28 Comments
Apr 25Liked by Jamie Li

I love this way of celebrating beautiful writing, highlighting favorite authors, and getting more out of the reading that we do!

Expand full comment

I love this idea! I create spreadsheets for everything (just went back to a submission tracker in Excel because it's easier to use than Duotrope). I do read most books on my Kindle and take notes and highlight there. This will be so much fun to use, thanks!

Expand full comment
Apr 25Liked by Jamie Li

Wow! I've been doing the same thing since 1978 in my daily writer's journals - - except my hand-written notes are much more detailed. My notes list the publication / title / author - - then my attempts at writing something that follows the rhetorical example. I then immediately track the author - - well, not exactly the author, the POET, start reading more of his/her poetry.

Then I'll probably buy the poet's latest book, start reading the poems aloud to myself.

FYI: Experts say handwriting one's notes are more helpful than a copy-and-paste.

Expand full comment

Very, very clever. My (personal) scores: 10 for great idea, 2 for me being this organized.

thanks for sharing

Expand full comment

Love this! I am writing a book in excel and I have felt so strange for using it in that way.

Expand full comment
Apr 25Liked by Jamie Li

Hi Jamie - I love this idea of capturing key quotes and highlights. I am often inspired to write (mainly poetry, but some flash fiction too) from reading passages of work, and sometimes even from podcasts and radio broadcasts. I think I'd need to tweak your layout a little but it could really work for me.

My only fear is that I already spend a lot of time on tracking spreadsheets for submissions so this sounds like another (fun) way of avoiding the hard yards of actually doing the writing/editing!

Expand full comment
Apr 25Liked by Jamie Li

Love this! I use Scrivener to capture my favorite phrases and this allows a way to tag them that feels more accessible for me than scanning a long list. Thank you!

Expand full comment
Apr 25Liked by Jamie Li

You're too much, Jamie Li! I just subscribed to your prompts to honor your energy.

Expand full comment
Apr 25Liked by Jamie Li

Frankly my dear, this is a great idea. I'm too lazy and disorganized to read the article through yet, but I worked at a tech firm and I loved watching the engineers and developers, for whom all problems are simply things waiting for solutions.

Expand full comment

This is great! Thank you for the spreadsheet AND the link to my Kindle highlights (I never knew!!).

Expand full comment
Apr 26Liked by Jamie Li

I’m in awe of your dedication to your craft, but I don’t think this would work for me. I’d rather read a few lines by Hemingway or some other great writer and fire up my creative engines that way. A spreadsheet feels too much like an engineering solution to me.

Expand full comment

This is great. I already do a similar thing in a different way, with a "Farley file for books & articles", but this approach has some strengths my own Farleyfile lacks. I'll experiment with it a bit (I just reactivated Notion a few weeks ago for a different purpose).

THANK YOU for sharing all this with us. I may quote and attribute you liberally in future articles of mine. ;-)

Expand full comment
Apr 25Liked by Jamie Li

Good to see you on here Jamie! FYI, her writing prompts have inspired more than a couple of my stories.. would recommend subscribing - link is in her bio

Expand full comment
Apr 25Liked by Jamie Li

Hi Jamie, nice to see you here. This is great idea. I've been keeping this in google docs and it's not organized and gets lost in the with everything else. I'll give Notion a shot. I'm seconding the recommendation to sign up for your writing prompts!

Expand full comment

Thank you for sharing, I love this idea.

Expand full comment

Spreadsheets? Uh, no thanks.

Expand full comment