💬 How do you collect stories and ideas? 🐿️
Share in the comments so we can make our own 'doh community compost 🌱
“I am a compost heap, and everything I interact with, every experience I’ve had, gets shoveled onto the heap where it eventually mulches down, is digested and excreted by worms, and rots. It’s from that rich, dark humus, the combination of what you encountered, what you know and what you’ve forgotten, that ideas start to grow.”
—Ann Patchett, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage
On , I share my collection bucket process (inspired by this book), and the writing practice that changed my life (inspired by this one).
Both involve moving through the world like a squirrel, pocketing all manner of memes, quotes, questions, stories, facts, writing samples, snippets of overheard dialogue, and any other miscellaneous mind-acorns that pique my curiosity. My software also allows me to assign an emoji to each entry, which delights me.1 🤸🏻♀️
I tuck these treasures into my digital cheeks before moving them to long-term storage, connecting new acorns to related older entries when I can.
For example, this recent article on selfies redirecting the male gaze to itself links to this one, this one, and a book. I can’t even with this book—🤮 ugh. I’m sorry to have linked to it just now, but I couldn’t stop myself from completing the reference rhizome. I’m probably obsessed with this topic because I still can’t grok the impulse to take a photo of oneself and post it to the internet for consumption and critique. I know, I know—this outs me as the curmudgeonly elder millennial that I am.2
When it comes time to write a personal essay here on ‘doh, I spread the array out before me and curate the best possible combination. Once the rough draft takes shape, intuition and serendipity also work their magic, dropping just-right acorns into my awareness (often at the last minute) to round out the final version.
I would love to hear from you: How do you collect stories and ideas? 🐿️
💬 Let us know in the comments :)3
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