Looking at my old notebooks and saw I've written over 200 story starters

I was cleaning out a closet and found a box of my old writing notebooks from high school and college. I started flipping through them, and I realized I had this habit of just writing down a single interesting line or idea whenever one hit me. I decided to count them all up, and it came to over 200 of these little prompts. Back then, I thought I was just wasting time or avoiding writing a real story. Now, looking at them, I see a whole map of my brain from ages 18 to 25. Some are terrible, but a few are actually pretty solid ideas I'd forgotten about. It's weird to think that all that scribbling actually added up to something. Has anyone else dug up an old pile of writing bits and been surprised by what was there?

3 comments

3 Comments

leohart2mo ago

It's like finding a fossil of your own mind...

nina_hall2mo ago

Yeah that fossil idea is spot on. It's like digging up an old diary and seeing how you used to put sentences together, what you worried about. You find a tweet from 2012 and cringe at the slang, but also kinda miss that version of you. It's proof you were a different person, and your thoughts actually leave a record.

jade317d ago

Oh man, I feel this so hard! I found a Myspace post from 2009 the other day where I was complaining about someone named "Skyler" and I still have zero clue who that was. My past self was out here writing dramatic paragraphs about people I can't even remember. It's like leaving a time capsule of your worst takes and hoping future you has the sense to laugh instead of cry.