Last month I talked about the importance of capturing your ideas in some way or another. I use index cards to jot down every idea that visits me, and that has worked well for me. It’s up to you how to capture them; it’s only necessary that you do.
But what happens to those ideas once you’ve captured them?
Again, you’ll have to find your own way through this (you might be more digitally oriented than I am), but I use a system of multiple photo boxes. Multiple stories are collected in each box, and each box is assigned a number. I have a key that tells me which story corresponds to which box.
The challenge, for me, is that I am never only working on one story at a time. I have so many ideas that are always working themselves out in the background, which means I need to have a system of, for example, collecting poems I read that might be brainstorm material for a story I write years from now. Or remembering a location that sounds interesting but doesn’t have a story yet. Or recording a character I want to write whose story I have not yet heard.
These boxes keep all of that safe and somewhat organized (about as organized as I can get).
I keep the boxes in my closet, and when I am ready to begin the long work of a story, I take out the box, examine all the notecards that I’ve collected, and begin on the research and brainstorm portion a few steps ahead.
This capturing system works well for me, although my husband complains that our closet doesn’t have enough room for shoes anymore. Who needs that many shoes?
