IT for the Brain
At the moment, I’m watching IT try to recover some files that mysteriously vanished from my work laptop. They’re not having a ton of success, but meh. Beats workin’.
That got me thinking about the way writers’ brains work, though. Most writers I know have a billion story ideas a day, but they only ever do anything with a handful of them. Part of the problem is time, sure — there aren’t enough hours in the day, and so on.
But there are times when you know you had a great story idea, plot point, or character… and you just can’t remember it. Like the files my laptop had for breakfast, the ideas are there, just buried somewhere. Maybe they’re recoverable, maybe not… but whatever you lost gets better and better in your mind. It was the Great American Novel. He was a modern-day Jay Gatsby. That plot twist would have made M. Night Shamalan look stupid(er)!
Trust me, folks. It was probably just OK. You’ll have a ton of better ideas.
My question to you, though, is has this ever happened to you? If so, how did you try to stop it from happening again? If not — well, can we all study your brain?
There have been lost ideas late at night, before bed. While I am always within reach of a notebook, on my nightstand…nothing!
So I go by, “If it’s THAT good, I will get out if bed and write or remember it.” when I’ve lost something I seem to remember was good, I throw myself into something else.
How ’bout you?