When I am taking time out to write for the day, I search for options and thoughts. Sometimes I have to go back to the “notes” in my phone to get a scrap or idea that I may have left for myself over the last five years. I used to stop and scribble writing ideas on scraps of paper or checkbooks in my car after pulling over to make notes. Often times, I kept a notepad on my drive home to stop and get the ideas out before I returned home from work. Driving home seems to be the best time to get my ideas out because my children sleep to and from WCHS. For example, I wrote on February 1, 2015 at 3:47 pm inside the notes app on my phone:
The Aging English Major
Topics: education, politics, parenting, writing, teaching of writing, struggling readers, literature reviews, and teaching literature to young adults, genealogy, parenting pets
That idea did not come to fruition until May of 2018 when I obviously narrowed my focus to a blog about parenting, writing, and writing about parenting. I just went back to that note today; I used my recollection of this note to create my second blog one afternoon. Yesterday, I recalled a few opening sentences of a novel idea that came to my head while driving home from Hahira after visiting my college best friend. On July 5, 2014 at 1:24 pm, I pulled over and typed into my notes:
New money moves into an old neighborhood.
He looks around after cutting the grass, pulls his blue collar tight,
and thanks his lucky stars for his white collar life
and his white collar wife.
I am not sure where I was going with that opener, but I dreamed about that book last night. I am pretty sure this guy is having an affair that would devastate his high maintenance wife. I am not sure where the inspiration or the thoughts arise, but who can put a cap or an explanation on creativity? I also found a story idea from 2014 about a journalist from Nantucket; however, when I read it I realize that it is the brainstorming for a romance novel!! What the hay was I thinking? ROMANCE…eww….What am I to become: Nicholas Sparks?
I opened my notes this afternoon looking for a narrative poem somewhere in there, but I am not the narrative poem type. However, my notes were marked to an interesting little poem that I don’t remember writing. It was typed October 15, 2017 at 12:52 am.
You are wisps of memory now They come They go They fade fast Like a puff of smoke You are my past The good, the trauma All that is left An occasional playing sound saunters in and out of The Stream of Consciousness Simply a wisp a thought a sound Nothing else exists "Morpheme" by Jennifer Greene Sullivan
The Aging English Major: Searching for Self throughout Motherhood 