When does inspiration strike you?

[Calico_Jack73]

Rather than hijack a thread about whether or not you write your own adventures I figured I'd start a new one.

Is there a certain time, place, or situation that reliably gets your creative juices flowing? When you need to brainstorm to create an adventure is there something you do every time to get yourself in the creative process?

Personally I find that I come up with most of my ideas on my 45 minute commute to work in the morning after I've had a double esspresso. I generally leave the music off but I have found that listening to Metallica's Black Album gives me inspiration when planning out combat scenes.

What about you?

 

[Buttercup]

Interesting question.

I don't seem to have a particular method. Sometimes I just bubble over with ideas. When that happens, I go into our office and work at the computer for hours on end. I've been known to spend a whole weekend this way.

Other times, the well is dry. I'd love to hear how people jump start their creative juices when they are in a slump.

 

[fusangite]

Spontaneous Inspiration
The shower remains, after all these years, the place where I am most likely to have an RPG epiphany. Of course, reading, as an activity, is very likely to produce such epiphanies because I tend to read about things about history and religion -- but these thoughts rarely hit me at the moment I am reading. They are more likely to hit me in a relaxing place, either in the shower (above) or when I'm taking the train somewhere. Seeing new types of landscapes or terrain features I have never previously observed is also a good source of spontaneous inspiration for me.

Induced Inspiration
When the well is running dry, there are books and CDs that I find very useful: "Of the Third Age and the Rings of Power" in the Silmarillion and Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities are short works from which one can read excerpts and receive inspiration with a fair degree of reliability. When using music, I will go for a walk with my Walkman (no, I haven't entered the age of IPOD yet) with either a Loreena McKennit album, Tom Waits' Bone Machine, the soundtrack to any David Lynch movie or Peter Gabriel's Passion.

 

[francisca]

In the car on the way to work.

In the shower.

When at work, when I am baby-stting OS upgrades and compiles. (like now)

 

[Psion]

When mowing the lawn.

 

[philreed]

When I'm asleep or trying to sleep. I frequently get up in the middle of the night -- or just get up early -- and start working on a new idea.

 

[diaglo]

on the can.

all my best work comes when i'm struggling with life's difficulties on the can.

 

[philreed]

Peter Gabriel's Passion.

If you like Passion, be sure to grab his Long Walk Home. Excellent album.

 

[Henry]

Driving to and from work. There's a long stretch of interstate I have to drive on to go to work, and driving and listening to music, sometimes talking aloud to sound out ideas, works wonders for me. So if you ever see me driving on the Interstate, I'm either singing to the radio, or working on my D&D campaign - but I dare you to figure out which one.

 

[The Shaman]

all my best work comes when i'm struggling with life's difficulties on the can.

TMI, diaglo...



Since there are so many sources of inspiration (music, books, my local landscape, maps, movies...), it's a hard queston for me to answer, but I think I do my most productive thinking about/plotting for my campaign when I'm commuting to work or in the minutes just before I fall asleep at night.