Hit 1,000 story prompts saved in my notes app and now I freeze up

I've been collecting writing prompts for like 6 years now, mostly from this sub and random Tumblr posts, and last night my phone showed I hit 1,000 saved notes. The weird thing is, the more I have, the harder it is to actually start anything, I just scroll through them and feel overwhelmed. Does anyone else hoard prompts this way and then never use them, or am I just running a museum of unused ideas?

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oliver_torres425d ago

1000 prompts is a lot of hoarding, but honestly, it sounds like you're treating your notes app like a Pinterest board for stories you'll never actually write. You've got 999 more than you need. The guy who wrote Moby Dick didn't have a folder full of whale fact prompts, he just sat down and wrote about a whale. I bet if you deleted half of those notes tonight, you'd feel lighter and actually pick one to work on tomorrow. The freeze isn't about the volume, it's about you avoiding the work part. Scrolling through a list is a way to feel productive without doing the thing. Pick the dumbest prompt you've got, set a timer for 20 minutes, and see what comes out. Worst case, you waste 20 minutes. Best case, you break the spell.