Admit it–do you make lists and then ignore them? I do. Almost every morning as I do my morning pages, things pop into my head and I jot them down: travel plans, to-do things for the day/week/month, shopping lists, calls to make. I think there is an area in my cerebral cortex that specializes in listing. Writers live with lists that we don’t call lists, but they are: tables of contents, book outlines, marketing plans (my toughest list to maintain). A calendar is a list of days and events. Listing also means tilting if you’re on board a ship or boat. I tilt often, go right off course despite listing my duties and desires.

Here’s a thought. Use a list to write from. No, not that book outline. I’m referring to that scrap of paper in your pocket that says something like duct tape, eggs, tomatoes. It’s not just a list. It’s a skeleton. Can you write something that fleshes out that list? It might lead to a bit of fiction–a scene for a novel or short story. (I have a scene in which a man is making a grocery list and collapses under the weight of parenthood that keeps him shopping for the needs of his children and ignoring other things in his life that had once been important.) Such a little list could become part of a memoir or a family history. Why did your aunt always take her list to Coolbroth’s Market in Cornish, Maine, and did they carry every item on her list? What if that market ran out of her favorite brand of toothpaste? Would she go without or move on to a different store, maybe feeling a shadow of guilt for not shopping at her usual place?

Lists can nag us into getting things done. They can remind us of our failures when we ignore them. They can telegraph our interests to an observer.  Way back, we had proto-writing such as hieroglyphs, runes, quipu and oracle bones. Such early writing seems to have been lists of food stuffs, taxes, military records. Gradual development led to true writing and our lists could also grow into true writing, even if what we make from the list is grand, outrageous fiction.

Don’t crumple that shopping list or honey-do list. Use it.