Why Should You Write Down Your Ideas and Interesting Thoughts ASAP?
When you write down your ideas, they become harder to lose or misplace.
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This is not the article I was originally writing.
Nope, that article was on a completely different topic. I was about halfway done writing it.
Then, my computer crashed. The usual recovery file that tends to pop up when I restart MS Word didn’t. After spending probably more time than I should have searching for this — it all proved to be for naught.
The worst part? I cannot for the life of me recall what I was writing before.
The title? Gone? Topic? Can’t remember. A good 20 minutes of work was erased.
Two lessons come from this. One — SAVE MORE OFTEN. You’d think, way back in college when I lost the entire beginning of a story because I didn’t save, I’d remember this. Yeah, MS Word nowadays should autosave. But…here we are.
Two — always write down your ideas and interesting thoughts as soon as possible.
Allow me to introduce another instance where I encounter this often.
Improv is my friend
In the medieval reenactment society that I’ve been playing with for 30 years now, I sometimes serve as the herald of the court. That loosely means I am the MC for the crown — serving as their voice as they call people up to give awards out, among other things.
Many of the awards come with fancy, handmade, custom scrolls. Incredible works of art featuring frequently impressive calligraphy and illumination. Some are seriously museum-worthy recreations for our purposes.
With said scrolls there are words. That’s what the herald reads. Sometimes they are based on historic texts, occasionally poetic, sometimes just fun, recipient-specific words.
Occasionally, either an award is done last minute — before a scroll can be created — or the scroll doesn’t arrive at the event. When that happens, some rely on pre-fab texts that cover the basics and allow you to add a name/award/date on the fly.
I don’t. I improvise.
