Rereading your notebooks
Opening old notebooks to today's date in previous years, as a writing prompt
Keep the notebooks, then actually go back into them. The usual version is date-anchored: read what you wrote on this date a year ago, five years ago, ten. Stuck writers use it to generate prompts. Almost any old page turns up an unfinished thought. Pattern recognition is the second effect people report, noticing the same preoccupation come round every spring.
People on record
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Does it: documented as part of their own routine. Recommends: explicitly advises other people to do it. Discusses: covered it substantively without clear personal adoption; this can include criticism or disagreement.
- Austin KleonDoes it
Writer and artist · Steal Like an Artist
Stuck for a subject, he opens his old notebooks to today's date in earlier years, a studio routine he credits to reading Thoreau's journals. It usually turns up something worth a post, and he says it also shows him the cycles his own life runs on.
Source: AustinKleon.com: A good assistant to your future self
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