The idea for my first novel, The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic, came to me when I was on a hiking adventure in England. I saw something that astonished me, wrote it down in a notebook, and then forgot about it until YEARS later when I found that note again and decide to do something with it. What's the moral of this story? You need to write down your ideas and keep them in a safe place! Someday you may make them into books!
So here's your creative activity for the week: make a bank to keep your ideas in. A bank keeps valuable things safe, right? This will be a bank for the valuable things in your imagination.
Take a cardboard box, such a shoebox, and decorate it with pictures and words you've cut out of magazines, or that you've drawn yourself--things that inspire your creativity and make you want to write. Cut a hole in the lid so that you can easily drop things into the box--like slips of paper, or index cards, or photographs, or drawings. What should you put in your Idea Bank? Anything that tickles your imagination! Keep a stack of torn-up sheets of paper and a pencil nearby, and jot down weird things you notice, interesting people you meet, new words you like, "What if" questions, memories, and ideas for stories. Every so often, dump your box out, randomly choose two or three things in it, and see what creative sparks fly.