Grab a Brilliant Book Idea off the Idea Tree!

Originally posted on April 6, 2013 at Bookworm Lisa.

OK, there's no such thing as an "Idea Tree". If only. But ideas have to come from somewhere right?

We’ve all heard stories of authors who wake up frantic, in the middle of the night, the crisp edges of a dream fading, getting fuzzy quicker than they can grab a pencil and paper, or their iPhone, or wherever they like to take notes about potential books they’d like to write. Or perhaps they see someone or something, and suddenly the idea hits them so hard they feel dizzy, as plots and characters charge through their thoughts unbridled, their stories begging to be told. Those are definitely awesome ways to come up with ideas and inspiration for your next book.

Well, unfortunately, none of that has ever happened to me, although sometimes I wish it would! For years and years I wanted to write a book, but the ideas just never came. I never had the next Harry Potter or The Hunger Games. Nothing worthy of being printed and bound and read by millions of readers. So I didn’t write. I couldn’t write. Not until I had my big idea.

As it turns out, that big life-changing idea never came for me. It wasn’t until I was between jobs in 2010 that my wife, Adele, said enough was enough, that I needed to stop talking about writing a book and just do it. Forget about big ideas and divine inspiration, she said, just write a book about the first idea that pops into your head. I stewed for a while, telling myself I couldn’t do that—and that writing wasn’t that easy.

But then I did just that. I started writing a book using the first idea that popped into my head. I’d read a few angel/demon books at the time, and I noticed that people seemed to like them, myself included, except most of them had religious undertones and focused on heaven and hell and fallen angels. So I chose angels and demons, but with a different spin: the angels were bad, the demons were good, and both groups were evolved from humans rather than fallen from heaven or raised from hell. Angel Evolution was born!

Really, however, that was just the spark, the tip of the literary iceberg so to speak. Because what I found was that my ideas and inspiration come from the very act of writing itself. Rarely am I walking down the street, or sitting somewhere, or dreaming, and then come up with an awesome book idea. Instead, it’s when I’m writing one book that I come up with a decent idea for another one. In other words, it seems that creativity breeds more creativity. At least for me it does.

One example of this was when I was writing The Dwellers Saga. I’d already written and published The Moon Dwellers, which was doing quite well and had finally put me on the Indie map, allowing me to start writing fulltime, which I was ecstatic about. I was hard at work on the sequel, The Star Dwellers, when it hit me. An idea for a completely different book, with different characters, plots, and even setting, that would eventually tie into The Dwellers Saga. Six months later, I’ve published the two Dwellers sequels, as well as the first two books in the series that was spawned by that “Aha!” moment while writing The Star Dwellers. The two books are called Fire Country and Ice Country, the second of which is the subject of the blog tour that this guest post is a part of. I’ve also written the third book in The Country Saga, which will be released on June 6^th of this year. All because I allowed my mind to roam a little while doing the thing I love: writing!

That’s just one example though. There are numerous others, more than 20 new book ideas, many of which have series potential, all typed into my iPhone or laptop, many of which may never be written. But at least I have a list so whenever I finish my current project or series, I can consult the list and pick the idea that happens to speak to me the loudest at that point in time. Because of that there will be no shortage of books coming from me in the future.

We may not all be writers, but we all have creativity. Whether you like to draw, write book reviews or poetry, or tell jokes, you have imagination and inventiveness inside of you. Where do you get your ideas and inspiration? Are you like the people in the first paragraph of this post, who dream or have muses, or are you like me, generating creativity from artistic pursuits? Or do you get your inspiration from something else entirely? I’d love to know! Please leave a comment and tell the world!

A special thanks to Lisa for allowing me on her blog, for giving me an awesome guest post subject, and for all her work to make this blog so fun! I love getting comments and messages from my readers, so feel free to contact me using any one of my social networking handles provided in this post. I promise to respond to each and every person who contacts me! And as always, HAPPY READING!

David Estes