Sunday, June 15, 2014

Creativity - Index Cards

If you took a look around my writing and composing area at home you would see stacks of index cards (and blank business cards, and 4x6 cards, and 8x10 cards). I seem to have an affinity for index cards. I thought I was a bit strange, but then I found out that one of my favorite writers liked to use index cards as well. Michael Crichton. Crichton would use index cards to plot his novels. He would carry around a stack of them in his pocket and write down plot ideas for the novel he was working on. At the end of the day he would put the index cards with ideas on them in a shoe box and grab some more blank ones for the next day.When the shoe box was full he knew he had enough ideas for a book so he would pull all the cards out and sort them on a table. He continued to sort the cards until he felt they were in a good order and then he would get started on writing his book. I guess it worked well for him because he went on to write some great novels.

Maybe it would be a good idea to take some index cards with you as you go about your day. Start writing down some of your ideas. Write down what you hear people say, write down descriptions of the places you go, or write down whatever crosses your mind. Use the index cards in any way you think they could help you be creative. You never know, maybe you come up with the next Jurassic Park?

What do you think?

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