When does your best work come to you?

I get my ideas anywhere. Usually when I'm at my most volatile emotional stages.

No, I don't think I have this problem. I carry a black pilot precise v5 pen with me wherever I go, and if I can't take my black Moleskine journal, I always bring graph paper in a pocket for ideas.

OMG,yes! Usually I have the house to myself during the day. Very quiet. I get my writing done. BUT the real inspiration comes in the evening, after dinner, when my sons and my husband are home, the TV is on, I'm getting interupted, and I'm trying frantically to get the thoughts down before they're lost.

usually when I'm at work and can't do anything about it

At night when I can't sleep.

kikilynn said:

I've noticed my best work comes when Im lying in bed, close to sleep. Most of the time Im too tired to get out of bed and write it down, so it's lost by morning. I try to recreate whatever came into my head, but it's never as good.

Click to expand...

If you don't remember the idea, how do you know it was any good to begin with?

Dale

I do this! Too much. I know it's good but assume that it's so noteworthy that I wouldn't dare forget it by morning. Right. I do remember a lot of it, but I'm going to have to start getting up to write it down.

My best ideas come when I least expect it. Never fails, they just show up, knocking on my brain and screaming for release. The strangest place an idea ever hit me was while i was in labor with my youngest son... you'd think my mind would be preoccupied because I was giving birth, but nooooo...

~Ellen

While I've been on holiday I've been writing on and off from 11pm to 5am. It's a long stretch of absolute silence, punctuated by the awesome Battlestar Galactica soundtrack, with the only distraction being the internet (sweet sweet internet, I wish I could quit you). Perfect writing time.

Although I agree about lying in bed half-asleep, especially after racking up a night's writing. Everything just bounces off the inside of your skull ... I'm trying to make a chemical reactions metaphor here but I'll save myself the embarrassment, since I flunked chemistry.

Also, walking the puppy. Alone. Sunshine. Puppy fossicking in the grass. It's good thinking time.

I have some of the "right before I fall asleep" problem, but I use my iPhone for an alarm, so it's right by the bed - I can jot things into the notes section if I need to.

I do a lot of my thinking about plots and characters when I'm driving, so if something particularly good comes to me, I call and leave myself a voicemail on my cell.

I've been trying to leave the music and TV off while I do my daily half hour on the elliptical, and spend that time brainstorming. But I find that my brain just shuts off during exercise whether there's music or not, so that's not working out very well.

Mainly, I do my best brainstorming with a friend. I tell her stuff, and she asks annoying questions that I then have to answer, and then she makes me justify my answers. It feels a lot like cheating, but it definitely works for me. Then I can take what I've learned in the harassment process to the keyboard; it keeps me on task.

I get some good ideas in the middle of the school, so I have to jot them in my assignment notebook, but most of my really good ideas come when I'm in the middle of writing, if I've already got things flowing. Lucky me

Most of my ideas come at the least opportune times; the times when I'm supposed to be turning my brain off. The lack of anything pressing to think about frees me up, but it does discourage me from ever acting on a fresh idea.

It's when I'm in bed drifting off to sleep or just waking up that I'm able to come up with imagery or solve story problems. I would NEVER be able to remember what they were, only that I knew they were good ideas.

For Christmas my husband gave me a light-up pen. I leave it on my nightstand, and when I get ideas in the dark, I sit up, click on my pen, and jot it all down in my notebook. Works great for me.

I get ideas at random times, but usually I sit down with the intention to write a certain type of work, and I just do it. This only works with poetry. I can't write anything else for crap.

There is something about watching a good movie that does it for me...

Maybe because I sort of take the story apart as I watch it, think about how things come together/are resolved, and if I can take some cues for my WIP. It really opens up possibilities I wouldn't have come up with on my own, and it gets those ideas going.

I also get good ideas when I'm driving really fast!

I come up with my best story concepts when I'm very sick, for some reason.

kikilynn said:

I've noticed my best work comes when Im lying in bed, close to sleep. Most of the time Im too tired to get out of bed and write it down, so it's lost by morning. I try to recreate whatever came into my head, but it's never as good.

Anyone else have this problem or another? Do your creative genius' work at the most inopportune times?

Click to expand...

Buy a notebook and a pen for next to your bed, cheapskate.

Seriously, I know what you're sayin'. I go bonkers trying to remember those thoughts...they are like trying to remember a dream. So I broke down and bought a pad and pen.

kikilynn said:

I've noticed my best work comes when Im lying in bed, close to sleep. Most of the time Im too tired to get out of bed and write it down, so it's lost by morning. I try to recreate whatever came into my head, but it's never as good.

Anyone else have this problem or another? Do your creative genius' work at the most inopportune times?

Click to expand...

LOL, I have been known to write down ideas at traffic lights on bank receipts, on scraps of napkins, on the sides of paper cups at times. I can relate to you in that I find it so terribly annoying to wake up with a good idea in the middle of the night, only to have forgotten it by morning. I always have pen and notebook by the bed! LOL

semilargeintestine said:

I get ideas at random times, but usually I sit down with the intention to write a certain type of work, and I just do it. This only works with poetry. I can't write anything else for crap.

Click to expand...

Oh, and I have often received some of my best thoughts while running. I force myself to take a break from whatever I'm doing (especially when I'm having a mental block and something in the plot just isn't coming together, etc.) Then, as I start to get into the first mile or so, I've got the solution. Happens to me all the time.

When I smoke and drink.

kikilynn said:

I have a legal pad and pen, that would normally rest next to my bed. Problem is, by the time I roll into bed after getting 3 kids (or 7 if its a weekend) nestled in, their gone. My 6 year old daughter has stolen all but one pad and written all over them. I've given up trying to keep her from them. I want to allow her imagination to run wild.

Click to expand...

How about hiding them under your pillow?

One of the best ideas I ever had, pounced on me while I was playing a computer game. It was one of those games where units sounded off when you gave them an order - I told one of my thieves to go and try something really dangerous (for him) and he said 'again?' with what sounded like a mixture of annoyance and fear. As soon as I heard it, a character popped into life in my mind, closely followed by a motherlode of connected story information, it was great!

Most of the ideas that have turned out to be any good have been like that. Seemingly random sights, smells or sounds that have triggered a sudden rush of stuff that must have been brewing away unformed for a while, I guess. Never happens while I'm consciously trying to have ideas - the forebrain doesn't seem to be the ideas department.

I'm the type of writer who only gets ideas when I sit down and tell myself to start thinking. I don't really get ideas in the middle of the night or anything.