From Stephen King’s On Writing:

“Let’s get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”

I used to think of our thoughts as a pile of mud: dirty, messy but hiding diamonds underneath. Dig deep enough past the top layers of crap and that’s when you’ll find some interesting stuff.

But the more I live, the more I find this metaphor missing a key component: randomness. Though most of my ideas are found in active reflection, a surprising amount come seemingly out of nowhere. For example, just yesterday, while in my gym’s changeroom, a story hit me: A man dreams of being a high jumper but is bound to his responsibilities as a neurosurgeon. He wrestles with his desire to improve the world (surgery) and his desire to enjoy the world (high jump) but never leaves neurosurgery. When he finally retires at the age of 70, he enters a masters athletics tournament, but trips on his first jump, falls and sustains a brain hematoma. He dies on the way into theatre.

Whoa! Where did that idea come from? No idea. Regardless, it hit me in one second, and I ran to my phone and wrote it all down. If I procrastinated, the idea would have surely vanished. Is it a brilliant plot? Not really. But it’s new, surprising, and might come in handy in a future project.

We hear of amazing discoveries that just hit people. Take these breakthroughs:

• Dmitri Mendeleev discovering the periodic table.
• Mary Shelley conjuring the plot of Frankenstein.
• James Watson discovering the double helix nature of DNA.

These events happened while the person was asleep. How crazy is that? It feels like there’s a force out there randomly shooting off ideas at us – some bad, some good – and it is up to us to catch them, consciously or not.

It is crucial that you recognize these when they arrive. Do not be distracted, mindlessly scrolling on Instagram, and do not think you will remember them later. You will forget. Catch them like a trap, and store them away in your private notebook.

Your job isn’t to find these ideas but recognize them when they show up.