It’s that time again–to stare off into space like I’m catatonic…and then move like a whip, snatching up the first sticky note, receipt, torn envelope, or candy wrapper to blow in my direction. I’ll turn over my purse, spilling markers, Sharpies, and broken pencils on the floor (wondering briefly what my cat did with all the pens), and then I’ll tear at the paper scraps until the words let me go.
Next, I’ll tape all the scraps in a notebook and write around them…past them. I will eventually run into the more attractive sister of my first idea, and build her up. Up!
Five different colors of ink. Sophisticated cursive on one page and animal scratches on the next. Staple surgery and pages torn from other notebooks. That’s my little monster.
Now, time to share. How do you get down ideas? Do you keep a “little monster?”
Michelle Joyce Bond
michellejoycebond.com 
Brilliant, thank you for finding my blog and commenting am enjoying looking at yours love the drawings and stories
Thank you! I’m enjoying yours as well. You’ve got a lot of know-how about Australia! 🙂
I travelled Australia a couple of years ago with my two dogs Tibby and Charlie on a sabbatical. I am settled now for awhile. I had a lot of grounding about Australian outback because my Dads family lived in the Flinders ranges South Australia. For many years I travelled the Outback with Dad and have a fascination for Australian history. I am South Australian
That’s cool–it’s always fun to hear about different places in the world (appease my wanderlust). Thank you for visiting. I look forward to more posts on your blog!
Eat spoiled cheese, add copious amounts of whiskey. Repeat until I remember the bizarre dreams induced by that stupidity. 😉
I have a similar problem except I consume stupid amounts of sugar cereal. 🙂 https://michellejoycebond.wordpress.com/2013/08/08/the-monster-in-my-kitchen-how-many-boxes-of-cereal-does-it-take-to-write-a-book/
Mine’s a notebook/sketchbook/laptop combo of mess. Until it is a mess no more. 😉
This makes me think–making a mess must be part of the writing process to most of us. 🙂
I definitely think it is. 😉
Time to share. I sometimes write them down on bits of paper, backs of incoming mail, envelopes.
Sometimes I file them in a Word document. Often, I mislay the bits of paper and can’t remember the location of the file. So really I rely on memory.
For articles of interest I find on the web, I store them using Evernote and am often amazed by what’s in there.
I wish my memory were as good as yours! Also, I like how you mention storing documents from the web. That’s a great tactic I may need to use in my research. 🙂
Brilliant.
Post it notes, envelope scraps and my moleskine. Like Rod, I try to use Evernote too. But invariably I put a note on my ipad and my phone before one I sync either of them and it messes the whole thing up.
All these advances in technology! I only just got texting this year… I’ve got to catch up. 🙂
I hadn’t considered spoiled cheese to help remember those dreams! 🙂 8-hour workaday and ADD means I use vast amounts of stickynotes, meeting minutes (oops!), receipts, business cards, envelopes and in desperate moments, the back of my hand! All tossed into a shoebox or the journal du jour to be mined later.
Ha–I’ve written on my hand, too…sometimes in marker if there’s no pen handy. 🙂
And our teachers thought we were aspiring graffiti artists! I love these posts, the insight into other writer’s techniques and quirks. Fun and intertesting 🙂
Thank you–and thanks for taking the time to comment! 🙂
always handy… the notepad on my iPod touch.
Technology for the win!
Getting technical in my old age. I use the notes app in my phone. It’s full of little snippets.
Fabulous! I’m more tech resistant in my young age…is that weird? 🙂
First, I have to say I really like the cartoon. As soon as I get an idea I use any paper I can find and then I put the note in a file folder. Then I go back to wondering when I will have to time to execute the idea.
I have a heap of ideas, too…and really giving my all to one takes over a year. I must be selective, but I never stop collecting. 🙂
When I get an idea or hear a great conversation, I write it down/put it down in my phone, random computer document, scrap of paper, or notebook on my desk and lose it the next day. These are sad, trying times these are.
I’m right there with you–whatever’s handy becomes my wordy canvas! 🙂
Ha, I WISH my thoughts were contained in a notebook… no… mostly it is tons and tons of little scraps of paper and sticky notes which I try to keep in organized piles. It’s a disaster. Occasionally I begin the task of compiling them. Until I get distracted half way through. Maybe someday I’ll graduate to a notebook and multi colored pens.
I heard a term for this once–organized chaos. It might look disorganized to an outsider, but you know where everything is. 🙂
Yes, exaaactly 😉
I am very visual. Like you, I must attack scrap paper with my own doodles. Everywhere I look I see faces from stains on the ceiling to rocks on the ground.Most people see bunnies in the clouds. There is much more if you look a little harder!
Agreed! Weirdly, I’m reminded of Horton Hears a Who and the whole world that was on that tiny speck. 🙂
Follow you, follow me?
I’m from Brazil, I loved your blog
http://gilvaniagil.com/
Certainly! Thanks for the follow. 🙂
Wishing you very happy and prosperous New Year.May God bless you. Happy, peaceful and prosperous New Year 2104 !
You as well! 🙂
I don’t actually have a little monster, I have a spider diagram! 🙂 I’m anticipating using a notebook in 2014 for my ideas though, as this is my year for ‘getting serious’!
A spider diagram sounds cool–I might have to try that, too. 🙂
🙂 You’ll want a HUGE sheet of paper – larger than A4. Have fun! Xx
Thanks for coming over, good to have you on my humble blog. Re your question on how I get ideas, anything sensory normally works for. If I look at a photo, I start creating a story around it and normally go quite over board. If I hear a sound or a song (literally music to my ears 🙂 ) I create a tune around it and see what I can fill it with. Scent of beautiful person elate me to heavens 🙂 . The key is to write or draw when you are enjoying or feeling the pain or at least remember how it felt.
Cool–I love how you draw on several senses for inspiration! I wrote a blog not too long ago on how music inspires me, too: https://michellejoycebond.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/scene-in-a-song-how-fiction-explodes-from-my-head/ 🙂
Many thanks, I also use the touch and taste as well 🙂
love it! its kind of how I write everything including academic papers! Happy 2014!
Congratulations, I nominated you for the 2013 Blog Of The Year! Go to my link for the details…and Happy New Years from Hot Rod Cowgirl! http://hotrodcowgirl.com/
That’s super sweet. Thank you for the nomination!! 🙂
🙂
I carry my iPod Touch with me, and jot down ideas in the Notes app when they hit me! As I love haiku so much, and they can be written mentally somewhat easily, I wrote this one in my head before I typed it up while I waited outside of a church service Wednesday night in a corner of the room outside the… whatever you call the room people sit in. Chapel I guess. I’m tired, vocab and grammar suffering…. Didn’t end up posting it, though I just now remembered it!
“Corner Post”
by Ry Hakari
Quiet, calm, composed
Haunting the corner, a ghost…
The north-western-most
Everyone’s so high tech with their apps, it’s making me jealous! It’s cool though that, no matter the tool, you’re still doing the best thing a writer can do–writing when the inspiration strikes you! This poem is mysterious. I wonder what the north-western ghost could be… 🙂
It’s a she, and she recently moved to Oregon, a state on the north-west coast, from a couple towns over from me, here in the Mid-West. Also it was me, I wrote the haiku in the north-west corner of the room I was in. It was a double-meaning poem. Her’s and my relationship was doomed to die when she moved, and we are now ghost-like lovers, haunted by longing for what once was, and now no longer is possible.
I really enjoyed reading (all) of that. I tend to have shreds of paper everywhere,with my notes on them. Who knows,perhaps a monster helps me write them? 🙂
Yes–and isn’t it funny how that monster comes out when there’s little more than napkins and post-its at hand? 🙂
it really is! I so often wake in the night,think of something. but cannot find a piece of paper,wherever I look. 🙂
Ahh, it is very good to find time for just you, because if you don’t you will someday look in the mirror and see your shoulders as high as your ears! Take time to do what you enjoy, now. Not later because we don’t know when it might be too late.
I always, always write (and think) better, smoother, faster and funnier after some decent weed.
For sketching, I try it, then don.t always like it. I am still learning to do digital art and finding it difficult because of my lack of knowledge