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How to Recognize a Good Idea · The Daily Writer

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Rider Podcast, where we bring you tips and inspiration each day to help you build habits for writing success.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: For more resources, including your free Daily Rider Starter Kit, visit DailyWriterLife.com.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: One of the perennial questions that writers ask is this Where do you get good ideas?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason we ask that question is because we all want to use the best ideas to make our writing better.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And our assumption is that we've got to do something more or add some new technique or find some brand new thing that we've never seen before.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Our assumption is that we've got to have something brand new in order to find great ideas.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: However, Stephen King said this, and I think this is worth hearing.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is some really great advice.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: He said, let's get one thing clear right now, shall we?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: There is no idea dump, no story central, no island of the buried bestsellers.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Your job isn't to find these ideas, but to recognize them when they show up.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, knowing that, and of course appreciating the awesome advice from Stephen King, the question is how do we put what he said into practice?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think that it's not necessarily a matter of doing something more.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually a matter of doing something less.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think it means less time on your phone, less commitments to things you don't really want to do, less time watching mindless entertainment, less time filling every possible nook and cranny of your life with noise and distraction, and generally just less of things that aren't really contributing to the value of our lives.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think that recognizing good ideas is not really a matter of addition, but subtraction.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: When we free up the space in our minds, it's much easier to recognize and cultivate those great ideas that are so critical to good writing.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: So here's today's challenge.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: What's one thing you can stop doing today to free up a little space in your mind?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Something to think about for sure.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, my friend, as always, thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.