Learn how to Gather Writing Ideas While You’re Procrastinating On-line

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Work whilst you play: gather writing ideas whereas procrastinating

Work whilst you play: gather writing ideas whereas procrastinating

I really like the web. In truth, I believe it’s the single biggest invention of the 20th century. It allows individuals to fulfill, connect, conduct enterprise, and gather information shortly and easily, all from the comfort of… effectively, anywhere. It’s also an entertainment mecca. All that art! Music! Movies! Literature! And games.

The net is an enormous resource middle, playground, and time suck.

We’ve all been there: You hop on the net to search for a fast truth, examine your email, or put up an replace to one among your (many) social media profiles. However what was speculated to be a two-minute motion item stretches right into a two-hour adventure as you click on by an countless stretch of movies, articles, and Lolcats.

I Can Haz Writing Ideas wit My Cheezburger

Distractions affect everyone but writers are particularly susceptible. As we sit crafting our prose, generally the muse escapes us and we’re tempted to enterprise away from our writing to find her again. The strongest among us can be in a position to withstand the alluring pull of the web’s dazzling distractions. However most of us, in moments of nice weak point and in instances of determined procrastination, will succumb to the clicking, usually forgetting concerning the muse completely.

Now, I’m not going to encourage anybody to dawdle. However a bit procrastination could be helpful. Actually, I’ve give you numerous nice concepts for blog posts while watching music videos. I’ve concocted story ideas from photos I peruse on iStockPhoto. Tweets on Twitter have impressed poems. There isn't a restrict to the writing concepts that may be found whereas randomly browsing around the internet.

Now, I’m pretty good about restraining from distractions, but once I do succumb, I put procrastination to work for me!

I Made a Stash File

As I navigate across the internet whereas avoiding inevitable tasks, I come across fascinating stuff - stuff I’d like to use - however later (as a result of, you know, proper now I’m engaged on something, sort of). I used to make use of my internet browser to bookmark interesting websites so I might revisit them later. Finally, I switched to social bookmarking. I was starring articles in my reader and using StumbleUpon.

Issues began getting spread out. If I wanted to go back to an illustration of an alien I saw three months in the past or a mesmerizing poem I discovered a number of weeks back, I might have to scroll by all my browser bookmarks, after which log in to 3 or four different accounts in search of the item of interest. The system wasn’t working for me.

Then I made a stash file.
Generally the Simplest Solutions Are the Finest

It started with a textual content file. I discovered a specific web site that I needed to make use of as inspiration for a poem, but I didn’t wish to lose the URL or overlook where I’d stored it. So, I opened my textual content editor. I copied and pasted the URL together with a quick notice to myself and saved the file to my desktop. Later, when I was ready, I knew exactly the place to seek out it.

I started using that same file for other writing ideas that I found online. Then, I decided to increase my stash file. I created a folder on my desktop and moved the text file into it. Now I may save photographs to the folder. However for some of the photographs, I wished to make notes. So I added a Word doc to the folder (Word lets you copy and paste photos on to the document).

Now my stash file is bustling with writing ideas. I nonetheless use my different bookmarking techniques, but for ideas and inspiration, I strictly use my stash file, and I like it. Certain, paper notebooks feel like residence, but when you’re amassing ideas in the digital realm, you need a digital approach to retailer them. I mean, who desires at hand-write URLs?

Ideas for Stashing Your Assortment of Concepts and Inspiration

You’ll need the next:

    * A desktop folder containing a text file and an MS Word file
    * The ability to copy and paste
    * Some time to waste

Over time, I’ve discovered just a few methods to make this little system fairly effective. For instance, once I exploit an thought, I can delete it. This keeps the files brief and easy to peruse. I’ve also thought about creating a 3rd doc that I can label “used ideas.” Then, I can simply move stuff to that doc and it is going to be there in case I need to refer again to it later.

My favorite characteristic on this system is that I can simply search via the material to shortly discover what I’m wanting for. It doesn’t matter if my paperwork develop to 10 pages or one hundred pages as a result of I use the Discover feature. That’s while you hit command-F (management-F for Windows customers) after which enter a phrase or phrase to go looking for. Within seconds I can find an merchandise that’s buried in a document. Easy as pie.

How Do You Harvest and Retailer Writing Ideas?

I’m always looking for efficient methods to maintain track of all the nice writing ideas I come across. How do you do it?

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