Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
You’re sitting in the bathtub, contemplating life as you scrub away all of the dirt and stresses of the day. Just as you sink a little lower into the now-tepid bathwater, a story idea hits you like a bolt of lightning. Thankfully, it’s only metaphorical lightning, given the bathwater situation, but it’s a fully fleshed out idea, unique and completely engaging.
You repeat the main idea, something about rats, an animal interpreter, and a national cheese shortage, as you pull out the white rubber tub stopper.
Rats. Cheese. You repeat these ideas as you dry yourself and put up your sopping wet hair into a bun. You pull on your clothes and brush your teeth. You’re sure that you’ll remember the story idea since it’s so amazing and memorable, so you neglect to write it down as you head downstairs to run through a brief list of morning chores.
At long last, you finally have time to sit at your computer. You stare blankly at the blinking cursor in your document.
Something about mice? Or was it ants? There was some kind of state emergency, right? A blizzard? Dang it, the idea has completely slipped your mind, gone forever.
I have had so many instances of this as I’ve gone about my day. Even if there’s only a fifteen-minute gap between an idea and me writing said idea down, I’ll be sure to forget it, the idea lost in the increasingly crowded labyrinth of my mind.
One of the tactics that Anne Lamott employs in her seminal book on writing and life, Bird by Bird, is to carry around a stack of index cards that she can write her ideas down on. She then has a mobile way to jot down her ideas and observations wherever she happens to be. Once home, she can store the cards away for future perusal when she needs to plumb her previous ideas for a story.
After reading about that, I bought a tiny notebook and kept it in my purse for just such idea lightning bolts. However, I encountered a pretty big problem with this strategy. I rarely carry my purse around when I’m out and about. It seemed like a nice enough idea, but how could I capture a random thought if I didn’t have my little notebook? What did I carry around with me always though?
Ah, my phone. At first I started to use my native notes app. I started to create a new note every time an idea struck me. The number of notes soon became overwhelming. I decided to just have one large note to jot down all of my ideas. The search functionality worked just fine if I needed to return to the long list of ideas.
It worked much better than carrying around an actual notepad for me, and it had the added benefit of being connected to the cloud. I could access the notes afterward on whatever computer I had that had access to the iCloud app.
It was lovely, for a while, but I’m old, and typing on the tiny iPhone keyboard was a pain in the butt, and not at all conducive to quickly capturing some of my more in-depth story ideas.
And that was when I thought about using the voice memo app. Genius! Here was an easy-to-access app into which I could pour all of my detailed story ideas as soon as I had them. Now, by simply pressing the red record button, I could capture these thoughts anywhere at any time (as long as I didn’t mind people looking at me a little strangely as I talked about crazy ideas into my phone). And, yes, the dang phone even went into the bathroom with me (don’t judge, you all do it as well, I know!). Playing music as I showered now gave me access to my phone’s voice app if a sudden idea struck me while I was washing away all of my worries. Now my story ideas didn’t just swirl around down the drain.
So, that’s how I’ve been capturing my story ideas on the go. It’s been wonderful so far and has allowed me to keep track of all of the ideas that strike me, usually at inopportune times.
How do you capture your story ideas? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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