. I thought it was kinda dorky to use them, you know, like in high school before laptops when you'd write your sources and info from books down on them.

But let me tell you--they really work.

3. Doodling on paper with lines and circles for character and plotting and sequencing.

Those are my top 3 picks, listed in order.

I often ponder the screenplay while driving, standing in lines, and, God forbid, in church during long sermons!!!!!

But I often come up dry.

So, I must resort to the 3 best times/places I mentioned above. That always works.

Up to page 70 of my draft (been about 2 months). Hope to finish first draft by end of September. I'm a newbee.

Hope you too are having fun and success. If you have ideas on getting inspired; pls share.

Church sermons feature times for me to think...as well as class...I think when I absolutely bored beyond comprehension I get my best ideas...

Writerscut,

Don't tell anyone this but 4 weeks ago I suddenly got inspired during a loooong sermon and pulled out my pencil and 3x5 cards and started writing furiously.

I immediately prayed for forgiveness afterwords.

Unfortunately, my prayers were answered because I've not since been as inspired during the preaching. (I subsequently switched churches to 15 minute sermons vice 1 hour--hey, if you can't say it in 15 minutes ...)

I hear ya...some ideas come in the strangest of places...

1. on the can.
2. in the shower
3. right as I'm falling asleep. It never fails, and my eyes snap open, and I rush to my desk to jot it down before I forget.

At the movies.

Just the other day, I was watching the Bourne Supremacy, and I got this idea for a script where an assassin is pulled back into the underworld when his family is killed by the mob that he used to work for.

1. Back yard, smoking a cigar. (I've been "brainstorm writing" like a madman lately, which, I fear, is going to be bad for my health)

2. In the shower. (shut up, friends of mine from the peanut gallery)

3. Watching a movie, reading a script, just reading something interesting, etc.

The #1 place I DO NOT get ideas is sitting at the computer. I usually have to get away from it before they start flowing.

While driving.
Waking up at 4 a.m. and couldn't go back to sleep.
Talking to myself in the park (yeah, I'm crazy!)

Why, oh why, must inspiration hit at 5 a.m. when I'm all cozy in bed? My husband does not take kindly to it when I throw the bedroom light on to scribble something down in my notebook so I don't forget it by the time I wake up, I don't particularly like the interruption myself, and in the morning, sometimes I have no idea what I meant by that half-asleep scribbling anyway. I have been known to awaken and find things like this written in my notebook:

"Grocery store tornado in youth: green piano"

My shorthand is really cryptic. Bet I've lost some great script ideas because I can't translate myself.