The home of fiction author Val Gryphin…

Writers know that story ideas can come to you in the weirdest of places and be sparked from the oddest of things. I know for me this has often led to writing ideas on napkins or scraps of paper. Some of these I manage to hang onto, and others I don’t. A lot of writers have told me that they keep a notebook with them at all times and I know a writer who has a day planner that he also writes in.  However, there are a few problems with that for me. One, I carry a lot of stuff around with me, and another notebook or day planner takes up a lot of space.  I thought small notebooks might work, but I am really rough on stuff, and they get really beat up, the spine gets bent out of shape. And i really hate writing ideas in bound books anyway because either you have to leave all of the pages in there and can’t rid of ones you use, or you tear them out which weakens the book even further.

Yeah, things are never easy for me.

So anyway, I was at Big Lots a couple of months ago, and I found a book of spiral bound index cards with hard plastic covers. My idea light bulb went off so I got it. Well, it has worked perfect for me. I throw it in whatever bag with whatever stuff I have using for that day, and it is tough enough that it doesn’t break or bend of come unstrung. it’s small enough that I can stick it wherever, and the pages are tough because they are index cards. I write each idea, thought, inspiration, whatever, on a different card, and since the pages are perforated I can tear out any ideas I use without weakening the integrity of the book. I was quite thrilled.

Yes, I am easily amused.

The one I bought was the only one they had, so I started looking around for more. Most places didn’t have them, and the few spiral-bound cards I found did not have front and back covers to protect them. Then at Wally-World I was looking through the leftover school supplies and I found these:

They are Five Star® Advance®Fat Lil Index Card Books - index cards in a binder with a fold-over flap, and inside the front cover is a pocket to put the cards that you tear out. They were $1.50. Of course I bought a ton.

Yes I am impulsive.

But seriously, the first one I purchased a few months ago is almost half full, and it has held up really well to the abuses I put it through. So now I have enough to last me for a while, and I also have gifts for writer friends! (And my daughter has appropriated a few as well.)

Small things make me happy

If this generates a title of a book or short story already in existence, I assure you, it was completely random. If it generates a title you’d like to use, go right ahead! A word of thanks to those people who have created Javascript tutorials or put sample scripts up for people like me to see and learn from. (NOTE: There are a lot of words in this, some adult in nature. Just words, folks!)

I came across this Random Title Generator during my net travels, (yes, I was Stumbling again!) and it made me laugh. Pretty much all you do is press the button and it gives you six story titles. I suck big time at titles, I think they are the hardest part of writing, so this probably comes up with better titles than I do a good part of the time * g *. I probably wouldn’t use this for titles, however, as a story idea prompt it works great - it comes up with some wonderful combinations. I copied the code, per Maygra’s request to save bandwidth, to my site and you can play with it below. I might edit it later and add other words just for fun.

Let me know what the best title it came up with for you was!