Finding Words: A Notes App Exercise

In his book The Anthropocene Reviewed, John Green writes about his various note taking tendencies. Pre-smart phone, he was prone to writing down various thoughts in whatever book he was reading at the moment. Here is what he writes:

“There is a grocery list in my copy of Song of Solomon and directions to my great-aunt’s house in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. On page 241 of All the King’s Men, I wrote at the bottom of the page, ‘It rains for two days straight,’ an idea I had for the plot of my first novel, Looking for Alaska. There are many other references to my stories in books I was reading. Sometimes it’s only a few words: FERAL HOT HUNT, scrawled in the margins of Our Southern Highlanders, became part of the climactic scene in my book An Abundance of Katherines.” (pg. 232)

My thoughts often feel scattered and sprawled, so the fact that John Green writes plot points in the margins of novels he reads brings me a strange sense of comfort. It reminds me that snippets of ideas can turn into something meaningful even if they start out as a fragment written somewhere inconspicuous.

Eventually, John Green switched to the Notes app on his iPhone, and he ends this particular essay by looking back at some of his old notes and writing what he remembers about each one which isn’t always much: “I have no idea what those words mean, but here they are, typed by me in March 2018 with no further context.”

Where do you put your thoughts when they come to you?

Do you write them by hand somewhere? Is your Notes app full of half-formed thoughts and sentences? Have you ever scribbled on the back of a receipt while your car is stopped at a red light or is that just me? 

For this creative exercise, go through your old notes—wherever they are.

Choose a few of them and expand the story or idea. Has something changed since your initial thought? Write about it. Have you forgotten why you wrote what you did? Utilize some creative license and fill in the blanks. Is the thought incomplete? Expand your thinking to include what you now know.

Take those few random sentences or the phrase you wrote on the back of that birthday card from your mom and turn them into a story—even if your first thought is, “I have no idea what those words mean, but here they are.”