Gather your ideas

It's Monday, the day of Getting Back to Work, but National Sketch Writing Month doesn't start until tomorrow. What do you do?

You probably have a bunch of sketch ideas lying around, in notebooks, in emails, in your brain. So, gather them into a single list. Then, when you sit down to write, all you have to do to get started is pick an item off the list and write a sketch about it.

You'll probably have more ideas as the month goes on, so it will help if you keep your list portable. If you've got a fancy computer phone, like iPhone or BlackBerry, keep your sketch idea list there. If you're a traditionalist, you can buy a small pocket-sized notebook and keep it with your wallet. Or you could even folder up a single sheet of paper and carry that around: if it's good enough for Earl Hickey, it's good enough for you.

The important thing, though, is be prepared to jot down your ideas as soon as you have them. Your head is not a safe place to keep things. Thoughts are mutated or forgotten in time. They also require effort to maintain, which is why you feel stressed out when you have a bunch of things you don't want to forget in the back of your head.

Tomorrow I'll write about how to turn that list of ideas into sketches. (Hint: it involves writing!)