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My prompt jar finally hit 100 slips and I'm weirdly proud of it
I started a little jar of writing prompts back in January 2023, mostly stuff I overheard at coffee shops or random ideas at 2am. Last night I counted them out and hit exactly 100 slips. It sounds silly but seeing that stack made me realize I actually have a system now instead of just staring at a blank page. The weird part is my best stories all came from slips I almost threw away. Anyone else keep a physical prompt stash, or do you just use a notes app?
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logan_young2927d ago
100 slips in a jar is the kind of thing that looks pointless to everyone else but means you actually showed up for yourself. The part about the best stories coming from slips you almost threw away is the real gold here, because that tells me the throwaway ideas were the ones your brain hadn't overthought yet. Once you sit with an idea too long it gets polished and safe, but the weird 2am scraps still have teeth. I bet if you went back through all 100 right now, the ones that scare you a little would be the ones worth writing. That jar isn't just a stash, it's a record of which ideas you trusted too late. Maybe start pulling two slips a week instead of one and see if the ratio of good to bad shifts.
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adamthompson27d ago
Man, the jar thing got me. I did something close to this with a notes app folder instead. Every time an idea popped up I just dumped it in, no editing, no second guessing. A year later I had like 300 notes and most were garbage. But maybe 15 of them hit hard when I reread them, and the ones that hit were always the messy ones I almost deleted. Pulling two a week sounds smart too. The first ones you grab are always the safe ones, but after a few weeks you start digging for the weird stuff because you want something with a pulse.
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