Where do you think up your best ideas?

[Wild Gazebo]

Just before I fall asleep. I find my mind just manages to lose the crutch of reality and think in blissfull freeform.

I keep a notepad with a pen tied to it on my nightstand. I used to keep a tape recorder by my bed but I found I didn't use it as often and found it hard to search for certain ideas on a long rambling tape.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

No place in particular, and because of that, I carry a sketchbook and my PDA with me almost everywhere I go.

If I can learn to write tab or standard music notation, I may have to add another notebook!

During sex.

Good thing that's not my situation- I'd never have any ideas at all!

 

[Mycanid]

My best ideas invariably occur before going to sleep and just after waking up.

 

[Bloodstone Press]

Sometimes I get ideas from TV or movies or the news. Sometimes I get them from dreams or from conversations with my friends. When I am stumped for an idea and trying to come up with something, I pace and talk it out. I sometimes look for different, unrealted things and try to fit them together.

 

[Kurashu]

At the worst possible time to be able to write them down or make use of them.

I know the feeling.

It depends on what the idea is. If it's for poetry, I tend to just shut my mind off and write. Then something brilliant comes out (if I do say so myself). For anything else, they usually just come to me. More often that not, at a bad time (e.g. BOZ). I used to tell myself to carry around a little notebook and pen with me, but I'd forgot it most of the time; the times I took it out with me, it got all bent and messed up, and writing on bent paper annoys me so much for whatever reason. So I've stopped doing that. Although, I've had a few of my latest and greatest ideas come at opportune times lately (such as the inspiration for a story, and a character...although it wasn't his story that came to me.)

 

[LightPhoenix]

Like many here, I tend to be pretty inspired in the shower. However, I'm usually the most inspired whenever I listen to music. Sometimes it will be a whole song or album that triggers it, but usually it's one a line or two.

 

[DarkJester]

Sunday afternoons are big for me, as I'm usually home alone and have time to sit at the keyboard. I kind of type a stream of consciousness as far as ideas go and then work back over it getting rid of stuff to streamline it.

 

[BOZ]

i bet if i carried around some means to record my ideas, i'd stop having them.

 

[Scotley]

I'd have to say shower too, but I think it has more to do with my shower being the start of my day. I think my best ideas must come from my dreams. I find that when I get a good nights sleep of more than 7 hours that I have cool ideas in the shower. If I manage to stay in there long enough to think them through then I don't have any problem remembering them long enough to get to a computer and type them out.

 

[Merkuri]

Another one for the shower. Also during the three-hour drive I make monthly-ish to visit my parents.

I keep a pack of half-notecards in my pocket at all times to jot down anything I don't want to forget. Sometimes in the car if I have a really good idea I'll whip out my cell phone and record myself a note, but I find putting the phone in "record mode" to be too distracting to my driving and usually have to end up waiting until I get to a pit stop.

When I'm in the shower, I find the best way to remember things is to toss an object (like a shampoo bottle or razor) outside of the shower. The out-of-place object on the floor acts as a mental bookmark. When you see it, you'll think about what you were doing/thinking when you tossed it out, so you can then write down the idea in a more permanent fashion.

I find this also works when in bed. If I think of something I want to remember in the morning, but don't want to go through the trouble of writing it down at that moment (laziness, or desire not to wake my SO) I take my book off of the nightstand and toss it on the floor where I'm sure to see/step on it in the morning.

These string-tied-around-a-finger-type tricks only work on so many ideas at a time, though, and only function if the area where you toss things is normally empty of such objects. Tossing a book onto a floor already covered in books and papers won't do you any good.