See What Happens When You Stop Aiming For Meaning

I believe that what many writers struggle with is finding a meaningful story, and a reason for sitting down and putting words onto paper or the blank screen. It’s a really scary thing when you feel you have no idea what to write about, absolutely no idea what story to write. But if you wait for that to happen, you might never sit down at your desk. We have to release ourselves from the idea that this is required every time we write. It’s not. You are perfectly entitled to sit and write nonsense, because there will be something within that nonsense that jumps out – a word, a phrase, a sentence, a whole concept hidden in scribble. Read it back armed with a highlighter pen, and then put it away for a few days before you look again. Nine times out of ten, you will see a story or the seeds of one.

I try to write something every day and I use a variety of prompts to help me do this. I write down random words people say on the TV; I flick through books with my eyes closed and land on a word, or take the first three words from the top of the page; I use an online random word, phrase or sentence generator; I ask my husband to shout out words. Using random prompts and feeling free to just ramble is a way of keeping your writing muscles flexed, even when meaning and genius is not even on the menu.

If you find you lack inspiration, I do a one-hour prompts session every Monday at 5pm, and this is part of my Time to Write club, which is a yearly membership to open up your creativity and productivity. You can find details of all the things we do at Time to Write at the link at the bottom of this post, as well as the other courses and events I have. I would love to see you there.
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In the meantime, tell me if you find it easier or harder to write when you don’t know where something is going – and what you do when you feel the ideas are drying up. Leave a message in the comments.

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