“Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.”

~ Khalil Gibran

You want to write, but your creative well is powder dry. Or it spouts off like Old Faithful, leaving you gulping from a fire hose, drowning in words. What do prolific authors know about how to coax and nurture new ideas, and breathe life into them without losing focus for all else?

Lightning bolts. Spontaneous knowing. Dream downloading. You’ve heard the tales told by the “lucky” few for whom this creative stuff appears easy. They’re walking down the street and, boom! A cinematic story line (soon to be a movie near you!) flashes across the screen of their mind. Publishers and Hollywood producers beat a path to their door. But what if you’re one of the 99.9999 percent of writers for whom this does not happen? What tips and tricks can you use to inspire your best book brainstorms?

I’m no stranger to magical thinking. While publishers and Hollywood producers wouldn’t be calling me anytime soon, what happened next was so surreal that it still feels impossible. Like a miraculous scene unfolding in a Spielberg film.

I bolted awake. Glowing in the reflection of the full moon, the walls, the floor, the hanging philodendron across the room were all perfectly still. This was earthquake country. I knew her signs, San Andreas. But the quaking was all mine.

The clock on the bedside table read 3:01 AM. What in God’s name?! SIX books—how is that even possible—flashed one after the other in my mind’s eye as I leaned against our headboard, blinking in the dim. Titles. Covers. Text. Format. Paragraphs slid left to right like a news ticker tape, some stopping to focus, even magnify. I rarely remembered my dreams, much less held onto them, but these words were alive.

OHMYGOD!!!! I just finished my last Artist’s Way exercise yesterday! My twelfth week! And wasn’t it August 1—the start of the “auspicious window” the astrologer told me about?! I sat dumbfounded. It had been a mere six weeks since Guru Singh admonished me to stop “hiding” behind my dogs and wrapped me like a burrito inside his woo-woo incantations. And, oh yeah, insisted I was supposed to step into my destiny as a writer. Is this what he’d seen coming?

Careful not to wake Jesse and Tosh, two comforter lumps atop our California king, I grabbed a flashlight and a yellow legal pad from my bedside drawer and tiptoed inside our closet to start downloading.

There, at eye level with my boots and running shoes, with my pulse racing, I took furious dictation—the blue pen in my hand flowing as if powered by magic ink. Soon, the carpet was covered with sixty-plus sheets of animated scrawl.

“Which book will make me happiest?” I whispered aloud, fearing the words would never slow, and I’d be overwhelmed by them. I needed specific instructions. Where to begin? I already felt bonded to each title; panic was imminent.

A voice in my head gave direction: “Start with Lives Charmed. A celebrity tell-all meets Seat of the Soul. A self-help bible with an environmental twist.”

Alrighty then . . .

I’m almost embarrassed to admit this, dear reader, but there it was, all laid out. Step. By. Step. Have you ever felt jealous hearing a novelist speak of stories “given” to them and playing out like movies in their heads—characters dropping in deeply developed, story lines nearly complete? I certainly had. I’d think, Come again? How does that happen?! And yet, this was precisely my experience. Only the lead character was me!

There I was, walking into the homes of my most “charmed” clients as usual, but I wasn’t there to exercise their pups. Instead, unbelievably, I was interviewing them for reality show (before there was such a thing) behind-the-scenes details—the never-before-told tales of what I witnessed every day in their homes. Fame, wealth, love, addiction, epic fails, lessons learned, and most importantly: environmental activism. This was KEY. The whole point of the book—the exciting and genius part I could never have made up on my own—was that we’d make eco-issues hip, cool, and profitable!

Could this really be? These were the early days of the internet when the world wasn’t yet fully connected by information and urgency. Yet I could see that by weaving in interviews with green celebs about our most pressing environmental issues and the innovative things they were doing to heal our world, we’d give a voice to the plants, animals, and indigenous and marginalized people gasping for air and airtime.

Holy tree-hugging! This was it! My dream life revealed. Eyes wide, I could see my readers en masse—ohmygod, readers!—engaged in the drama and success tips, while being educated through the back door about how to save our natural world.

Tom Bergeron, funny man, and Emmy-winning host of three of the most popular TV shows of all time: Dancing with the Stars, America’s Funniest Home Videos, and Hollywood Squares. His memoir, I’m Hosting as Fast as I Can! is about being Zen and staying sane in Hollywood.

I wrote my book a long time ago, and it’s currently holding up some of the finest windows in America. As a TM, Transcendental Meditator for years, I was writing a book about meditation, really. About being present and in the moment. The [personal stories and] anecdotes I told in the book were the way I lured you in.

Rob Bell, New York Times bestselling author of many books—including What We Talk About When We Talk About God, Love Wins, What Is the Bible?, and Everything Is Spiritual—and award-winning podcaster of The RobCast.

There’s this Latin phrase, Ex nihilo, [the idea] that there’s this nature of creativity that comes out of nothing. Jerry Seinfeld was asked where his jokes come from, [and] there’s this great line where he says, “I have no idea. I literally have no idea.”

I wrote a kid’s story called A Goat for a Boat and read it to my daughter’s class and then read it on an episode of my podcast. Ron and Don; one has a goat, and one has a boat. And this girl named Eileen Vee shows up with a vat full of chili that was made by her brother Willie, so it’s Willie’s Chili. What in the world? That is just completely ridiculous and absurd, and I have no explanation other than for some reason I came up with a story about a guy named Ron who has a boat and [a] guy named Don who has a goat.

There are straightforward answers to why you made what you made and wrote what you wrote and were feeling what you’re feeling. But I don’t know. I pursued a line of inquiry. I wrote the next sentence and then the next sentence came. And I studied and I worked hard, and I was disciplined, and I did research . . . You’re putting in your hours but you’re also aware that you are opening yourself to great mysteries.

Don’t ask me how I trusted this would work. It didn’t even occur to me that going from my clients’ kibble dispenser to translator of their innermost secrets might be a stretch. I just knew this vision had legs and providence. My body was buzzing as if propped on a beehive. Yet, deep inside, I felt a profound sense of calm. I knew I had what it took. As surely as I’d ever known anything, I was certain writing was my Willy Wonka golden ticket.

I thought of my beautiful mother, working so hard behind the scenes as a secretary and editor for her boss at Stanford University. She’d be especially proud that I was writing to try and help our precious planet; it was thanks to her that I had a lifelong preoccupation with falling water tables and rising temperatures. After wasting $65,000 of my parents’ money on the college degree I never quite earned, I figured I’d be able to pay them back quickly when my bestseller was released.

Candles sparkle on the table at the Chart House, where I’ve taken my folks for a celebratory meal. With trembling hands, Mom opens up the ivory linen envelope I’ve handed her. Inside is a note explaining that I’ve paid off the mortgage to their home in full.

This is nuts! I’m going to be an author! Tears of gratitude filled my eyes. I leaned down and kissed the carpet. “Thank You, God. Thank You, Mother Earth, for entrusting me with this assignment. I won’t let You down. Just show me what to do. I’ll study every minute my family doesn’t need me. I’m all Yours.” My heart was so full it felt like it would pound right out of my chest. I hadn’t been wasting my brain all those years being distracted in school. Spirit was just waiting for the right time to put my skills, passions, and connections to work!

I peeked back at our bed, moonbeams streaming down through our skylight. Jesse and Tosh, still fast asleep, had no idea that everything had just changed for us. I couldn’t stop smiling. The gates of heaven had just swung open.

But you’ve never written a book before. You’ve never even taken a single writing class. I waved that pesky voice away. How hard could it be when you’re basically taking dictation from God? Besides, I could see it, feel the book’s life force, and my role as midwife. When Jesse woke up, a miracle—he got it, 100 percent.

“Everywhere we go, people tell you their life stories,” he said. “You’ll be great at this!”

It was clear. I’d grab low-hanging fruit, start with two of my favorite dog-walking clients for my inaugural interviews—Paul Williams, and model and Dynasty star Catherine Oxenberg. Surely, I’d get more eco-minded stars from there.

Paul Williams, Songwriting Hall-of-Famer, actor, Oscar-winning composer, president of ASCAP, New York Times bestseller of Gratitude and Trust, co-authored with Tracey Jackson, and recovery advocate—sober now for thirty-two years.

When I was twenty-two, a friend invited me to lug equipment for a new band called the Chancellors. The night before, I wrote two songs—my first ones. It never crossed my mind I couldn’t do it. I sat down, wrote the songs, and then went out and played them for the band. I didn’t know how to play the piano, so I wrote the words and sang them to the melody in my head.

One day, Roger Nichols and I were asked to write a song for a Crocker Bank commercial. We called it “We’ve Only Just Begun.” Roger wrote the melody, and I scripted the lyrics about a young couple starting out with white lace and promises.

A young singing group—the Carpenters—saw our commercial and wanted a whole song. I was floored when it shot up to number one and became one of the highest-grossing songs of all time. Imagine. It had all the romantic beginnings of a bank commercial! I’d desperately wanted to be an actor but ended up backing into the right career by not getting work. It’s then that I discovered my real gifts.

Catherine Oxenberg, actress, screenwriter, royal, and first-time author of Captive: A Mother’s Crusade to Save Her Daughter from a Terrifying Cult.

I’d always wanted to write a book. But I never would have anticipated that Captive would have been my first. I wrote it to save my eldest daughter’s life and to protect mine. I was up against a powerful, dangerous, and vindictive cult—and they would have no qualms about taking me down. I had found out that my daughter India was in extreme jeopardy in a cult called NXIVM, and so far, all my attempts to free her had failed. When left with no other recourse, I made the excruciating decision to expose her in the press. I had uncovered what looked like evidence of tax evasion, racketeering, money laundering, identity theft, and sex trafficking within the group. I was afraid that not only was India’s life at risk but that she could be coerced to break the law unknowingly.

Early on, I was able to get some other young women out by warning them they were going to be physically branded and spooking them with news of a government raid, which I had used as a scare tactic, but in actuality did happen a few months later. I appeared in a blitz of talk shows, on the news, in magazines. I helped the New York Times break a cover story. Shortly after, the government moved in and told me that I didn’t have to carry the burden all by myself anymore. The leader, Keith Raniere, fled to Mexico, and I was saying to myself, “If this investigation fizzles out, which it had in the past when other people had tried to bring evidence against the group, how am I going to expose the truth about this cult? How will I ever reach my daughter?” I had never been so scared in my life.

I signed with a literary agent, Yfat Reiss-Gendel, who had me write a book proposal. Simon & Schuster gave me a book deal for a book with no ending, which took a lot of faith. My agent is a miracle-worker.

I was writing in real time as events unfolded, not knowing what would be on the next page. It was harrowing because India refused to communicate with me and considered me enemy number one. I started writing in January and, simultaneously, NXIVM started to fall apart. Keith was arrested in March. The book came out in August of 2018, and other high-ranking members of the cult were still getting arrested on July 26. As the plot kept unfolding, I kept calling my publisher, saying, “Can we add this one more thing? One more thing!”

In the end, law enforcement did not drop the ball, and the criminals were brought to justice. At sentencing, a member of the FBI came up to me and gave me a giant bear hug. “Thank you, mama, you called it! You knew what was happening before anyone else!” My family’s nightmare became a story of hope and perseverance and of love triumphing.*

Everything was easy-breezy . . . at first. No matter how late I went to bed, I continued to awaken at 3:00 AM for months, seeing pages of scrolling text. My brain and body were afire. As Vladimir Nabokov defined it: “Ink, a drug,” and I was heavily under the influence. Thankfully, my husband and Tosh were nearly inseparable, which gave me plenty of time to start pitching agents and celebs for interviews. Each small writerly step created its own momentum, and we celebrated every win.

At the eleven-month mark—so much for that “six to nine months” window!—I’d quit my dog-walking business to study and write constantly. Although I was ecstatic to have found my calling, it was painful not making my own money.

“Most divorces result from two issues—disagreements over finances and childrearing,” Carol said, sounding like an issue of Psychology Today. That’s just great. Jesse and I were two for two. He practically had an aneurysm every time I “wasted” thirty dollars on organic juice oranges, which sucked because I was never not going to waste thirty dollars on organic juice oranges. This California mama was gonna buy the kid 100 percent organic, come hell or high prices! As a soldier in Mother Earth’s army, She’d meet me halfway—of that, I was convinced, and so I pressed on.

Despite being a total beginner, I experienced miraculous synchronicity, doors opening, and vastly improved punctuation weekly, if not daily. That said, the path would be nowhere near as simple as I’d wagered—not the writing, schmoozing, promotion, or the marriage. But I was on a track I’d never leave.

Being gifted a book in a dream is rare; I’ve yet to interview another author with that same experience. Yet, there are endless ways to get ideas and begin your writing journey. For some, inspiration whispers softly, or comes in fits and starts, or takes its own sweet time. Everyone’s path is unique. Don’t stress if you don’t hear a thunderclap. Again, all you ever need to get started is the desire.

Charles Sailor, New York Times bestselling novelist of The Second Son, and Hollywood screenwriter for TV shows like Kojak, The Rockford Files, CHiPs, and the debut of Charlie’s Angels.

I had just finished producing and writing a movie of the week for MGM and CBS. Back then, movies of the week were hot. The first three minutes was called “the hook.” You had to hook the audience with that first three minutes so that they came back after that first block of commercials. I decided that my next hook would be an ironworker that falls off a building and lives. I spent two weeks trying to figure out how this guy could survive through the fall.

I was out walking my dog at about eleven o’clock at night when a voice in my mind said, “Chuck, nobody’s going to live through a fall like that off of a high-rise building unless God wants them to.”

I stopped mid-step and said to myself, “Well, who would God save?” Of course, the first thing that came to my mind was Jesus.

“You can’t write a movie of the week about Jesus, an ironworker!” the voice says.

“Well, why couldn’t it be another son of God with a whole new message for humanity?” I went back in the house and told the actress I was living with, and she said, “Chuck. You’ve been smoking too much of that shit.”

NBC offered me a ten-hour miniseries off the story pitch. CBS offered me an eight-hour miniseries. And this producer said, “You’ve got to write this as a book. This is a bestselling story.” But I didn’t know how.

Nathaniel Branden, who was Ayn Rand’s close friend and a psychologist, said, “You can do this. I’ve got an editor who has edited my psych books for me, and I’ll loan her to you.” So, I hired this editor, Cheri Adrian, and my ex-wife, Barbara George, and I set about writing the great American novel.

Joy Harjo

I just recently wrote the best song I’ve ever written, a full-fledged storytelling song with a bridge and a chorus. How did it come? With an instinct, almost a heartache. There was something there. I knew that the only way I was going to be able to deal with it was if I wrote.

When I started, I thought, Oh, this is a drag—and it was. Drafts can be that way. You have to have faith. But after I was done, I realized, Wow! That’s the song that I needed for such and such.

I didn’t go in there with that intent, but this is how the creative, intuitive process works. In the civilized world, they teach you that you go after something and pin it down and wrestle it down. And, yes, there’s the work of casting it. You have to do your work, to practice, to gain knowledge so that you have other possibilities and modalities open to you. But when it comes down to it, if you ask for help and you’re working in the field where inspirations come to you, it’s mysterious.

Steven Pressfield

When a book idea comes, it always takes me by surprise. I think, Am I even interested in that? Where did that come from? The second thing I always think of is: Well, nobody in the world is going to be interested in this. This is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard. It’s totally not commercial, I can’t pitch it, and I can’t sell it. Like on the hero’s journey, where you get the call and hang up on it, I am in the “refusal of the call” stage.

Then a couple of months later, I’ll stumble on the file and think, Gee, that’s a pretty good idea. That’s when I’ll plot it out. These ideas come out of left field for me. That’s why I believe in the Muse and that we’re all being led as artists by some force we can’t understand.

The book that just seized me and happened incredibly fast was The Legend of Bagger Vance. I wrote the whole thing in about four months and totally on instinct. I’d been trying to do that—write a novel—for thirty years and failing constantly. I don’t even remember writing it. But I did eventually steal the structure of it from the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu scripture—one of those books that, in different translations, somehow feeds me. At some point, I had the idea: “Gee, this is a great structure for a story. Let me steal it and transpose it to another arena.”

I’m a big believer in stealing. If you can steal a structure from Hamlet or Moby Dick or something, great. I’m being facetious. I don’t mean to steal in the sense of ripping off somebody else’s stuff. But there are only so many plots. When the structure of Romeo and Juliet or another classic story speaks to you, you might as well use it. Use it as a model, and then do your own thing upon it.*

Terry McMillan, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back (both made into hit films starring Whitney Houston and Angela Bassett, respectively), and eight other bestsellers.

I’d gone to Jamaica because I was numb. I was grieving the loss of my mother, followed by my best girlfriend. And I fell in love with a young man on the trip. He started flirting with me, and I said, “This is a joke. What is he doing?” Then I said, “Oh, what the hell, I’ll fuck him. I never fuck anybody.”

When I got home, it was as if I’d been resurrected. I’d felt dead, and now I felt alive. That was what made me start writing. It started out as a poem. Then it was a short story. I told him what I wanted to do. He didn’t know my writing—he’d never heard of me, thank God. But he said, “Terry, you said that when you write a novel, you just lie. So just lie.” And I said to myself, Well, I guess this young man has given me permission.

And I wrote a chapter a day, for thirty-one chapters, for what became Stella Got Her Groove Back. It was like I was on cruise control. I mean, talk about lying like it was coming out of my nose! There are people that, and I don’t knock them, but they outline their novels. I’ll put it this way: I’m like a conduit. I’m just here to write what my character is telling me—what they see, what they feel, and what they think. I just write it down. I have to jump out of my own skin in order to do it.

Over the years, several aspiring writers with knowledge of my self-funded artist dates and trips to Drew Lawrence and Guru Singh asked if I’d done anything else to conjure my “magical book dream” that didn’t cost money. We’ll cover the topic of coaxing creativity via divine support specifically in chapter eight. But there was one mental component that may be worth sharing now . . .

. . . With a desire to raise a happy child, I was contemplating my positivity and good fortune. A lot.

Stumble into any self-help event, and you’ll probably hear something about the importance of asking high-quality questions. I didn’t realize it then, but by asking these things over and over—What does it mean when people call me charmed? Why am I so happy? What do I do to attract blessings?—perhaps I was setting up my unconscious and the Universe to deliver high-quality answers. Training myself to look for, expect, and attract magic. When I told Deepak Chopra about my book dream on his episode of the podcast, he confirmed my experience, saying, “Reflective inquiry is the only way to access creativity.” Then he added this brain teaser: “The question is the answer. So, if you live the questions, you move into the answers.”

Robert McKee

Wanting to write in a specific mode is quite often the spark of inspiration. I can’t remember much of my first idea. I know I wanted to write a thriller, something psychologically interesting. And a character came to mind. Step by step, I put him in trouble and kept him in trouble until the very end. But I think the inspiration was simply, “I want to write a screenplay, and I’m going to write in my favorite genre.” After that, the steps are kind of logical.

People decide they’re going to write. They sit down. They make choices like genre and character. And then they begin to put things on paper. There’s a theory of writing that I believe in—that the story is already written. The writer’s job is to get out of their own way.

There’s something in the subconscious mind of a writer that already knows what they want to accomplish. It’s not a mystical experience. It’s a kind of hunger, a kind of need. It’s a desire—a thing you want. Then you start doing it.

Samantha Bennett, popular speaker, creativity/productivity expert, founder of the Organized Artist Company, and author of Get It Done and Start Right Where You Are.

I stalled out almost immediately after getting the idea for Get It Done, because I couldn’t figure out what kind of book I wanted it to be. A workbook? Client success stories? Linear or nonlinear? And, of course, I felt like I had to have it perfect inside of my mind before I could start writing.

Then I had the thought, Why don’t I let the book tell me what it wants to be?

So, I started carrying around index cards, and any time I had an idea for something I thought should be in the book, I wrote it down and stashed it in a manila envelope on my desk labeled “Genius.” After a month, I poured all the cards out onto my dining room table and sorted them by topic. Sure enough—a rough structure started to emerge. Whenever I didn’t know what I wanted to write, I would reach into that envelope and write about whatever card I drew. It gave a nice “magical fortune-telling” feeling to the writing process.

For what it’s worth, I believe that as we live our questions, we can be natural optimists and sky-is-falling doomsdayers at the same time. A typical hour in my head, for example, might reveal any of these polar-opposite scenarios:

1.Doomsday Linda: The world’s burning up. Mother Earth’s pissed and the big quake’s coming. Are we all gonna die any minute now?

Trusting Linda: We’ll see. But right here, right now, you’re safe. Look around. Name five things that are working.

2.DL: I’m never going to finish another book, at least not until the crooks are out of Washington. My time and brain have been highjacked by politics. How can I look away?

TL: Politics have always been a train wreck. For the next hour, turn off your alerts. What’s one paragraph you can play with before you do anything else?

3.DL: I’ll never finish chapter four. It’s a total disaster. Is it even fixable?

TL: What if you did know? Grab a pen and paper, sit somewhere quiet, and ask your book what it has to say.

4.DL: I’m drowning in too many ideas. Have I developed ADD? Is that ever a good thing?

TL: Doesn’t matter. You’re abundant. What’s the one idea that makes you smile right now? Go there.

5.DL: What if publishers don’t want me? Can I still be happy?

TL: Write what you love. Love what you write. The right people will love it too. What do you love today?

Whether you believe your creative inspiration comes from a higher place or is being fed by your subconscious mind, you’ve got this. Creating that relationship, however you describe it, opens the creative floodgates. Why not give it a try? Seed your daydreams and sleep hours with quality questions and watch the answers percolate in. Before I go to sleep, I will often still pray for specific dreamtime instructions. “Something I will remember, understand, and be able to implement,” I say when putting in my cosmic order. And guess what? Every so often, I still bolt awake at 3:00 AM, quaking with insight.

__________________

*Fun fact: Danielle is also my co-author on Your Big Beautiful Book Plan.

*India was freed, healed, became an author, and got engaged. Keith Raniere was sentenced to 120 years in prison. And Catherine’s book became the subject of multiple TV shows—Seduced and The Vow, among them. Talk about scripting your success!

*Steve’s onto something. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was written between 1594 and 1596 as a remake, “inspired” by earlier poems and plays by other authors—specifically Masuccio Salernitano (1410–1475), Matteo Bandello (1480–1562), William Painter (1540–1595), and French author Pierre Boaistuau (1517–1566)—whose The Traagicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet was translated into English by Arthur Brooke in 1562. One could make the case that this was Shakespeare not just stealing the form but essentially crafting the then modern-day master 2.0 version of the same plot and story!

Interestingly, when I told this to one of my besties—my mentor, Betsy Rapoport—a longtime editor in New York, she said: “Yes! I did know that Shakespeare ‘cribbed’ many of his plots. I remember when we were studying Latin, we translated the story of Pyramus and Thisbe from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which is pretty Romeo and Juliet-y: Star-crossed lovers. Families that hate each other, thus a decision to elope. A misunderstanding leads him to believe she’s been killed, so he stabs himself. When she sees him dead, she then stabs herself. And this was from freaking Babylonia!”

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Dream Weaver

Inspiration’s First Spark