*Dreams

Keep a pen and paper next to your bed, to jot down your dreams when you wake up. Dreams don't just happen at night though. Protagonists can start interacting in my imagination at any time of the day. Just leave your mind open to dream, dream, dream….. Don't do it when you're driving or operating machinery, of course!

*Surfing the Internet

Take a ride through cyberspace and don't say you can't come up with an idea. All you need is time! Once I found a site declaring they can make you an ordained minister of religion - for a fee, of course. Idea - a woman who always wanted to become a priest purchases the "ordination" on line and goes out in the world proclaiming she is now a minister of religion. What happens? Perhaps she forms her own church and actually becomes good at being a religious leader or maybe she gathers a group of gullible people around her and steals their money.

*Personal experiences

Share your joys and triumphs. You can also turn a negative experience into something positive. Write about it. It can earn you $$$ and can be very therapeutic. 

*Travel

I write like crazy when I'm traveling, as there are always so many new sights and experiences. I also pick up lots of brochures and flyers to refer to later. 

*Court proceedings

Check out the courts. I wish I had time to sit through the multitude of court cases that we have in Nassau. I know I'd have the beginning of a book before the week is out!

*Quotes from authors, poets, actors, statesmen, scientists, religious leaders, heroes, environmentalists, etc.

Yahoo has a pretty cool selection of quotation websites. Check out http://dir.yahoo.com/Reference/Quotations/

*During a leisurely or fast walk

Walking stimulates the imagination. I listen to the birds singing, feel the breeze through my hair, look upwards at the ever-changing cloud formation, gaze at the pure beauty of trees and flowers or study the interaction of people around me. When I get back home I'm ready to let the pen or computer keys flow.

*Everyday life

I live in a very "vibrant" neighbourhood! There's always something happening day or night. With my wild imagination, sometimes I picture myself in the classic movie "Rear Window", starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly, from Alfred Hitchcock's thriller about a wheelchair-bound photographer who witnesses a murder. Of course, I have very nice neighbours and I've never seen anyone in the vicinity who resembles a murderer (what does a murderer look like anyway?), but put together a strange car parked outside in the early hours of the morning, its driver disappearing into the darkness, and you have the seeds of a plot!

What to do with your ideas:

As you come up with ideas, store them somewhere, even if only on scraps of paper in a box or file. Better still; get them into a computer as soon as possible, in a Word document under the heading "Ideas". Later, when you start working on a poem, article, story or book, you can look for topics, plot, descriptions of characters, etc., in your collection of ideas.

Some writers use alphabetical index cards. If you store your ideas on a computer, make sure you back them up on a floppy. 

Your ideas are invaluable, worth their weight in gold, and once lost, they are gone forever.