Feb
5
It happens.
That great idea for a post you thought of as you were out driving, running errands?
Gone!
When inspiration pings, you are usually in one of three places:
- You can’t write (like driving in a car or walking down the street).
- You’re nowhere near a computer or the web (waiting in line at the grocery store, morning routine in your bathroom).
- You’re in front of the computer but you’re right in the middle of something else (like, I dunno, work).
Here are three ways to capture those fleeting ideas so we can act on them later and write those killer blog posts:
When you can’t write at all, speak: get a digital voice recorder
When there is no computer or web access to be found, a fantastic low-tech solution is to use a notebook. I use a Moleskine Notebook
When you’re in front of the computer but in the middle of something else, you can’t take the time or suffer the interruption to log into your blog. Instead, use Google Notebook. Then get the awesome Google Notebook Firefox extension. I use this all the time to quickly capture Ideas as I work on the computer.
Three is a lovely number, but this list could perhaps be four, or six, or twelve. How do you capture your blog post ideas before they slip away?
If I’m out walking, with no voice recorder to hand, I pretend. I simply say out loud whatever idea came to me as if I were recording it and it’s still fresh in my mind by the time I get home.
db
David, I’ve done the exact same thing from time to time! It works.
This works for me too. You can actually remember four or five things at a time this way, provided your environment is relatively free of distractions.
I also use my cell phone. I can record up to one hour in it’s memory at a time.
That is a great idea! I hadn’t thought of that.
i can’t believe i didn’t know about or have been using google notebook.
Google Notebook is amazing. I really get a lot out of it. Which is really to say, I put a lot into it.
I use the good ole yellow notepad … comes in handy in the car!
Darin
Darin, I’m just one of those people who can’t hardly change the radio station without swerving off the road. Writing? No way, buddy. Glad it works for you, though!
If you don’t want to purchase a voice recorder but do carry a cell phone, you can always use jott.
http://www.jott.com/
Holy crap I didn’t even know about Jott! Thank you for that link!
I signed up for Jott and it’s AWESOME. Thanks for sharing that!
Im doing those myself because Im really, really forgetful. And it works for me.
Yeah, me too. I get distracted by the next great idea and then the first one is gone!
Moleskines are top-notch. I’ve been very, very hard on mine (I’ve always got one in my back pocket), and they still hold together pretty well. They’re so stylish and well made that they give me mixed feelings — I feel guilty marring their perfection by writing in them (akin to the guilt you feel carving into a new jar of peanut butter), but on the other hand I feel this intense need to completely fill them with nothing but awesome content.
(As you can imagine, that’s difficult to do. I’m lucky if I’ve got one good notebook entry in ten.)
I’d also recommend reviewing your notes as often as you can. I recommend this because of two things that happen to me pretty often:
(1) I read a note I wrote to myself months earlier, and think, “Wow — that’s a great idea. Wonder why I never followed up on it.”
(2) The contextless nature of my notes completely baffles me, the entry in question was made too far in the past for me to remember anything about it, and I’m left trying to figure out what the hell I meant by “Great short story idea: Sun Dried Tomatoes/Bedlington Terrier/Unreliable Narrator.”
Really great points, Kevin! Reviewing your notes is a weird trip into your own mind, for sure.
I’ve had so many different kinds of notebooks in the past. From now on, there is only one kind of notebook I will use, and that is a Moleskine. For those of you reading this who wonder what the big deal is, all I can say is… try them.
A lot of my ideas come to me as soon as my head hits the pillow, and since I know I won’t remember them when I wake, I grab the notebook and pen from my nightstand and jot them down.
Misti, that happens to me sometimes, too. Man is it hard to write legibly in the dark when you’re half alseep!
Oh yes, it’s definitely difficult to write in the dark! Sometimes I turn on the lamp, but if hubby’s in the bed too, I leave it off out of respect for him. Boy, you should see some of my notes in the light when I don’t turn on the lamp.
This is obviously one great post. The information are very insightful and helpful. Thanks for sharing all of these.
I also like to use TextEdit (Mac) to jot down those notes that must be jotted down right now — then I can name the file with as much detail as the character limit will fit. This is especially good for those times when you come across a new word you’d like to work into your writing vocabulary, since you can just use the word as the filename, then leave it on your desktop.
I use a digital recorder, a notebook, or I doc it in a word doc list I have going on my PC….just depends on where I’m at at the time.
The old-fashioned notebook on the nightstand is great, too, when you’re woken in the night with an idea!