Good ideas come from combining pieces you’ve already got in your head.
I find that when I look back at a good idea, I see that I was carrying around all the pieces for some time beforehand. Everything I needed to generate the idea was available to me, and it was just a matter of putting it together.
That tells me two things:
- It takes time. You have to be patient, give your mind free rein to combine and recombine the pieces.
- The more pieces you collect, the more ideas you have. Pieces might be stories, other people’s ideas, things you’ve noticed, facts about the world, or anything else you can cram into your brain.
Collect more pieces, and then give them time and space to combine into new ideas.