Purposeful Daydreaming

Limitations. They’re anathema to writers and artists, am I right? We need creative freedom to come up with our best ideas and mould our greatest works.
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True. But limitations can also be our friend, especially when it comes to the freest kind of thinking we can do: daydreaming.

Imagine infinite pathways, built from clouds. A fluffy labyrinth, never-ending, with no centre and nothing to nudge or beckon you down any particular one.

You can pick any cloud-path you like, knowing each one will then split off in a number of different directions. The paths don’t exist until you pay attention to them. That is how these thought-paths get born: just by thinking about them.

This is daydreaming. This is your empire! You can literally think anything, dream anything you like. The power of your mind is boundless.

Too wide, too open, too scary?

If someone says to you, “Imagine something, right now!” you might (if you’re like me) come up blank. Or you might think of an elephant because of that thing people say about “the elephant in the room” (though as the proud owner of a vivid imagination, you probably won’t admit to such a cliché).

This is why we should not be afraid of our creative time being squeezed by day jobs, chores and other life pursuits. In moderation, time constraints, like subject constraints, can be the mother of new ideas.

If you literally had all day every day to write, I suspect you would end up breaking your day into shifts, including times when you’re not “allowed” to write. It’s one thing to live under the constant glare of a looming deadline; it’s quite another to have no pressure at all, and to find your time and mind sprawling endlessly into directionless, undefined spaces… Ever been there?

Somewhere between the two extremes – endless time and tight limitations – is where you’ll find your sweet spot.

Opportunities, dedicated time slots and idea suggestions must seem like narrow alleyways in the beginning. A magic portal is never the size of a football pitch, is it? It’s a nook, something small and special; an unexpected little junction of ideas, a restricted place where odd details collide. We live and we create in the spaces in between.

Start small. An oak tree doesn’t sprout from the sky, but from a little, brown seed.

Usually I begin a story or a novel with a few details, and it might be some time before a slow trickle of ideas turns into a rush. I may have nothing more than an image, an inkling of a character, or a line of dialogue. Barely Composed, my 7K-word short story about two musicians and a demon, was built from a single sentence uttered at the very end, which gives the story its unlikely twist. (And no, I couldn’t give away that big a spoiler! While it’s one of the best stories I’ve written so far, I’ve decided to keep it unpublished and give it away to subscribers only – so please subscribe if you haven’t already, and enjoy this exclusive treat.) 

Chatting to other writers on Twitter, I learned that Mariah Bell (@Mariah94350720) has a method where she focusses on a single object, like a pen, and lets her mind wander from that. Starting small takes her imagination to big places. And author @KarenEisenbrey says, “I rarely spend more than an hour a day adding words to a document, but I am writing all the time. The best ideas come when I am walking, listening to a concert, chatting with family or friends or about to fall asleep…” For Karen, it’s these times when she is busy or distracted doing something else that “the mind is set free.”

Devin Miles (@devinmyles90) gets his ideas while on his rowing machine; Rochi Zalani (@rochi_zalani) says “Thinking of the writing piece while doing chores connects the dots in an unimaginable way.”

As you probably already know, I use the surrealist game of Exquisite Corpse to create bizarre sentences from which I try to puzzle out a story. It’s difficult, it doesn’t always work, but the entirely unexpected word combinations can open a window to another world.

So, consider limiting yourself: to an image, to an object, to a time slot. Imagination is a muscle. The unconscious mind may be infinite, but your ability to connect with it and invent new ideas is a fine-tuneable, mutable skill which improves with practice. Even if your ideas today aren’t that great, you exercised this pathway-making skill which will be easier and better next time.

@StrangeSeawolf says, “Is there any other way to get ideas? I can only think of the writing process itself that brings ideas while the scene unfolds, apart from that, all my writing is born out of daydreaming.”

Ours is the kingdom of the in-between.

Keep daydreaming with purpose, and you’ll realise your purposeful dream.