Post-Its Fuel My Process

I love writing by hand. There is research that suggests writing by hand helps fire your neurons better than typing, in the same way that walking is great for creativity, that doing your dishes or taking a shower helps you think -- movement sparks imagination, even movements as small as moving your hand across a page.

In fact, I recently read Agatha Christie wrote her books by dictation as she did housework. So there you go.

The point being, I do most of my best thinking by writing by hand, and I do the large majority of that writing in my Master Notebook, and I try to finish one notebook each month because I also live and die by Natalie Goldberg's idea that quantity trumps quality when you're a writer -- you just dump and dump and dump until suddenly diamonds start dropping on to the page.

For many years, I struggled a little bit with doing all of my work in one spot. I was worried if my life stuff was mixed with my business stuff was mixed with me personal stuff, I'd never find what I needed when I needed it. I kept looking for high tech solutions to this problem -- pens that created digital files, or tablets with tagging software, etc etc.

This year I finally got smart and went lo-tech using POST-ITS of all things, and lo and behold my creativity is OFF THE CHARTS if I do say so myself.

Basically, if I'm dumping away in my notebook and I suddenly have an idea for the blog or the website or my packlist for an upcoming trip or a plot point for the novel, or, like this week, the first 750 words of a story I've been trying to crack for years pours out of me, I just pull out a post it and mark the page.

My plan, when I first started doing this at the beginning of the year, was to try to get those items I'd marked into their appropriate funnels (Scrivener / Notion / Wix) on the weekends, but that hasn't quite panned out with family obligations and frankly, some intertia on my part.

But now my March notebook is only 5 pages from done and there must be thirty post-its in there, and I know much of the first act of my novel are just waiting on the pages waiting for me to revise them. My intention is to take advantage of a few upcoming plane rides and a long train ride next week to dump the various stuff I've marked into the appropriate Scrivener / Notion / Wix buckets where they belong.

I once read that one writer used to book himself transatlantic flights in order to force himself to work at long focused stretches. I kind of like the idea of booking a trip every time I have a notebook I need to process, myself.

Hmm. Win-win!

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