by Naomi | Jan 20, 2018 | Creative Life
The wide-awake way that children’s authors view the world that never fails to inspire me. Here’s a dose of wisdom to inspire, stretch and most importantly, motivate you to keep collecting ideas. Where are they? Tiptoeing around your world, whispering to you, inviting you to follow and explore.
“But the sensibility of the writer, whether fiction or poetry, comes from paying attention. I tell my students that writing doesn’t begin when you sit down to write. It’s a way of being in the world, and the essence of it is paying attention.”
— Julia Alvarez
“I often have trouble falling asleep at night, so when I’m lying in bed I think up stories. That’s where I do a lot of my thinking. I also get a lot of ideas while I’m reading – sometimes reading someone else’s stories will make me think of one of my own.”
— Linda Sue Park
“Sometimes you have to stop trying to force it, walk away and let your subconscious show you the way. Fill up on life for a while.”
— J. K. Rowling
“Artists need to fill themselves to overflowing and give it all back.”
— E. B. Lewis
“You can make up your own story when you look at a photo.”
— Brian Selznick
“The main thing to do is pay attention. Pay close attention to everything, notice what no one else notices. Then you’ll know what no one else knows, and that’s always useful.”
— Jeanne DuPrau
“We cannot stay home all our lives, we must present ourselves to the world and we must look upon it as an adventure.”
— Beatrix Potter
“Maybe we are all cabinets of wonders.”
— Brian Selznick
I know, I know, I said ten quotes on collecting ideas … but I couldn’t help myself. I added a few extra.
“Take a step, breathe in the world, give it out again in story, poem, song, art.”
— Jane Yolen
“The city is like poetry; it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines.”
— E. B. White
Collecting ideas is one of the cornerstone habits in the Writerly Play Attic. Curious to know more? Writerly Play a story-based lens to help you individualize, map and problem-solve the creative process.
If you’ve ever found yourself stuck and unsure what to do next, or if you crave a more trustworthy process for bringing your ideas to life but don’t want to feel trapped by a one-size-fits-all solution, I hear you. I hand-crafted Writerly Play because I needed it, and my students needed it, and my peers needed it. You don’t have to stumble around in the fog when you’re bringing a new, beautiful creation to life.
Want to give it a try? The first step is figuring out your creativity style.
And hey, do you have any favorite quotes on collecting ideas? Maybe yours are from children’s authors, or from someone else entirely. Please share! Share in the comment section below, or share and tag me on Facebook or Twitter. I’m always collecting new inspiration. I hope you are, too!
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by Naomi | Jan 11, 2018 | Creative Life
You have thousands, probably millions of ideas, I know you do. The trick is capturing them and keeping them somewhere convenient.
Why do we lose ideas?
Consider the key hook by the front door. Until we install it, our keys drift all over the house, refusing to be found when it’s time to dash out on an errand.
A key hook is such a simple, inexpensive solution to an everyday problem, a problem that wastes tons of time and plunges us into a ferociously terrible funk. Unfortunately, this simple life-hack eludes many of us multiple times in our lives.
The solutions for lost ideas are similarly easy to implement. I’ve collected three for you in this post, but my hope is that you’ll create even more of your own, based on how your life works and where your ideas tend to show up.
Popcorn Catch-All
Ideas are likely popping into your mind all day. Choose a simple, trustworthy place to keep them. Where you choose to keep them isn’t nearly as important as the key point: You have to choose a spot and stick to it. Try somewhere on your phone such as in an Evernote notebook, Google Keep, Day One, or in a small notebook you carry with you. The more you use it, the more valuable your catch-all becomes. When you need an idea, you’ll have a growing list of them.
Story of the Day
Every day, tons of things happen. First, there are tiny interactions with family, colleagues and friends. Then, there are mini-experiences such as an excellent cup of coffee, a particularly beautiful sunrise or the surprise scent of jasmine when you’re out on a run. Finally, there are the major moments that surprise, frustrate or excite you. Capture these life moments–the small and the large–by writing down one story per day. You can write a sentence, a paragraph, or a whole page. You can use a photo to tell most of the story. No matter how you format it, be intentional about noticing what happens to you and keeping track. Over time, you’ll have a collection of moments that helped you learn and grow, and that you can use in many different ways.
Post-Conversation Brain Dump
Whether it’s a meeting, a coaching session, a mastermind group brainstorm or manuscript feedback from a friend, that conversation gave you at least one idea. Make the most of your interactions by taking a minute or two afterward to write down a few thoughts. Use a template to speed up the thinking process. And don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. You might not remember every single question you want to follow up on, but if you capture even a portion of your insights, that’s a portion more than you’d have if you’d let the day speed past without jotting them down.
It’s not about the hook.
Maybe when I mentioned a key hook, you thought, “I don’t use a hook, I use a bowl.” (Or something else entirely.) Whether you use a bowl or a hook or a pegboard doesn’t matter. The point is noticing that you have a little problem that can be solved in a simple way.
No matter how you choose to capture your ideas, make sure that you DO capture them. Create a little system for yourself, and notice how it pays off. Do you already have a pretty fabulous idea system? I’d love to hear about it! Tell us in the comments below, or tag me and share your ideas on Facebook or Twitter.
by Naomi | Sep 19, 2016 | Creative Life
If I asked you to pick up a pencil and free-write about an experience that caught your interest in the past day or so, chances are, it would take you a while to come up with an idea.
How many of our daily experiences do we remember?
Already this morning, I’ve taken my dog for a walk around the park. I popped out to Trader Joe’s on a quick errand and then went for a run around our local rose garden. If you asked me before I pushed myself to remember, I’d say, “Nothing much happened this morning.”
However, in point of fact, I had a mildly embarrassing moment when my dog snapped at a neighbor’s dog who was running around off leash. The Trader Joe’s clerk asked me my cat’s breed (I was buying litter), and when I told him she is black with a white patch, he said, “Oh, a tuxedo cat.” He insisted this was an official breed, which left me wanting to consult Google. On my run, a kind crosswalk guard helped me across a street. Also, I observed a man training his puppy. The puppy tugged, bounded, and every once in a while, sat, while they walked around the rose garden.
Many of the people I met could inspire character ideas. The sounds, smells, or colors might provide visual inspiration for a room remodel. Some of the interactions might provide metaphors to aid my problem solving. For instance: How could picturing my role as a helpful crossing guard provide new perspective on this situation? The truth is, life brims with material that lays the foundation for creativity to strike.
Unfortunately, we often miss the rich material our lives offer.
The first task of the Attic is to collect ideas and information from your world. If you’re wondering what the Attic is, here’s the short description. The Attic is one mental room we enter during the creative process. In the Attic, we gather ideas, sort them, and identify a creative question or challenge statement that points our creative problem solving in the right direction. If you’d like the longer description of the Attic, or want to know more about the full set of mental rooms, read more here.
Like much in the creative thinking process, collecting happens whether you try to or not. However, if we don’t have an intentional collection practice, there are a number of drawbacks.
What happens when we don’t intentionally collect moments from our lives?
1. We end up with a collection of the wrong things.
Science tells us that negative thoughts and experiences are like velcro. They stick easily. Positive experiences are more like teflon. They are strong, but slippery. Neurologists tell us that in order to impress a positive memory into our memory, we must focus on it for at least 15 seconds. We need proactive ideas and a positive outlook to fuel our creativity, and thus, we need to be intentional about what we mentally collect.
2. We end up with mental clutter.
If we rely on memory to serve as our mental collection bin, we’re forced to sort through everything in order to find the moments that might be useful. Like any unappealing junk drawer, we tend to shut the clutter out of sight rather than utilize it in any meaningful way.
3. We lose ideas or memories that could be highly useful to our projects.
Our brains aren’t computers, and they don’t have a reliable search function. Worse, if we ignore the ideas that pop into our heads at odd moments, our subconscious is likely to determine that we don’t care about those ideas. Then, those thoughts become harder to access a second time.
So, how can we be intentional about our collection practice?
1. Start where you are.
The harder you make collection, the less likely you’ll regularly do it. So, go with the first strategy that comes to mind–it’s likely be an approach that comes naturally to you. Maybe you’ll take photos, or write in a journal, or set a timer for a certain time each day when you’ll list some thoughts in Evernote that you don’t want to forget.
2. Make collecting convenient.
Choose an app that automatically collects your photos into an album. Find a sketchbook that’s small enough to fit in a bag you regularly carry. Come up with three standard questions to answer in your journal so you don’t have to start with a blank page every day.
3. Give yourself a boost.
Starting a new habit can be difficult. Consider your style. (And if you haven’t taken the creativity styles quiz, there’s no time like the present!) Given your strengths, what will give your collecting habit a boost? A reminder alarm on your phone? A periodic check-in with a friend? A block of fifteen minutes on your daily calendar? A colorful post-it tracking system for your office wall?
Do you want to make sure that when you need it, creativity will strike? If so, you need a collection action plan. Choose a next action right now, and if you’d like, share it in the comments below. Where might you start? If you need some extra inspiration, you might enjoy reading about my Thoughtbox, the simple system I’ve created for my own collection process.
by Naomi | Sep 15, 2016 | Tools & Apps
Naomi’s Playlist is an eclectic collection of tools that help me approach my work as play. My hope is that they’ll do the same for you.
Object: Collecting the ideas and thoughts that pop into my mind all day.
What Didn’t Work: Remember to always have a certain notebook in hand, having ideas while driving and trying to remember them until I parked, wanting to reference links on the web or use photos or audio files to help myself remember why I had the thought in the first place.
My Aha! Moment: While on my sabbatical, I was in a rich landscape of thoughts all the time. However, I also wanted to be as physically and mentally free as possible. I didn’t want to drag a notebook around with me all the time. Evernote was another challenge, because opening it up meant looking at work and bills and real life. As a storage tool Evernote is fabulous, but as a collection tool it hindered me.
That’s when I came up with the concept of the Thoughtbox. Imagine you could carry an invisible box, or a magical, expandable bag like the one Hermione Granger carried, where you could store ideas, images, audio files, documents, and research. Even handwritten notes and drawings could be collected in this box. In order for it to work, the box would have to be flexible and ever-present.
I asked myself: What do I always have? The answer? My Apple Watch and my phone. Now, even if you don’t have a smart watch, you likely have a phone, so you can adapt this tool to fit your style and toolkit. The point is to choose a collection entry point—or, as in my case a couple entry points—with an air-tight container to catch everything you toss into your Thoughtbox.
How I Play:
- Because I collect thoughts in so many different mediums, I use Evernote as the holding zone for my Thoughtbox. I use the tag #Thoughtbox, so all thoughts of this type end up together.
- I’ve chosen a few appealing apps that live on my watch, phone, and iPad. These apps make collecting ideas easy and integrate well with Evernote.
- I use Day One on my watch and phone and Noteshelf on my iPad, but there are many other apps that will work. The point is to choose apps that appeal to you, which you already use or are easy to add to your system, and which will seamlessly send material to Evernote.
- Once a week or so, I review my Thoughtbox and pull out any ideas that need further attention right away. In general, the collection becomes an expanding record of my thinking. I access it during brainstorming sessions or when I enter my Attic looking for raw material to take into the creative process. (The Attic is one of the Writerly Play rooms, more on that here.)
Player’s Notes:
- One reason my Thoughtbox works so well is because Day One has a recording function from the Apple Watch app. Any time I have a thought, I can tap a button, speak a thought, and the words are instantly transcribed.
- I can also take a photo with Day One, or easily add any photo that I’ve taken on my phone to the app. When I’m out on a hike or in a museum, this allows me to take a picture and make a few quick notes.
- I use Noteshelf on my iPad because handwritten notes and drawings are an important part of my thinking process. However, it is nearly as easy to draw or write on paper, snap a photo, and add the thought that way. Scannable is a great app for taking clean pictures with your phone for Evernote.
- I use Evernote’s simple web clipper and app extensions to send other material into my Thoughtbox. Since Evernote is such a well-connected tool, it allows my system to grow as technology changes.
Take it to the Next Level:
- Since I collect most of my thoughts in Day One, I can review my thoughts periodically in the app’s well-built interface. Looking over my words and images will often spark additional ideas, which I then add to the feed.
- Day One doesn’t instantly export material to Evernote, so I do this once a week or so. The exporting session provides another chance to review my collected ideas and think them over. I take the opportunity to also look at my complete Thoughtbox in Evernote to see what I’ve collected recently from the web and from Noteshelf.
- Since Evernote can be overwhelming to my visual-thinker’s mind, I use the presentation mode to scroll through the Thoughtbox. This way, the noise is cut out and I can see the ideas in a more compelling format.
