People often ask me for writing advice, and they’re surprised when the first thing I tell them is to keep a dream journal.

In fact, many people look downright suspicious, perhaps fearing I’ll go on to advise them to use healing crystals, or only to write when Mercury is in the ascendant.

But keeping a dream journal is perfectly sound, if neglected, writing advice.

The best thing is that the process works even if you’re one of those people who never remembers dreams.

I know. Because I used to be one of them, until I trained myself to remember.

The mind is more malleable than we realize.

 

What is a dream journal?

 

A dream journal is just a book that you keep next to your bed, so that you can write in it as soon as you wake up.

And I really do mean as soon as. A dream is a slippery fish. If you delay at all, even just for a minute to brush your teeth or plan your breakfast, it’s gone.

The idea is to write down everything you remember of your dreams.

When I first started, this was almost nothing. Then, it was just a few vague impressions. With more practice I began remembering more and more details.

Now I can cover pages of my book each morning, often reaching back beyond my latest dreams to recall some from earlier in the night.

 

Why bother?

 

There are several reasons why every writer should keep a dream journal.

1. Get fantastic story ideas. If you keep a dream journal, you’ll never be stuck for ideas.

Your mind effortlessly creates stories every night. Most of them will be boring, or unusable, or just plain weird.

But every now and then, your sleeping mind deals you something that makes you reach for your pen with thumping heart.

Paul McCartney famously dreamed the song Yesterday, so clearly and fully that he was sure he must have heard the tune somewhere before. Luckily he wrote it down anyway, and it became one of the most popular pop songs of all time.

2. See the world differently. The best stories or scenes are often those in which familiar things are presented in a fresh way.

What better training for the imagination than dreams? In dreams, you may find yourself in a mundane situation at work, but your boss is an old school friend you haven’t seen for thirty years.

Or you’ll be making breakfast in your apartment, but the apartment is now inside your parents’ house.

I had a dream recently in which Paris was not in France, but in the United States. I still think there’s a great story in there, if I can work out how to tell it.

3. Get inspired. If you’ve been writing for a while, you’ve probably had that incredible experience where the words come to you so easily that you feel you could write all day.

You write things that shock you, things that seem to come from somewhere else. You’re in a state of inspiration, wonderful while it lasts, but depressing when it stops and you realize you can’t recapture it.

In the past, people attributed this to God. ‘Inspiration’ comes from the Latin inspirare meaning ‘to breathe into’.

People believed that God breathed into them, creating works of genius that they merely had to put on paper.

If you don’t believe in God, then believe in science instead. Sigmund Freud gave us the id, and Jung took it a step further, positing the existence of a collective unconscious.

Dreams provide a natural access point to these subliminal realms, enabling us to tap into a source of endless inspiration.

4. Break writer’s block. Finally, if you keep a dream journal, it means that the first thing you do each morning is to write – with no pressure, straight from the subconscious.

It’s very difficult to have writer’s block when you write a couple of hundred words first thing every morning. It sets you up for the day much better than filling your head with traffic reports, weather forecasts or the jingle-jangle of pop songs.

 

Try it!

 

So go ahead, give it a try. All you need is pen and paper, and a few minutes each morning.

Don’t judge or analyze your dreams. Just write them down.

You probably won’t get gold-dust right away. Your notebook will probably fill up with the mundane, the nonsensical and the embarrassing.

But over time, you’ll start to see the benefits. Your writing will become more creative, and ideas will come to you easily rather than having to be dug out at great cost.

And who knows, maybe one night you’ll dream the next Yesterday and be able to fund your writing for the rest of your life.

“Have you ever tried keeping a dream journal? Or have you had good story ideas in your dreams? Leave a comment and let me know!”

 

About the author:

See if this scene sounds familiar…

It’s time to write. You’re at your computer with your favorite beverage half an arm’s length away. The lighting is just right – and you have the climate control set exactly the way you like it.

Conditions are perfect.

You put your fingers on the keys and…

and…

Nothing.

At least, nothing exciting or original. You’re stymied. Out of gas – with no filling station in sight.

This kind of block can manifest itself in different but equally annoying forms.

You might have a few ideas, but even by your own judgment, they seem boring as melba-toast. Sometimes you might have too many ideas that don’t connect in any meaningful way. And other times, you have no ideas at all.

If you haven’t experienced this – then you probably don’t write enough.

 

But It’s Fun And Easy To Be Creative, Right?

The rest of the world likes to think of us “creative types” as fun-loving, free-living quirky folk who flit around without a care in the world. They have this idea that it’s easy (or at least, not hard) to be creative.

You and I know damn well that isn’t true. Being a “creative badass” is hard, and creating something significant is even harder.

Eventually there comes a time for all of us who write, when our brain decides it’s time for some R&R. Our brain checks out. It doesn’t want to play.

I’m not talking about just writer’s block here. I’m also talking about the pressure, self-imposed or not, to be creative day in and day out.

Whether you’re having difficulty getting the creative process started, or your mind is clogged with far too many overlapping thoughts and partial ideas from who-knows-where, the pressure to consistently create quality work is stressful. And stress just makes the situation worse.

So when you face these stumbling blocks, what do you do? Fortunately, there are some fairly easy fixes for creative droughts like this.

 

Diligently Collect Information

Start collecting interesting ideas from articles, books, blog posts you’ve read, funny things that come up during the day, and anything that catches your eye or makes you go “hmmm”.

Jot down notes whenever an interesting idea strikes you, clip articles and tape them into your notebooks, become an Evernote junkie. Save information, write down whole paragraphs, sentence fragments, titles, slogans – anything that strikes you as interesting.

It’s much easier to be creative when you’re surrounded by interesting ideas.

 

Go Old School With Some Pen And Paper

Remember pens?

pen  -  noun
1. An ink-dispensing manual writing tool from the past.

Those were the days! I used to grab me a pen and some paper. Then hop on my horse and ride him to town. I’d visit the old general store or maybe the saloon and make a day of it.

Seriously, though – while I am as dependent on technology as the next person, I find that old fashioned pen and paper are best for note taking, planning, sketching, and thinking. It’s a more active, tactile experience that has a totally different feel to it than typing.

There is something about being able to hold those pages in your hand, set them next to each other, tape them together, draw arrows from one to the other, or manipulate them physically that gets the creative juices flowing.

Sure, I curate mountains of information on my computer, and I have a ridiculous number of PDF files saved just like everyone else does. The thing is: it’s hard to look at several of them at once or compare them side by side. Good old fashioned paper in combination with all your cool digital tools can help you be creative from a whole new angle.

 

Maximize The Power of The Intersection

Real creativity comes from intersections. Intersections of ideas, of cultures and of disciplines. We all have a pretty finite scope of experience. Just by the fact of being who we are, we develop a kind of tunnel vision.

Electricians think about watts and volts most of the day – so their mental world is heavily influenced by that type of thinking. Writers think about (among other things) words, structure and how to communicate ideas. So our world is influenced by that kind of thinking.

To be creative, you need to start looking at where your world collides with other worlds.

And how do you do that? I’m glad you asked!

 

Go Play In Someone Else’s Sandbox

Let’s say you’re an architect working on a project. While most of your research and preparation for the project would be architectural in nature, I would advise you not to discount other seemingly unrelated areas. Go read about water polo or gaming. Grab a book or magazine on a topic you wouldn’t normally read. Genius often happens when two unrelated areas collide.

The following story is a great example of how to be creative and generate great ideas from unrelated places:

In Zimbabwe, an architect designed a mid-rise shopping complex that stays cool without an air conditioning system. Think it’s hot in Zimbabwe? Yeah!

So how did he do it? Well, he didn’t do it with traditional architectural information. Not even close.

Architect Mick Pearce came across information on how the local termites in Zimbabwe used air currents to cool their termite mounds in their warm natural environment. The end result is a very big building in a hot climate that stays cool without traditional air conditioning.

I’m guessing that the study of termites in Zimbabwe probably wasn’t part of Mick’s college architectural curriculum. It’s probably also a safe bet that he likely would not have come up with this solution if he hadn’t been looking in what most people would consider strange places. In this case, entomology.

If you want to do some Googling, you’ll find that vaccinations and the theory of evolution were also inspired by “out of field” events. They were born of the collision of two or more disciplines – or intersections.

Look in weird places. Collect random information… and then look for intersections.

 

Try Mega-Brainstorming

A great way to be more creative and generate some brilliant ideas is to do some mega-brainstorming.

Just get out a pen and paper or open up your laptop and generate as many ideas or thoughts on one given topic as you can – before you stop to evaluate any of them. Write every single idea down without thinking – even if they’re totally bizarre.

The important thing when doing this exercise is that you postpone judgment of your new ideas because if you judge it too soon, your brain will compare it only to what is already known within your established area of expertise.

“The best way to get a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.” – Linus Pauling, Nobel laureate in chemistry and peace

Let Your Brain Do Its ‘Thang’

Learn to trust that your brain can spot the significant.

If something – anything – jumps out at you and makes you notice it, then it likely resonates with you on some level. It has some importance to some remote corner of your brain. That’s why you noticed it.

You may not know why it’s important just yet, but it will cross-reference with something for you in the future and possibly give you your next big idea. This is why if you want to be creative, it is vital to record your thoughts and ideas. You need to let your neurons make the connections for you… it’s their job.

We’ve all read how powerful the subconscious mind is and how we only use a fraction of our brain at any given moment. There’s a lot going on up there that you don’t consciously or fully understand. Let it percolate!

 

Review Your Old Notes Regularly

Over time, you will collect huge volumes of information. Make sure you review all your saved notes – not just the recent ones – on a regular basis.

Remember: if you made the effort to write it down or save it, it must have had some value to you. Going back over old notes and comparing them to newer notes will often result in an explosion of ideas from those interesting intersections I’ve been telling you about.

 

Make The Obvious Connections First

As you gather more information, you will naturally and immediately make the obvious connections. For instance, after clipping articles and writing notes for a few weeks, you might connect different pieces of information on, say time management – and a fresh, new angle for your writing will come to you.

The more information you collect, the more obvious connections you will make – generating a greater number of  ideas.

 

Be Ready To Receive When The Weird Connections Come

If you’ve been collecting information from unusual places (remember our Entomologist-Architect?), go back over your notes and see if you can discover an overlap between your area of expertise and the new, unusual areas.

Hunt for intersections in the random and unrelated. It is in this intersection between the usual and the random that some of the best ideas are born. These ideas may seem weird or different at first, but don’t dismiss them. Instead, be ready to receive them when they come.

 

Phone A Friend

This is where having good relationships comes in. Having a trusted friend or colleague I can bounce ideas off almost always does the trick for me. You know the old saying that it’s hard to tell the forest for the trees? Well, it’s an old saying for a reason: it’s true.

When we’re immersed in our own work, we primarily see all the minutiae and details that we have to deal with. It’s easy to lose the big picture. Having someone look at our work from the outside can clear up our perception of the situation and help us let go of some of those details that are bogging us down.

 

Let It Incubate

When you have been stewing over a project and everything looks like a big gnarly knot to you, often the best thing you can do is to shut down, log off and let it incubate.

Go do something totally unrelated and come back to it later. Maybe later that day, maybe later that week. Just get away from it for a while. Ideas have a way of incubating in our brains when we stop actively obsessing over them.

The concept of an incubation period is well-documented in a fantastic book called The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson.

According to Johansson, the incubation period is the time between when one stops thinking heavily on a subject and the time when one suddenly and subconsciously comes up with a solution. It’s one of my favorite books, and a great read on the subject of creativity.

Sometimes when you want something to grow, you have to leave it alone for a while. You can’t make flowers grow faster by watering them 24 hours a day and screaming, “Grow, damn you!” at them. But that’s exactly what we often do with our creative projects, isn’t it?

Try stepping away from your project if you’re feeling blocked. Go do something fun, spend some time with friends and family or get some exercise. When you return to your project, you’ll find that you can see it from a whole new perspective.

 

Whenever Possible, Avoid Creative Deadlines

Creative deadlines make it difficult, if not impossible, to be creative. I understand that this sounds wrong, but it’s absolutely accurate.

You’re probably thinking, “But I perform better in the 11th hour!”

No, you don’t. The Ivy League says so.

A Harvard Business School study by creativity researcher Teresa Amabile followed 177 employees in 22 different project teams for up to six months. And what she found might shock you.

Not only are people less creative under intense time pressure, but people believe that they are more creative during those times. One more time…

People under intense time pressure are less creative but incorrectly think they are more creative under pressure. There’s more – creativity didn’t just drop on the specific day of the time pressure. It dropped that day, and for three consecutive days thereafter.

The moral? Avoid creative deadlines when you can – and when you can’t, start early to avoid intense time pressure.

 

Go Implement Your New Knowledge

Hopefully you’ve got a few new ideas from this post – or a new angle on an old idea. Reading is well and good – but for positive change to occur, you have to implement.

Some of these tips are mere perspective shifts that you can put into play right now. Others are habits that you’ll have to make an effort to form over time. I can tell you that I personally employ each and every one of these techniques. And when I’m stuck, one of them always comes through for me.

At the risk of being redundant: Read The Medici Effect. Some of the concepts in this post (and many more brilliant concepts) are discussed in much greater detail in the book.

So what about you?

What helps you be consistently creative?
How do you get over your creative block?

Let’s talk about it in the comments section!

About the author:
Gary Korisko (@RebootAuthentic) writes about real world business strategy brought online, market creation and integrity selling on his blog Reboot Authentic. His FREE eBook, How To Alienate All The Right People, is a real-world guide to breaking away from the herd and doing something special.

Image: Be Creative – Always courtesy of Bigstockphoto.com