Drawing Inspiration From...

From where do you usually draw inspiration from when creating a new thread? Is it from the TV? How about internet stories from around the world? Movies that promote deep-thought about life and its nature? Perhaps from reading the thoughts and views of others in books and journal articles? Real life experiences and interactions with others? Maybe it's a combination from all of the above depending on the time and your mood.

For me personally, I find music to be the greatest single form of inspiration when formulating ideas for creating new threads. Song titles, track lyrics and the overall theme/tone provide plenty of inspiration.

So when it comes to creating your own thread, are you most often drawing inspiration from the media, the arts, printed media, or your own life experiences?

a reply to: Dark Ghost

Any of my good ones have been chewed over for weeks and months and then thrown down as words in an OP. The writing sometimes takes an hour...sometimes hours and occasionally weeks. One of those that took forever to compose flat-out bombed and that's just life isn't it? : )

The inspiration hits me and then takes a long time to come to the boil. Right now there are around ten half-formed threads scattered around in folders and documents. The folders have back up pdfs, links and fitting images. Umming and ahhing about whether they're too crazy, too boring or just 'done to death' doesn't help either!

Then again, I've been inspired by a comment or article and then blasted out an OP within a couple of hours and they've done okay too.

I am like Kandinsky.

I've dozens of thread ideas - particularly for the UFO Forum, Paranormal Forum, Skunkworks and Philosophy, Metaphysics - as those are my where my interest lies. However, I too agonize over whether or not I'll be bullied to death by the self appointed debunkers on some of my more 'crazy' theories. Or I worry no one else will be interested and there is a day or so wasted on creating a thread. Then there is also, "This thread has been done before like 100 times over the decade here at ATS." I try to nip that one right in the bud and track similar threads down, and include them in the OP as further ATS reading.

The inspiration come from everywhere. Something silly my husband or kids might of said, or something I saw come up on my news feed. Something I saw on television or was sparked in the words of a song.

However, I don't often author too many threads. For the reasons illustrated above. I instead participate in the ones that interest me as they come up in my favorite forums, or I'll get a writing bug up my butt and post on ATS manically from the new threads list, for a few hours in several threads that spark my interest by title, then content. That's how I branch out into other forums.

CdT