I just finished reading Twyla Tharp’s delightfully useful book, The Creative Habit . She’s a world-class choreographer, but what she says applies equally well to writers. Chapter 5 is particularly interesting because it talks about something decidedly low tech–cardboard boxes.
Everyone has his or her own organizational system. Mine is a box, the kind you can buy at Office Depot for transferring files.
I start every dance with a box. I write the project name on the box, and as the piece progresses I fill it up with every item that went into the making of the dance. This means notebooks, news clippings… books and photographs and pieces of art that may have inspired me…
The box makes me feel organized, that I have my act together even when I don’t know where I’m going yet…
More important, though, the box means I never have to worry about forgetting. One of the biggest fears for a creative person is that some brilliant idea will get lost because you didn’t write it down and put it in a safe place. I don’t worry about that because I know where to find it. It’s all in the box.
There’s much, much more in the book, but hopefully this will give you a taste.
–Michael W. Perry, Seattle
Yes. Tharp’s book is popular among Scriveners. Here are two thread where this book is mentioned. There may be more.
https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/methods-using-curio-5/5870/4
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7392&start=0&hilit=tharp
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