AIA#75 Journaling, Meditation and Trash Cans

How do you guys get your ideas? When? Are you in the car driving or walking? Are you at home? Do you come up with ideas in the morning or evening? I really want to know.

I’ve been think a lot about ideas because I make Youtube videos and do some writing and often hear people say, “..It’s hard to come up with a new idea for videos…”

Floating around the atmosphere
Ideas are a funny thing. They just kind of float to us a lot of times. But how do we facilitate ideas or how do we get them?

I used to write songs years ago. I would come up with a riff on my acoustic guitar and then record it on to a crappy four track machine. Sometimes my friends would come over and Sind on it or play on a song as well. It was great fun and I recorded many songs. Sometimes, it was difficult to come up with something. Other times I could spend a whole day coming up with a few new songs.

Write for the trash can
I never took writing songs very seriously, I just kind of did it. I did hear some advice from a professional song writer, he said, “…write for the trash can….”. In other words, write as though you won’t ever use the songs and after while you might come up with something good. For sure it takes the pressure off.

Influences
For sure influence can come from others. I heard Hunter S. Thompson say to copy a page directly from your favourite author. I’ve never done that but perhaps I’ll try.

Meditation
I have never tried this one, but the film maker David Lynch is really into meditation to help facilitate creativity. He actually wrote a short book about it.

“…(Meditation)…allows any human being to dive within experiencing subtler levels of mind intellect and transcend and experience this pure ocean of consciousness…” -David Lynch

He describes it beautifully in this video.

Journal writing
I’ve never done a lot of journal writing but I hear that it can be helpful. So I’ve decided to block out a fifteen minutes a day to test it. I write my goals down first thing in a notebook, but these are usually the same everyday.

I will have a few sections, Ideas for blog writing, quotes and study from books and mentors, daily activities and randomness, drawings (I’m no artist) and sketches. Goal writings well but I already do that.
Here's a video on Journal writing.