Secret Weapons – The Morgue File

No, this isn’t a new murder mystery. The Morgue File is where ideas go when they die.

Lots of artists have them – whether they use a different term or not – sometimes it’s a pile of canvases in the corner, other times it’s a sketchbook filled with branding ideas. Some people use copyleft clauses and post their dead ideas online for anyone to take and use.Me? I hoard my ideas.

On my harddrive are more than eight hundred pages of raw notes, spanning maybe two dozen folders. Not surprising – lots of writers generate huge amounts of material spread over wide topics. those of us who wrote long before we blogged likely have many text files filled with unfinished works ready to be used should the need ever arise.

However, looking through my drive, I found something even more interesting.

My images morgue file, which I drop things into routinely whenever I see something inspirational, is five or six times as large as my writing file. I’ve used the pictures in the past both as inspiration for scenes in writing, and as models for landscapes, character sketches and so on. I’ve derived so much value out of this folder, I can’t even compare it to the one housing the results of my work.

The experience got me thinking about the idea of banking creativity. You may have been told that creative thought can’t be scheduled, but can it be hoarded? Getting past writers’ block, designers’ block, or any other kind of procrastination agents requires a certain amount of agility.

Usually, you’ll find scads of suggestions about creative exercises, mental hoops to jump through to get the juices flowing. These are great ideas.

Morgue files, however, are for ideas that you’ve already had.

If you don’t already have one, here are some really simple tips for keeping an effective Morgue File:

• Archive everything – every idea you have, write it down somewhere. Create a gathering point for all of these ideas, and make sure everything falls there eventually. Like collecting your reciepts, banking your ideas in one place can help keep track of real genius.
• Keep it organized to YOUR needs – You may not be a folder junkie like I am, but build a simple taxonomy for labeling ideas. for example, even with all of my folders, I want to keep some ideas at the top of the pile. These folders begin with underscores, because _Zebra falls before Antalope in asciiland.
• By all that’s good and precious, leave the thing alone – Morgue files work best when they’re left to their own devices for a while. don’t go rooting through yours unless you need an idea on the quick, or unless you absolutely have to clean up your storage space. If the latter is the case, I’d suggest getting a good, large external hard drive to keep your morgue safe and out of sight.

Keeping a Morgue File is just one way to archive ideas, but these already-baked flashes of brilliance or inspiration can be absolutely invaluable to the creative under the hammer. And, like any good secret weapon, they only improve with time and feeding.

Do you have any secret weapons for your creativity?  Any techniques for preventing writer’s block or the like?

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