I try to write one blog post every day, but it is (understandably, I think) a fairly low priority for me. This means that I often push it aside and make it the last thing of the day, when I need to scramble around and try to think of a topic. And yet, I know that I've spent a fair amount of time today thinking about things that would've been good posts. I'm not sure how to capture those ideas. I either need to just write them when the idea occurs to me, or I need to figure out some way of taking down the ideas as they occur to me.
Periodically, I make plans to become a better notetaker, but I've just never managed to do it. I take down notes on my phone sometimes, but it just never feels organic. I read, in Daily Rituals, about a writer who took long walks in order to think. Whenever he had an idea while on his walk, he'd pin a (blank) piece of paper to his coat and associate it in his mind with that idea. Then, when he got home, he'd slowly unpin each piece of paper, remember the associated idea, and then note it down. Maybe that's all I need: some kind of mnemonic.
I honestly don't have ideas that often (or I have them so often that I don't feel the need to catch them when they flit past), but it'd still be good to have note of the 1 or 2 each day that I really want to remember.
Walking on a windy day would’ve been tricky. 🙂
Ahah, looked it up! The writer is the 18th century Great Awakening preacher Jonathan Edwards. And he did it to remember the ideas he had while on horseback!
“On his walks, he carried a pen and ink to record his thoughts. For the horseback rides, he employed a mnemonic device, described by the biographer George W. Marsden: “For each insight he wished to remember, he would pin a small piece of paper on a particular part of his clothes, which he would associate with the thought. When he returned home he would unpin these and write down each idea. At the ends of trips of several days, his clothes might be covered by quite a few of these slips of paper.”
I am the same way. My goal was to write one post a week…Failed! I often have trouble thinking of topics, or as you, will have an overflow of them. I also have the problem of starting a post in the heat of an emotion, but not being able to complete it because of other priorities and when I finally do get back to it I no longer feel the need to express the emotion or discuss the thing that had me so fired up. Anywho, I’m glad to know I’m not alone. Happy writing