Looking for new ideas

I recently spoke to a friend about writing novels. He always wanted to write his own book, but for some reasons, he has always postponed it. Work, lack of time, responsibilities, I understand, it is clear that it is a hard process and requires effort and dedication. But this time he told me something different, he has literally 6 months of free time ahead of him. Due unique situation between jobs, he has plenty of time during the following months to write that novel he has dreamed about for some time. However, when I saw him, the man was desolate. "I don't have an idea, I don't know what to write about". Those were his words. Said with such forcefulness that they sounded a sentence. He believed that inspiration was the first step, necessary, to write a good story. And inspiration comes or does not come, he thought. There are many people who think like that, the famous writer's block is based on that belief. But let's suppose for a moment that inspiration doesn't work that way, just for a moment, that's what I told him. Think about how your mind works, it gets inputs from the outside, the neurons process signals an create links between all that information, sometimes logical, sometimes intuitive. You get conclusions and new data, all that is different from one person to another, just because the whole network of connections in our brain is unique. For example, if I want to cross the street, my mind will determine if it is better to do it now or wait, depending on what I see. The idea is the result of the input data combined by our minds. And how does this apply to my friend's problem?, Provide data to your brain, read a novel you liked, go back to that movie that inspired you, collect the best moments you remember as a reader, scenes that impacted you. If you give it enough data, your mind will do the rest and generate the idea. He trusted me and committed to try it. Two days after I saw him again, that huge smile in his face was enough to know that he had already had the idea and that the novel was on its way.