I guess, for me, personally, it’s down to using as much synced technology as possible. I don’t like notebooks any more; and have become obsessive about transcribing text into digital format ASAP. That way, I can cut and paste, re-arrange and expand/contract/add to whenever necessary.

I’m also obsessed with syncing everything online to portable formats so it’s all in one place. Oh yes, and backing up, in an obsessively, obsessed way.

Hadn’t realised just how pedantic I am until I started writing this. Maybe I’ll sync this comment. It could come in handy one day!

Fab post. Great to see so many people up for a discussion. Best wishes. Luke

When you verbally tell someone a story, do you tell them the boring parts? Hopefully not. Hopefully you cut to the chase. After some practice, your brain just automatically does it for you. It drops the filler and remembers the killer.

You sit in a coffee shop for three hours and then someone busts in a robs the place at gunpoint. When you tell the story, you don’t really get into the details of what you did for three hours. Do you? Hopefully your mind won’t even let you. It gets to the point.

If an idea is good, it will be persistent. That’s my view and I believe a consensus of Jeffs was reached last night. You may assume all Jeffs are in agreement on this. (It’s a 50+1 society)

My notebook is for calculating, not as much for remembering. I figure stuff out in it.

Jeff

What I do, is if a new movie idea comes to my mind I little it linger for a week or a month. I debate whether it’s even worth writing as a script. Then if it doesn’t pass my test, I tried to forget it and move on with life. During post-production of AMENSIA (18 months) I tried to think of nothing but that film. Not easy. But I didn’t write anything unless a program issue in post.

What we have to be careful is too many new ideas not related to the project at hand can become a distraction that renders us useless to what we’re doing now. Having our heads too much in the clouds of thinking can be detrimental to the real world project you’re working on right now.

Lee — You and I have a lot in common… okay, maybe it’s just the writing on trash in the car thing. We should start scrapbooking our brilliant trash, and then some French person will make a movie about it. (Hello, France!)

Word docs, emails to self, tweets, blogs, paper files, computer files…

I also am getting more into the just let it go and if it comes back to you, it’s important…thing.

I also sometimes just get really frustrated and depressed about it. Which I guess is not really coping. But it is part of what happens with the lots of ideas problem, really the not-enough-time slash money problem, right?

Then when I have time, I’ll transfer the ideas into a WORD doc. If it get past the WORD doc stage then there’s at least a Scrivener file if not a Final Draft file runnnig amok in my hard drive.

I’ve got a separate files for each film idea — and even one doc just listing a bunch of titles I’d like to use someday. I already came up with the title for Part Two of the Loneliness Trilogy which I hope to shoot at the end of the year if it’s possible.

My god I need help.

Julie to Maria: I think anal is something that unorganized people call organized (and often successful) people. So…

Julie to Cassidy & Phil: I bet tossing ideas into the FriendTank is similar to what they do over at SNL. I’ve always thought it would be a cool and terrifying place to work. Float your ideas out there, the bad ones sink, the good ones swim. Works for them…

Julie to Everyone: Please meet Mike McNamara. He’s @McMikeNamara on Twitter. He’s also one of our oldest friends and someone we trust with our scripts (and our lives). Mike, meet everyone else.