SUCCESS & LIFE BY DESIGN

My Writer’s Toolkit: What I use to catch the Muse

Writer’s Toolkit #1: MindMap App for iPad

I love this app. I use it daily. It’s perfect for brainstorming / braindumping as it has no boundaries. If you get carried away in one direction, you can just keep going. (Unlike on paper where you are limited by the page size.) Thinking without boundaries can lead to some highly creative surprises. (And the calm that rushes in after this mental decluttering is a nice side effect too….)

It’s great for just getting the random thoughts and ideas out of your head and pinned down – where you can actually do something productive with them. Plus, it makes it clear, at a glance, which ideas have legs.

With a mindmap, you don’t need to worry about priorities or orders, as you would with a list. But once I have everything out of my head and down on the ‘page’, it’s then easy (and fun) to comb through for gems or sequences or natural patterns or groups.

At which point I use…..

Writer’s Toolkit #2: Evernote

There is a popular guide to Evernote which goes into this fabulous programme in more depth. But just quickly, it is an app where you can store your notes in seperate notebooks (as many as you like). You can then organize your notebooks into ‘stacks’ (groups). I am writing my next book almost entirely with my Evernote notes and stacks.

The webclipper is a useful tool, too. If you are reading anything on the web that relates to one of your projects, you just save it into that notebook to read later or keep for reference. Like a virtual filing assistant – it’s indispensable once you get used to using it. (Being able to file things away quickly and easily means you’ll spend less time getting sucked into all the interesting/distracting stuff online – until you’re ready for it.)

I use Evernote for organising my Mindmap ideas and for giving everything structure. But for catching those visits from the Muse that occur when I am out and about, I use….