Have you ever had a brilliant idea, but when it came time to write it down couldn\u2019t remember what it was? I had that happen recently. It was coming up for my turn to write a blog post for the Writing Center, and I came up with something that I thought would be a great idea to talk about, but for whatever reason: no pencil, no paper, or more likely, pure procrastination and the arrogance to think, \u201cI won\u2019t forget,\u201d I didn\u2019t write it down, and then it was gone. I tried to blame age\u2014I\u2019ve heard as you get closer to 40 your memory starts to go\u2026Now who was it that said that? Hmmm. Anyway, the truth is, great ideas that pop into our head aren\u2019t likely to be stored in our long term memory, regardless of age. They are fleeting little birds that tweet in our ears, and if we aren\u2019t quick to catch them and record them in some way, they fly off to tweet in someone else\u2019s ear\u2014at least that\u2019s my bird theory, which I probably heard from someone else, but again, I can\u2019t remember. <\/p>\n
The funny thing is, even though I still don\u2019t recall what that brilliant idea was, it prompted an even better one, the title of this blog. It came about when I was talking with a friend, and he asked me what I was going to blog about, and that\u2019s when I realized, I\u2019d lost my bird. I couldn\u2019t remember my idea, but I could remember that I was excited about it. Irked, I stewed for a moment trying to recall what it was when it hit me that maybe an even better idea was to blog about lost ideas. Bingo! I had a new idea to work with, and this time, I captured my wily, little chirping bird, and put him on paper. I realized there are two great lessons about writing to be learned here. First, if you get a great idea, write it down as soon as possible, and jot down any other ideas that may come with it. However, the second is, if you do find yourself with a runaway bird; don\u2019t get too discouraged because it may prompt something else even better. Part of the fun of writing is the excitement of exploring new possibilities, and sometimes they happen as a result of lost ideas or even wrong turns. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Have you ever had a brilliant idea, but when it came time to write it down couldn\u2019t remember what it was? I had that happen recently. It was coming up for my turn to write a blog post for the Writing Center, and I came up with something that I thought would be a great […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/writingcenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}