Organizing Ideas

How do you develop your ideas? Instead of a few extra sheets of paper in my filofax for those fleeting moments when ideas fly by and risk disappearing if they aren't plucked from the air, I made sure a while back to begin choosing sacs, or purses that are large enough to carry a clipboard.

You would be surprised at how stable and well balanced handwriting or even designs, plot diagrams, character sketches, landscapes, dishes, moments, wisps of perfumed steam rising from Italian meringue or flow charts can seem when sturdied by a clipboard on a moving bus, in the metro, while walking, riding, or sitting in a café among the people. These ideas can be systematically captured and squeezed from the smallest of moments if you get into the habit.

When affixed to a clipboard, a piece of paper can become the calm center of a vortex of all manner of observable movement and activity, inside the mind and out. It is then preserved as an object on its own, to be placed within the order chosen in the times when I am in that frame of mind for imposing order. In addition to free form feuilles, I have pads of many colors and special sheets with pre-set blanks for important information that I use for telephone conversations. I save these pages in sleeves in different binders once my inner administrator has deemed them significant.

I simply adore the sound of a good ball point scratching the single slice of paper and clicking on the board as I bring it down again to begin another word. Black flair pens make voluptuous lines. I love pencils just as well. Sharpened to a pinpoint for precise expression, ready to scratch the surface of anything, or rounded soft lead worn from the hum of flowing ideas, broad strokes in patterns and shapes filling a concept's shadow and light.

When ideas for projects are complete, having been successfully researched - when lists of recipes have been amassed, photographs pondered, telephone calls made, visits to pinpointed locations complete and thoughts put down, the varied singular handwritten sheets are already in their sleeves. I can flip over one and past the next as though I am separate from them, and view them with a different eye.

The sheets are insulated from me, from outside observers, my moods, the weather, coffee rings, events, gusts of wind and cleaning frenzies. I have the pleasure of organizing them, a luxury for me. Once they are clipped into the binders, I can let them go completely because I know they are safe there. I am ready to work, free from distraction, with the ability to use them as reference when needed.