Every writer and blogger wants great ideas to write about. It makes writing fun and exciting. You want the whole world to know about it. Great ideas motivate you to share them in the best way possible. Sadly, even when you do think one great idea, you might struggle to think of more.

You sit at your desk and go blank.

Brainstorming, freewriting and other writing exercises are great and all, but some of the best ideas are not found at your desk. And that is part of the problem. You’re sitting at your desk expecting yourself to be inspired. Expecting yourself to come up with your greatest ideas.

Your best ideas for writing are not found at your desk, but in the midst of living your life.

When you read a good book or blog post, where do you think all of those stories and experiences to relate to come from? They come from real people doing real hard work. They come from people taking a risk and failing or succeeding. They come from someone just like you that decided to walk down their own path. Somehow, in some strange way, their life became relative to their greatest ideas.

Writers find their best work in their own experiences. It’s evidence for others to believe in your ideas.

I would now like to refer to a very recent and soon to be published book by Jon Acuff. Watch the video below to understand what his book is all about.

After watching it, what made you feel like you could believe him?

It was his personal experiences.

He is giving his audience evidence to believe that his ideas that he will share in his book are not crazy and work. His life was a testing ground for those ideas. All of his stories will help readers relate and understand his idea. Jon cares so much about his idea because it is something he lived himself.

In writing, great ideas have been lived and then they are written.

I wrote my book on better blogging because I lived it. I wrote over 400 blog posts in 2013 to support that book. I put in the hard work and the effort. I focused on living my life, failing and succeeding along the way. It allowed me to have the idea to write that book and give others evidence to beleive in my ideas.

Hopefully the experiences of Jon and myself are enough for you to believe that you need to be focusing on living your life to come up with your best ideas.