Remembering the time my entire writing prompt collection vanished before a workshop

This was back in 2018, right before a big group meetup in Portland. I had spent months building a physical notebook of weird, specific prompts I found or made up, stuff like 'a lighthouse keeper finds a message in a bottle, but it's in a language only they understand.' The night before the workshop, I left the notebook on the roof of my car while loading other stuff. I drove off and only realized it was gone when I got home. I spent the next two hours retracing my route in the dark with a flashlight, but it was just gone. The next morning, I had to show up empty-handed to a room of ten people expecting to write. I ended up just talking about the prompts I could remember from heart, and we built new ones together based on what people in the room were carrying in their pockets. It actually worked out better, but I still miss that old notebook. What's the worst thing you've lost that was important for your creative process?

3 comments

3 Comments

violay271mo ago

Forget the notebook, what happened with the group after that? Did you keep meeting with those people, or was it a one time thing that fell apart because your plans got wrecked? Losing the physical thing is bad, but sometimes losing the group momentum is worse. I've had projects die because one key piece went missing and everyone just drifted away.

pat_webb451mo ago

Losing the group momentum" is the part I see differently. If a group falls apart because one notebook went missing, it probably wasn't that strong to begin with. The story sounds like the opposite, that the problem forced a better, more personal way of working together.

leo_mason15d ago

Saw a piece on productivity that stuck with me, basically said that most groups are held together by the invisible stuff, not the physical stuff. The real bonds are the conversations and the shared effort, not the notebook itself. That missing notebook might have just been the thing that forced everyone to actually talk again instead of relying on a crutch. Your take makes sense to me, maybe the group was already drifting and the notebook was just the excuse. Sometimes losing the easy path forces people to build a stronger one, or they walk away. Either way, it tells you what the group was really made of.