When it comes to jotting down ideas for articles and blog posts, I have to say I’m pretty good. I’ve tried a number of notebooks, including ones which store my scribbles to a computer or “the cloud”.
What I’m not so good at is finding those ideas afterwards. The reason is that I store them in so many places. I have some in notebooks, some in a spreadsheet, some in another spreadsheet….
I came across a good solution to this problem while reading an interview with Anne Tyler, the author. The writer, Lisa Allardice, says:
“Her usual process for beginning a novel is to turn to an index box in which she has written ideas or snatches of conversations and left them to ripen for years ("and I mean years"), often passing the same card over and over until she feels she can make something of it.”
An index card box! How delightfully old-fashioned! How amazingly pragmatic. As long as you devise a system of naming and ordering the cards, and sticking to it, you can hardly go wrong. It does have disadvantages of course: it’s not portable like a phone app, so you’d probably have to make notes in a notebook or on your phone if you’re out and about, and transfer them to an index card when you get home. That’s another thing: it’s a bit labour-intensive.
Still, it’s a solution that does have the advantages of (a) being simple and (b) actually working.
I’m not sure I have the heart to start transferring all my writing ideas to index cards at the moment, because it would take me ages. But I’m seriously considering starting an index card file for the ideas I have from now on.
In the meantime, while I am cogitating about that, there’s a Windows card index app called AZ Cardfile, which I reviewed in November 2019.
And today I downloaded and have started experimenting with an Android app called Windows Free, which is a simple phone-based card index file:
Notepad Free Screenshot, by Terry Freedman
It seems OK, though it’s pretty basic. You can’t import notes from other apps into it for example. However, what I do like about it is that you can see the “card” titles at a glance.
One thing which strikes me about my endless quest for the perfect solution to writing down and retrieving my writing ideas is that it could all be one big displacement activity:
“Sorry, Muse, I will definitely start writing when I’ve found the right filing system.”
So, back to the grindstone I think!