Welcome to October’s writing challenge. This month, I encourage you to stock up on ideas to write in the months to come.

Here’s the thing about inspiration: it’s fickle. It doesn’t always arrive when you’re ready to use it. Sometimes you’ll get and idea and be fired up to write. Other times, the well seems to go dry.

So, store some ideas aside for coming weeks. Let’s harvest some ideas this month.

Here are a few ways to collect ideas.

First, ask people about what they’re interested in. This is really useful if you write nonfiction.

Or, use AI to brainstorm ideas. Give it some topics and thoughts and see what other ideas and angles it comes up with.

Or—and this is the most interesting—simply challenge yourself to write down at least 10 ideas every day. If you do that every day in October, you’ll have more than 300 ideas. You may discard a whole bunch of them, but there’s bound to be a handful that are worth pursuing.

There’s just nothing like having a bunch of writing ideas you’re ready an interested in working on. It’s like having a fully stocked cupboard.

So, give it a try this month and let me know if something interesting comes from it. Good luck!