Sometimes you may have plenty of ideas on what to write but no time to do it while, other times, you will have the time but are fresh out of ideas. Inspiration isn’t always easy to come by but there are some ways that you can generate so many ideas, you’ll have material for years to come!

Brainstorm or a Spider Chart

While there is plenty of software available to use, sometimes a pen and paper will produce the best ideas. Write your topic in the center of the paper and then use it to start writing down ideas around the edge of it. Once you start, the ideas will come thick and fast because one will lead to another and so on.

Time Your Ideas

Again with a fresh piece of paper and a pen, set a stopwatch for  5 minutes and write. Jot down as many ideas as you can in that time without stopping until that timer sounds. Putting yourself under pressure like that can force your creativity; you’ll find that you are writing anything down just to get some ideas in that 5 minutes but when you go back over your ideas, you might find a few real gems.

Write a List of 50 to 100 Ideas

When you are writing a blog or a short story, start a new page or Word document; title it as “50 Blog Ideas” or “100 Ideas”, something like that, and then don’t move until you have all of them written down. It will take a while but once you get started, the ideas will flow.

Join the Dots

Use any of the lists or brainstorming diagrams that you have come up with for this. Find ideas that are directly related to one another and draw a line between them. One idea isn’t always enough to produce an article but a combination of several might be just the thing. You might also find that one topic is a bit too bland so take that topic and create another spider chart around it with sub-points.

If you are trying to write fiction, take the ideas from either side or either end of your page and see if you can come up with something very creative involving those two ideas. You could also stick a pin in and pick an idea that way.

Use Someone Else’s Ideas

You can use writing prompts or writing bursts to come up with ideas for a fictional piece of work. You could pull a couple of novels off the shelf, choose one character from each book and then try to combine them. Take a traditional story or a fairy tale and rewrite it from a creative standpoint or use some ideas from them in your story.

If you are writing nonfiction, find some popular and famous quotes and use these to generate new ideas. When you respond to the words from another person, whether you agree with their words, disagree or go off in a different direction, you will often find that your own unique ideas will start to flow.