This Is Just To Say

I leave a lot of notes for myself. Occasionally the notes are on paper, stuck places where I'll see them ("Car needs gas!"), but mostly they're typed into my computer in a ridiculous number of applications and files.

I make detailed to-do lists and use them to plan my days. Because of all my lists, I more or less accomplish what I need to, and I rarely forget stuff.

I write down ideas for my novel whenever they occur to me. I keep these carefully organized so I can consult the notes and incorporate the ideas when I get to the right place in the story.

All these notes get to serve their purpose in life when I eventually act on them. But I've also been creating a very large body of notes that sadly never get to progress to the next stage of existence. These are the ideas for future blog posts that I record and never look at again.

I have multiple files containing notes for blog posts, I guess so I can feel organized as I type things into the appropriate black hole. Obviously I'm posting to my blog on a fairly regular basis, but it's never thanks to these notes. Most of what I post (besides book recommendations) is sparked by some thought I get inspired to write about immediately. That's just fine, but I'm curious about all those other topics I wanted to explore.

I've started looking through my notes, and there's some decent stuff in there. The ideas I've noted for later are mainly either too big (they'll take a lot of time and maybe multiple posts to cover well) or too small (I may not have more than a sentence or two to say). It's the medium-sized ideas that most often make it to actual posthood.

What with it being the beginning of a new year, I thought I would try digging through my idea files and turning some of them into posts, even if the writing situation that provided the original spark is now lost to the mists of time. I think I'm sometimes reluctant to go back to the old ideas because they feel too random if the topic isn't currently on my mind, but since I'm sure that for you the readers, this whole blog is pretty random, that's a silly concern.

That said, if there's any particular subject or type of post that you the readers would like to see here, please let me know. I'll make a note of it.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Evan V. Symon presents 10 Deleted Chapters That Transformed Famous Books: "Bram Stoker's iconic novel is by far the most influential horror book. But what many don't know is that the final chapter was taken out by Stoker at the last minute. In the deleted chapter, Dracula's castle falls apart as he dies, to hide the fact that vampires were ever there." (Thanks, Louise!)