You’ve heard of the “to do” list, but what about the “to write” list? It’s a powerful tool in my writing kit.

Sitting in the classroom at Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, New Mexico, I watched as best-selling author Natalie Goldberg picked up her cheap spiral notebook, flipped to the back, and showed us a list of scrawled topics she’d penned on that last page. She said she carried a notebook everywhere and jotted ideas on the back page of the notebook as they occurred to her. “If I’m stuck, I look at these,” she said.

She’d mentioned this list in one of her books, most likely Writing Down the Bones, but to see the real thing left quite an impression. I began to do the same and still carry a notebook at all times.

We also did list-making exercises in the many workshops I took from her. The topics varied, but here are a few of my favorites:

~ The things I carry (a spin-off from The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien).
~ Make a list of everyone you’ve ever met
~ Write the names of every place you’ve been
~ Name your pets
~ Tell me every car you’ve ever owned and what happened to it
~ Write down everywhere you have lived
~ List all your loves
~ Tell me everything you know about the color blue

When I write a list, sometimes I’ll fill the entire writing practice with listed, but more often, as I made the list, something would occur to me and I’d soon be writing an essay instead.

Do you use writing lists? I’d love to hear if they work for you!