Ideas do not wait for the desk. They arrive on a walk, in the shower or halfway through someone else’s book, and they are gone by the time you sit down to write. Offload Your Mind (working title: Long Moment) is a place to put each one down the moment it shows up, and to ask for it back while you draft.
How writers would use it
- Keep the line that arrives on a walk. Say it and it is transcribed, filed and waiting when you sit down.
- Photograph the notebook. A handwritten or printed page is read, so a note in the margin can be found again.
- Ask your own notes. “What did I decide about the villain’s backstory?” is answered from what you captured, with the sources shown.
- Keep the threads together. The people and things you mention are linked across everything else you have captured.
- Close the loops. “Send chapter three to my editor by Friday” becomes a task with a due date, and a short review at the end of each day catches what is still open.
What we are testing
Whether writers capture more of their ideas, and use more of them, once they trust that nothing they put down is lost and that they can ask for it back mid-draft.
What happens next
The beta is private and runs with a small group of volunteers, and writers and authors are one of the groups it is looking for. What they capture, and what they ask for back, decides what gets built for them.