Purposeful Daydreaming

Part 1:  Daydreaming for Ideas

A few weeks ago, Stephanie mentioned she was starting the writing processes with some daydreaming. Which got me to thinking about daydreaming.

And, since I like to classify, I identified three types of daydreaming a writer should do often. First up on the blog: daydream for ideas.

Ideas are arguably the bread and butter of the writer. You’ve got to come up with better ideas than the other writers out there; purposely cultivate your imagination so you get used to thinking differently than everyone else.

Tips:

1.  Free writing. Morning pages. Whatever you call it, you simply write for 10-15 minutes or so straight, putting down anything that comes to mind.

2. Story starters/Writing Prompts.

a. For kids, the Scholastic Story Starter.  I spun the wheel and came up with Describe a day in the life of an old magpie bird who is shipwrecked on a desert island.

b. The Storystarter website randomly offers ideas like: The unhappy crayon collector found the top secret document in the store to answer the challenge.

Now, these particular examples would be good for writing kidlit, but if you don’t write kidlit, you could maybe take a word or phrase that stands out to you like “answer the challenge” and go from there.

c.  Gail Carson Levine’s blog,  more often than not, includes writing prompts following a teaching point. For example, this prompt from the blog post Change or stay just who you are:

Your main character wants to reform herself, stop being bossy and become more caring.  Write a scene in which she completely fails at this self-improvement.

Her excellent advice usually includes:  “Have fun and save what you write!”

3.  Doodle with words. Make yourself a word cloud by hand, or use wordle. Or the google wonder wheel. Follow all rabbit trails to see where they lead.

4.  Read the newspaper and find a human interest story that catches your eye. Keep a file.

5. Pretend to take a nap; keep a notepad nearby.

6.  Review your journal of ideas–you have one, right?–and pick one idea to sit and daydream about.

Now off you go. Find yourself a comfy hammock and daydream away.

Part 2: Daydreaming For the Future.