Google image search ‘idea journaling’ and you get beautiful pages full of neat handwriting, perfect sketches, scrapbook paper and washi tape.
I keep an idea journal. Mine is not beautiful.
My journal (or should I say journals, because I constantly start new ones before old ones are full) is messy – scrawled script, scribbled pictures – complete nonsense to the onlooker. However, this process is a way for me to save things that I may not remember later, to brainstorm vague ideas for images and make those ideas fuller, to feel like I’m creating even when I don’t have a camera in my hand.
This process also makes me feel more sane. I’m a planner and a list maker and I think of ideas at inopportune times. So, rather than create right away, I write it down and hope that the little tidbit of an idea still inspires me later.
I truly believe ideas can be found everywhere.
Whenever you watch a movie, read a book, visit a new place, etc. and see something you love, something that draws you in – whether a place, color, person’s movement – that’s inspiration to you and thus something that influences your work, whether you actively recognize it or not at the time.
My solution? When you feel that passionate twinge, make note of it – whether a note on your phone or a physical piece of paper. Connect those ideas and draw patterns from them. The more you know yourself, the more personal work you create and personal work draws others in. Who knows, maybe your work will become a line in someone else’s idea journal.
Do you keep an idea journal? What do you do when you’re struck with a creative thought at just the wrong time? Let me know in a comment below.
“In large measure becoming an artist consists of learning to accept yourself, which makes your work personal, and in following your own voice, which makes your work distinctive.”
– Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland
I’ve tried keeping an idea journal but have never been successful for very long. Mostly I just follow the muse when I’m creating and often I don’t know what the final image will be until I get there.
We all have different ways of creating, and it seems yours works very well for you. I often thing for longer than I create, so without writing things down I am absolutely lost.
I wish I had thought of keeping an idea journal. I always come up with ideas when I am not in a place to act on them. I see a journal in my very near future. Thanks for the idea.
Of course! Hope it’s helpful :)
This is what I so have to learn to do instead of thinking “that idea is SO obvious I’ll never forget”… HA!
Wonderful! I hope having a journal will help. Trust me I’ve had so many times where I just think – but my forgetful self finally encouraged me to write it down.