You want to write a book... But you’re not sure what you want to write.

Each time you face a blank word processor page, your mind goes blank too.

Some authors know exactly what they want to write. They tap the keyboard, and an hour later, they’ve created a complete outline for their book, or novel… or they’ve written at least one scene, and know exactly what will happen in scene two.

Other authors sneak up on their books. If you’re suffering from “empty mind” syndrome, chances are that you’re this kind of author.

Here are five easy and fun ways sneak up on your book.

1. Write Titles

You don’t have to write a book. You just have to write a title. The titles are just meant to jolt your imagination a little.

Brainstorm 20 to 50 titles; they can be as weird and wacky as you please.

2. Describe an Image

Working with images is a brilliant way to kickstart your imagination. I love browsing museum sites, to look at great paintings. They’re evocative.

You’ll find that as you’re describing an image, you’ll drop into a creative mind state, and before you know it, you’ve started writing your book.

3. Become a Collector

I’m an index card fanatic. I always carry a stack of index cards, and I note down ideas, quotes, and insights.

When I want to start a new book, and have no idea what I want to talk about, I grab a new stack of cards, and just write down sentences, descriptions, titles.

As the cards mount up, I enter them into a database (I use Bento). You can use a spreadsheet, if you don’t have a database application.

I usually create around 40 cards before I can see a definite pattern emerging, and know what I want to write.

From then on, I create a dozen or more cards a day.

When the time’s right, I create a synopsis or outline from the cards, and I’m ready to write.

4. Describe Your Greatest Fear (or Delight)

Emotions trigger creativity. (See Describe an Image, above.)

Write about what makes you happy, what upsets you… Before you know it, you’ll have an idea for a book, then you can start collecting cards, as we discussed above.

5. Use the News for Inspiration

Years ago, when I subscribed to a couple of daily papers, I’d clip anything which gave me an idea for an article, an essay, or a book. I had a filing cabinet crammed with clippings.

These days, I still clip, and still get inspired, but I use EagleFiler. (If you use Windows, OneNote is useful.)

You can use news stories to provide inspiration for many books.

Start clipping.

So there you have it; easy ways you can conquer the blank page, and sneak up on your book.

Do you have a favorite way you conquer the blank page? Please share in the Comments.

If it’s not on the page; it doesn’t exist.

(Similar to Angela’s Law of Getting It Done: if it’s not written down, it won’t happen.)

Let’s say that your heroine is compassionate. You understand this. As part of the prep for the book, you’ve written 20 pages of this woman’s life story so that you could understand her.

You know she’s a member of Amnesty International, she’s “adopted” a lizard at the local zoo, and she ushers spiders gently out of the bathroom, rather than swatting them with a rolled-up newspaper.

It’s not enough, however, for you to know it. You’ve got to show your heroine acting in a compassionate way on the page.

A major part of a first revision is getting all the material out of your head onto the page. (Don’t worry about it in your first draft. Just make a note on the typescript: “Show compassionate streak”, so you don’t forget later.)

Details, details… details will make your fiction come alive.

Here’s one of my best tips for my writing students – ground your fiction in your senses.

When you use your senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell in your writing it takes your writing out of your head and brings it into the real world, and in fiction, it enables your readers to experience the world you’re creating.

Get specific. For your reader to experience the world you’re creating, you have to experience that world first.

So be there with your characters. Feel what they feel, and see what they see.

Stephen King, in his early novels like Salem’s Lot, was a master of creating a world that you could experience. If you haven’t read Salem’s Lot, read it with an eye to studying how King uses the five senses to take you right into a world which contains vampires – he makes you FEEL.

Make YOUR readers feel when you use your senses in your fiction.