Don’t wait for a brand-new idea. Combine two old ones nobody thought to put together.

Almost nothing is new at the level of parts. What reads as original is usually a pairing: an old form carrying unfamiliar content, two genres in the same room, a technique borrowed from somewhere it does not belong. Waiting for an idea with no ancestors means waiting forever. The available move is to put two known things next to each other and see what happens.

List five things you are into right now, however unrelated. Draw lines between pairs and look for the pair that makes you slightly uncomfortable. Make the smallest version of that pair this week, to find out whether there is anything in the collision.