I don’t know how anyone else handles spontaneous ideas, but personally I write on anything if the need arises. I have an embarrassing pile of ideas that have been sorted into each series of notebooks. I have compiled many notebooks (I am serious when I say MANY) from these notes and many stories are just beginning.

I don’t always think logically when writing. I could be out in a store, for example, shopping for a random number of unnecessary items when a song comes on overhead and an idea sparks. After that initial spark I find myself scrounging into the deepest depths of chaos that is my purse looking for my emergency pen. (Yes. I said emergency pen.) I dig it out and have rushed up to random work stations to steal a piece of scratch paper, I have asked an embarrassing number of employees for receipt paper, and I have even decided what the heck and written in a notebook knowing I would have to put something back just to write it down.

(Before anyone says, “What about the notepad in your phone?” and starts to judge me…) I am not the person to usually leave her phone fully charged. If I look down and that thing is on two percent I am rushing up to someone for paper. (I probably need that two percent for music to get home. Just being honest.)

I used to work retail and I used to be a waitress. I have a stash of paper from my waitressing notepad days that started some of my current ideas. I also have all types of paper that I could find working retail. I will not lie and say I have never used a napkin or done a last resort to toilet paper because I absolutely have.

If the Idea is there and is begging to come out I will write it down before it floats away somewhere else. I lost a few pieces in a recent move and a recent purge, but I am choosing to believe that those ideas were not meant for me to continue with and who knows they might spark something for someone else.